President Lincoln and the Homestead Act

[David Lockmiller]

The New York Times is again attacking President Lincoln in a very lengthy April 9, 2020 editorial titled “The America We Need.”

In the second paragraph of the editorial, the Editorial Board of the New York Times appeared to be in agreement with all of the Republican Party legislation that President Abraham Lincoln signed into law in 1862:

“Between May and July 1862, even as Confederate victories in Virginia raised doubts about the future of the Union, Congress and President Abraham Lincoln kept their eyes on the horizon, enacting three landmark laws that shaped the nation’s next chapter: The Homestead Act allowed Western settlers to claim 160 acres of public land apiece; the Morrill Act provided land grants for states to fund universities; and the Pacific Railway Act underwrote the transcontinental railroad.”

But in a paragraph very close to the end of this lengthy editorial, the Editorial Board negated the positive assessment it had made in the second paragraph of its editorial opinion and directly placed blame on President Abraham Lincoln for the Homestead Act legislation:

“The purpose of the federal government, Lincoln wrote to Congress on July 4, 1861, was ‘to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial burdens from all shoulders, and to give everyone an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.’ The Homestead Act in particular was a concrete step in that direction: 10 percent of all the land in the United States was ultimately distributed in 160-acre chunks. But Lincoln’s conception of “everyone” did not include everyone: The Homestead Act rested on the expropriation of Native American lands. (Emphasis added.)

In order to learn about Lincoln’s participation in the history of this particular legislative act, I consulted Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book “Team of Rivals.” The book index lists three sources (pages 240, 267, & 461-62) on the topic of the Homestead Act.

The book page 240 entry reads:

“While opposition to the extension of slavery remained as central as it had been 1856, the 1860 platform also called for a Homestead Act, a protective tariff, a railroad to the Pacific, protection for naturalized citizens, and government support for harbor and river improvements – a far broader range of issues designed to attract a larger base.

After much debate, the delegates rejected a provision requiring a two-thirds vote to secure the nomination. Their decision that a simple majority was sufficient to nominate appeared to be a victory for Seward. Coming into the Chicago as the best known of all the contenders, he already had nearly a majority of pledges. . . . Indeed, when business came to a close at the end of the second day, a move was made to proceed directly to the presidential balloting.”

The book page 267 entry reads:

Lincoln knew this election would not be determined by a single issue. While opposition to slavery extension had led to the creation of the Republican Party and dominated the national debate, in many places other issues took precedence. In Pennsylvania, the leading iron producer in the nation, and in New Jersey, the desire for a protective tariff was stronger than hostility to slavery. In the West, especially among immigrant groups, multitudes hoped for homestead legislation providing free or cheap land to new settler, many of whom had been hard hit by the Panic of 1857. “Land for the Landless” was the battle cry. And when, in the mist of the campaign, President Buchanan vetoed a mild Homestead Act, many in Indiana and throughout the West turned to Lincoln. All of these issues had been carefully addressed in the Republican Party platform. Had the election been fought on the single issue of slavery, it is likely that Lincoln would have lost.

And, the book pages 461-62 entry reads:

As was customary on the last day of the session, the president traveled to the Capitol stationing himself in the vice president’s office, where he signed the spate of bills rushed through in the final days of the term. It had been an extraordinarily productive session. Relieved of Southern opposition, the Republican majority was able to pass three historic bills that had been stalled for years: the Homestead Act, which promised 160 acres of free public land largely in the West to settlers who agreed to reside on the property for five years or more; the Morrill Act, providing public lands to states for the establishment of land-grant colleges; and the Pacific Railroad Act, which made the construction of a transcontinental railroad possible. The 37th Congress also laid the economic foundation for the Union war effort with the Legal Tender bill, which created a paper money known as “greenbacks.” A comprehensive tax bill was also enacted, establishing the Internal Revenue Bureau in the Department of the Treasury and levying a federal income tax for the first time in American history.

Lincoln signs Homestead Act

The first Homestead Act claim was filed by a civil war veteran and doctor named Daniel Freeman on January 1, 1863. By the end of the Civil War in 1865, [only] 15,000 people had homestead claims in territories that now make up the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado.

Before the Civil War, similar acts had been proposed in 1852, 1854 and 1859, but were defeated by a powerful southern lobby that feared new territories populated by homesteaders would be allowed into the Union as “free states,” thereby giving more power to the abolitionist movement. In addition, many in the northern manufacturing industries feared the Homestead Act would draw large numbers of their labor force away and into farming. In 1860, President James Buchanan vetoed an earlier homestead bill, succumbing to pressure from southern slave-holding interests.

“Unused” Land?: Native Americans, The Homestead Act, and the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act"

As land was claimed and turned into private property, arriving settlers aggressively encroached on Native American territory, and began to agitate for the expansion of territory into sovereign Native land, sometimes with violent results. The Indian Appropriations Act (1851) relegated Indians to reservations in the West. For Indians, reservation life was restraining, and the land Natives were forced to occupy were often too small to raise animals or hunt on and not viable agriculturally. Still, many settlers believed that Indians had gotten the choicest land, and pressed for their availability to claim. The government responded to this crisis in favor of the white settlers and land speculators, stripping Indians of the last semblance of sovereignty they had by abolishing the reservation system as well as their honoring of tribes as separate entities from the United States. The 1871 Dawes Act stated that “hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.” It also marked the beginning of increased efforts to integrate Indians into American society rather than cordoning them off into isolated reservations. This was continued to a larger extent with the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act (also called the General Allotment Act), which was a Homestead Act directed at breaking up Indian reservation holdings as well as tribes themselves.