The Homestead Act of 1862: Land Freely Given, Much Abused

For much of America's political history, the freeman or "yeoman" farmer has been a powerful symbol—combining the twin American dreams of independence and prosperity. From as early as the 1830s, the call for free distribution of public lands was strong. The Free-Soil Party was especially vocal on the subject, seeing such land distribution as a way of preventing slavery from spreading to the territories. The Republican Party favored the idea of free land distribution and adopted it for its platform in 1860, while the Southern states were opposed because of its implications regarding the future of slavery.

Article continues after this newspaper image from the March 20, 1860, issue of the Macon Telegraph (Georgia)

Free land for homesteading began with the Preemption Act of 1841. This act permitted settling on government lands by people who were heads of households, single men over 21 or widows. Applicants also had to be U.S. citizens or intending to become so, and had to have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 months. The act allowed settlers to buy up to 160 acres of land at a low price before the land was offered for sale to the general public. It also established that when certain states were admitted into the Union they would be paid ten percent of the proceeds from those land sales.

The Homestead Act was an attempt to reform and broaden the Preemption Act, as well as speed up the settlement of Western lands. After the secession of the South in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln officially signed the act into law on May 20, 1862. The law granted applicants 160 acres of undeveloped land outside of the original Thirteen Colonies upon three conditions: file an application, live on the land for five years and develop it under certain requirements, and then file for the deed of title. Anyone who had never fought in battle against the U.S. government could apply, including freed slaves.

Unfortunately, the belief that the act would provide a way out of poverty for every man was unrealistic. Few laborers or farmers had enough money to develop the land, and the act was much abused by corporate interests. The main intent of the act was to provide land for agriculture, but in many regions the claims were used instead to control resources such as water, or to squeeze out competitors. Land speculators, cattle, railroad, timber and oilmen were among the abusers of the Homestead Act. Between 1862 and 1904, approximately 500 million acres were granted, but only 80 million of those acres went to small farmers. Another common practice, while not illegal, was for grown children of large families to claim neighboring lands, thus creating large estates within a few generations.

The Homestead Act was revised with the enactment of the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909. This act gave 320 acres to farmers who accepted lands of lesser quality that could not be easily irrigated. The Homestead Act, and especially this enlarged version, has been blamed for contributing to the great Dust Bowl, a period of severe dust storms on prairie lands that occurred from 1930 to 1936, in some places until 1940. These storms were caused by drought combined with decades of extensive farming without crop rotation or other techniques that would prevent erosion.

The Homestead Act expired in 1976 in all states except Alaska, where it expired in 1986. All told, 1.6 million homesteads, about 270,000,000 acres, were granted between 1862 and 1986. This is approximately ten percent of all land in the United States.

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