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Show HOMESTEADING, 1862-1882 413 Homestead Entries and New Farms Totals of Original Entries Since 1863 Total Number of Farms Year Michigan Wisconsin Iowa Missouri Michigan Wisconsin Iowa Missouri 1860 62,422 69,270 63,163 92,792 1870 1880 12,221 25,086 10,379 23,500 7,337 13,905 15,235 24,701 98,786 154,008 102,904 134,322 116,292 185,351 148,328 215,575 Compiled from Donaldson, Public Domain, and Census Reports. their entries to patent, the figure for entries before 1880 being 63 percent by 1885, which was a higher rate of success than was achieved in any other state.50 Testimony before the Public Land Commission in 1879 reflected on the pressure for California lands. Sometimes five or six applications were filed in the Sacramento office for the same tract and a majority of the tracts were applied for by more than one person. The register reported that the majority of the settlers first applied for preemptions, proved up and paid their $200, and then entered a homestead. Timber culture entries were made only to hold land until it could be entered under the homestead law. The register thought a single 160-acre tract would be insufficient for farming in California and did not favor the repeal of the preemption law as some critics of the land laws did.51 It is true that elsewhere in the testimony presented to the Public Land Commission, whose work will be discussed below, there is abundant information concerning the use of preemption and homestead privileges to gain control of timberlands, but that does 50 Here and elsewhere I have calculated the percentage of success by dividing the total number of original entries for the years from 1863 to 1880 into the total of final entries, as in Donaldson, The Public Domain, p. 355, and Homesteads, issued by the Bureau of Land Management. 51 Testimony of Edward F. Taylor, Register, "Report of the Public Lands Commission," H. Ex. Doc, 46th Cong., 2d sess., Vol. 22, No. 46 (Serial No. 1923), p. 213-17. not invalidate the view of the register that through these two laws actual settlers in California were getting title to land in amounts considered necessary for farming. In the five southern states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, public land sales were not resumed after the conclusion of the war and the 47,700,000 acres were held for homesteaders only, in 80-acre tracts until 1868, and thereafter in 160-acre tracts. It was hoped by land reformers that these lands, together with others forfeited because of the owners' part in the Rebellion, would enable the freedmen and poor whites to become small independent landed proprietors. They misjudged the character of the unsold public lands which had been open to unlimited purchase for many years and tracts suitable for cotton, sugarcane, or general farming had been sold. What was left was refuse lands which had not attracted buyers at the graduated prices, and the longleaf pine land made up of unpromising sandy soil near the Gulf. Such timber as cypress, hardwoods, or easily accessible pine had been stripped off those tracts near navigable streams. In an era when the government was making efforts to protect its remaining timber, loggers might file a homestead entry on a tract, cut what they wanted and then abandon it. Such people doubtless constituted a portion of the homesteaders on these unpromising lands. That the land was to offer little possibility for the re- |