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Show 414 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT habilitation of the freedmen quickly became apparent. General O. O. Howard, head of the Freedmen's Bureau, said in 1870 that some 4,000 families had "acquired homes of their own and commenced work with energy building houses and planting" on these lands but there is little evidence of the Homestead Act bringing much opportunity to either the blacks or the whites, as knowing southerners could probably have predicted in 1866. Between 1866 and 1876, 68,607 homestead entries for 6,310,538 acres were filed in the five southern states. If the rate had been continued and the entries carried to completion, this would have closed out the public lands in less than 8 years. But the rate was delusive as the table indicates. Homestead Entries in Five Southern States Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi Acreage of Original Homestead Entries, 1866-76__ 1,547,203 Acreage of Final Homestead Entries, 1872-81____ 445,252 Percentage of Acreage Proved up in 5 Years_____ 28% Number, Original Entries to 1876______________ 16,288 Number, Final Entries to 1881_________________ 4,343 Average Size in Acres________________________ 102 From Donaldson, Public Domain. 2 ,368, 122 947 ,010 711 ,683 736, 520 1 ,045, 380 261, 977 243, 996 184, 784 44% 27% 34% 25% 26, 395 10, ,675 6, ,452 8, 797 10, 807 2 ,543 2 ,001 1, 915 96 103 121 96 The repeal of the Southern Homestead Act in 1876 and the restoration of the remaining public lands to "offered" status brought no rush of purchasers until 1881 by which time northern lumbermen were becoming interested in the southern pine. Thereafter, though the timberland was subject to purchase at $1.25 an acre complaints were frequent that local people were making constant encroachment on the land and that homestead applications were used to protect the guilty if they were detected. Acreage IN Farms* Year Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi 1860 1870 1880 19,104,545 14,961,178 18,855,334 9,573,706 7,587r296 12,061,547 CM CM CO ,920,228 ,373,541 ,297,324 9,298,576 7,025,817 8,273,506 15,839,684 13,121,113 15,855,462 a Eleventh Census of the United States, 1890, Reports on the Statistics of Agriculture, pp. 92, 100. The Census report of land in farms for 1880, as compared with 1860, offers no support for the view that Federal policy was encouraging the enlargement of the acreage Louisiana but in Florida and Arkansas the acreage was substantially greater in 1880. By 1890 the acreage of land in farms reflected more directly the further home- in farms in Alabama, Mississippi, and steading shown in the following table. |