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Show Chapter XV Homesteading, 1862-1882 Americans accustomed to the free grant, headright system of land distribution in the southern Colonies or the ease with which people in respectable standing in New England could gain ownership of a tract of land did not easily adjust themselves to the practice initiated by the new Federal government of making the public land a source of revenue. Yet, as has been seen, under pressure of necessity, people of both viewpoints-those who saw nothing wrong with charging a fair price for the lands and those who, like Thomas Jefferson, believed that to charge pioneers for land they were making into productive farms was to levy upon them an unfair, discriminatory and unjust tax-soon agreed that the public lands should be sold, not granted away freely. Furthermore, because the Federal government was convinced that retirement of the national debt would have to be provided for from the sales of public lands, it could no longer allow settlers and, indeed, land locators and speculators, to push out into the frontier and take possession of land before the government was ready to put it on the market. Neither change was well received by people accustomed, at least in the southern Colonies, to free penetration into public lands to which the Indian title had been ceded. All the power of the new national government was unable to prevent intrusions before the land had been surveyed and proclaimed for sale. Administrative officials, unable to obtain respect for regulations regarded as unjust, were obliged to tolerate squatting unofficially, and Congress was forced to forgive it by a series of special retroactive preemption measures and finally to sanction it on surveyed lands in 1841 and on un-surveyed lands in 1853 and 1862. Though the practice of selling land continued, it was breached in notable instances for the benefit of settlers in the territories. In 1788 the government of the Confederation gave to each head of a family residing in Indiana or Illinois in 1783, 400 acres of land in addition to land they had previously been allotted. Other persons, who had not received such donations but who were enrolled in the militia on August 1, 1790, were to be given 100 acres.1 Later, residents of what became the States of Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, and Michigan who were in possession of, occupying or improving land as of stipulated dates, and who were either heads of families or 21 years of age and who had no other claim to land were entitled to have approved to them up to 640 acres as a donation.2 While no outright free grants were given residents of Florida having no official claim to land, the commissioners to investigate claims were required to confirm every actual settler's claim which had been recognized by the Spanish Government and 1 The Ordinance of 1788 was re-enacted on March 3, 1791. 1 Stat. 221. 2 Acts of March 3, 1802, March 27, 1804, and March 3, 1807, 2 Stat. 229, 303, 437. 387 |
