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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 393 of westerners, boosters who wanted rapid settlement and development of the land and its resources, felt that free homesteads would give to the West its greatest impulse to growth. Their support of free homesteads was won by the omission of the inalienability and reversion proposals.15 George Malcolm Stephenson, Benjamin H. Hibbard, and Roy M. Robbins have traced the discussions in Congress of free homesteads, the increasing support the proposal obtained from newspapers and among members of the House from the northern states, the sectional distribution for and against the various bills, the adoption in 1860 of a compromise measure that land reformers regarded as no homestead act, and its veto by President Buchanan. The bill would have given preemptors 2 additional years in which to pay for their claims, reduced the price to 62.5 cents an acre and granted homesteaders, after 5 years of residence and improvement on odd numbered sections only, the right to buy their quarter-section for 25 cents an acre. Graham Fitch's proposal to raise the price of even numbered sections to $2.50 an acre was rejected. The measure also would have provided that after 30 years of exposure to sale the remaining lands would be ceded to the states in which they were located. Southern Senators, with the help of some northern Democrats like Fitch, had done had affected his judgment. Letter of Cyrus Woodman, Mineral Point, Wis., March 31, 1852, to Ben. C. Eastman, M.C., Washington, Woodman Letter Book. Pinkney W. Ellsworth, a partner in land speculation with Moses M. Strong of Wisconsin feared in 1860 that the enactment of a free homestead act would seriously affect his land investments and urged that they be closed out. Letter of Jan. 30, 1860, in Strong MSS., Wisconsin State Historical Society. 15 George Malcolm Stephenson, The Political History of the Public Lands from 1840 to 1862: From Preemption to Homestead (Boston, 1917); Hibbard, History of the Public Land Policies; Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage. The Public Domain, 1776-1936 (Princeton, 1942). their best to emasculate the free land measure passed by the House and to make it as unsatisfactory as possible to the land reformers. Few had thought Buchanan would veto it but he did.16 Notwithstanding the many precedents of free grants to individuals and to states, Buchanan could find no constitutional authorization for free homesteads. Furthermore, the measure discriminated against the early settlers who had paid for their land in favor of later immigrants; it would do "great injustice" to the veterans by reducing the value of their land warrants; it conferred a boon on western settlers at the expense of all others; it was unjust to the old states whose land values it would depress; it would enable capitalists using dummy entrymen to accumulate large tracts; it conferred unwarranted favors on foreigners; it gave an advantage to existing preemptors as against future preemptors; it would drastically reduce the income from public lands and undermine the "present admirable land system."17 Homestead Act of 1862 Buchanan's veto opened the sectional chasm wider, further weakened the Douglas wing of the Democratic Party in the North, and contributed to Lincoln's triumph in November.18 Victory of the Republicans assured early enactment of a homestead measure more completely in tune with western demands, after the withdrawal of the Deep South, though there 16 Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 1st sess., April 4, 5, 9, 1860, pp. 1527-1539, 1551-1556, 1619; Senate Journal, 36th Cong., 1st sess. (Serial No. 1022), June 23, 1860, pp. 753- 56. Fitch's proposal to liberalize still further the granting of military warrants to soldiers, teamsters, etc., of past wars was also defeated. 17 Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (1900), V :608-614. 18 Stephenson, The Political History of the Public Lands from 1840-1862, pp. 238-39. I have shown something of the significance of the issue in the public land states in my Fifty Million Acres, passim. |