President Lincoln and the Homestead Act

[David Lockmiller]

(04-21-2020 04:30 PM)Amy L. Wrote:  But Lincoln’s conception of “everyone” did not include everyone: The Homestead Act rested on the expropriation of Native American lands.

I am not generally well-read, and I didn't read the whole NYT article, but is that not just what the Homestead Act did?
Is the sentence above not true?

Yes, it is true that the expropriation of Native American lands made the Homestead Act possible.

But what role did President Abraham Lincoln play in the expropriation of the Native American lands?

My post #2 in this thread provides the following information on the subject.

On May 28, 1830, the Indian Removal Act was signed by President Jackson. The Act allowed the government to divide land west of the Mississippi to give to Indian tribes in exchange for the land they’d lost. The government would pick up the cost of relocating the Indians and helping them resettle.

In 1838, President Martin Van Buren sent federal troops to march the remaining southern Cherokee holdouts 1,200 miles to Indian Territory in the Plains. Disease and starvation were rampant, and thousands died along the way, giving the tortuous journey the nickname “Trail of Tears.”

In 1851, Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act which created the Indian reservation system and provided funds to move Indian tribes onto farming reservations and hopefully keep them under control. Indians were not allowed to leave the reservations without permission. 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.

Abraham Lincoln became President of the United States on March 4, 1861. What do you think that the new President of the United States should have done? Obviously, he did not believe at that moment that he had the constitutional right to emancipate all of the slaves in the United States.

Do you believe that President Lincoln had the right and authority to declare the Indian Appropriations Act of 1851 unconstitutional? I don't think so.

Do you now think that the Editorial Board of the New York Times is under the impression that President Lincoln had the right and authority as President in 1861 or 1862 (when President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act) to return all of the Native American lands to their rightful owners by Executive Order? I don't think so. Do you?

If the Editorial Board of the New York Times actually did think that that was the case, why did they not write this or make a similar statement in their editorial? Believe or not, the Editorial Board of the New York Times control what they write; not me.

Instead, the Editorial Board wrote:

“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.”

Implicit in this one paragraph statement made by the Editorial Board of the New York Times is that President Abraham Lincoln himself had done something morally wrong. In my opinion, the “cheap shot” denigration of the character and reputation of Abraham Lincoln in the Editorial pages of the New York Times in this manner (without President Abraham Lincoln being able to defend himself) is unwarranted and should not be permitted to go unchallenged.

See my post #2 on this thread for these last two paragraphs.

What were the reasons that We the People of the United States elected Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States in November, 1860?

According to Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Lincoln historian that I highly respect, the answer is (see my post #1):

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.

We the People of the United States elected Abraham Lincoln in November 1860. This is what were the expectations of the voters who elected him to be President of the United States.