May 20, 1862—Envisioning what a revitalized America
might look like, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act,
which turned over 270 million acres of the public domain to private citizens,
for free or at minimal cost.
No other administration has been so associated, from
its first day in office to its last, with a war and its consequences as
Lincoln’s. By necessity, historians have concentrated on this aspect of his
Presidency to the exclusion of almost all else.
But the Civil War did not undermine the determination of either the President or his
party to enact sweeping domestic legislation. In fact, in a certain way—i.e.,
the elimination of “strict constructionist,” pro-slavery Southern Democrats—the
outbreak of hostilities enabled Lincoln to pass more legislation than what
otherwise might have been possible.
A modest bill to provide lands to settlers at either
no or minimal cost/cheap credit, for instance, had been vetoed as recently as 1860 by President James Buchanan, and the Republicans had called for passage of the bill in their platform that election year. With no obstacle in its path
two years later, Congress passed and the President signed a bill that gave
irresistible momentum to the settlement of the West and provided a safety valve
for people stuck in a stagnant economy.
If you’re not in a state directly influenced by this
piece of legislation (and maybe even if you are), you’ll be hard-pressed to
recall, years after seeing it in a high-school history text, the year it
passed. But in this case, it’s important that this bill passed in 1862 rather
than 1857 or 1867. As just seen, the measure had no chance of passing prior to
secession by the Confederacy in 1861; had it been proposed five years later,
its impact on returning veterans would have been late and limited.
To start with, the act was part of a series of
measures—including the Morrill Act, which helped to establish agricultural
colleges through land grants, and the Pacific Railway Act, authorizing the first transcontinental
railroad—meant, as Lincoln told Congress, “to elevate the condition of men—to
lift artificial weights from all shoulders—to clear the paths of laudable
pursuit for all—to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the
race of life.” In other words, before the GOP increasingly became a party of
entrenched privilege in the Gilded Age, it fostered egalitarianism in a
diversified economy.
This program was also, in a sense, a later version
of “the American System,” the economic development system proposed by Lincoln’s
“beau ideal of a statesman,” Henry Clay. Key to the American system were federal
subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to
develop markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be
obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands.
A slaveholder himself, the Senator from Kentucky was
concerned that slavery would fracture the Union. He was a member of the American Colonization
Society, seeing colonization of freed slaves back in front as a means of
removing the evil from American life. (Lincoln likewise advocated that position, and only abandoned it during wartime when it provoked a storm of criticism from abolitionists and freedmen such as Frederick Douglass.) Clay saw markets as another means of
unifying the nation across sectional lines, this time through commerce.
The Homestead Act provided a shot in the arm to what
was then the major American employment source: agriculture. Approximately 2
million farms existed in 1860, but owners of small farms had been squeezed by
the Panic of 1857 and the rise of large farms (particularly Southern
plantations). For a fee of only $18, the
Homestead Act allowed someone to stake out a claim, build a cabin, live on the
land for five years, and, at the end of that time, “prove up”and claim the land for himself.
The effects of the Homestead Act were immense,
including a nation more united by commerce and the creation of a breadbasket
region west of the Mississippi that, in the 20th century, would feed
a world badly damaged by catastrophic wars. Above all, it created a more
egalitarian society, opening greater opportunities for freedmen, war veterans,
women (over 10% of claims were filed by women), and immigrants.(See, for instance, Fergus Bordewich's assessment of the legislation in The Wall Street Journal this past weekend.)
At the same time, it should be recognized that the
act did not achieve the full extent of its promise—or, in at least one
instance, its impact was deleterious:
·
*Approximately 60% of lands reverted to
the government, since the soil (especially in the Dakota Territory) was not
always favorable to settlement;
·
* Although 2 million emigrants settled in
these trans-Mississippi territories, a number of these newcomers were even less than
dirt-poor—they literally could not afford farm tools;
·
* The postwar wave of white settlers
increasingly pushed Native-Americans off they had once held for years.
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