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Show AN INCONGRUOUS LAND SYSTEM 445 the act would be a real boon, were not in a position to take advantage of it. Because the act only applied to the five ex-Confederate states, southerners regarded it as part of the hated reconstruction measures instead of as a land reform measure. They were resolved to have it repealed, along with all the other punitive measures the triumphant radicals had put through. Julian came close to achieving a second step in his land reform program for the South. This was a measure to provide for the forfeiture of the 5 million acres of land earlier granted to the southern railroads. There was some demand in the South for the forfeiture of these lands since the railroads had not been built and the land might have proved suitable for settlement in small tracts. The measure passed the House after one of the railroads had succeeded in getting its grant excluded, but only by a narrow margin; the bill never got out of the Senate Committee on Public Lands. It was one thing to reserve public lands for settlers but quite another to forfeit railroad land grants, even though not earned.21 Analysis of the southern homestead entries under the Act of 1866 are not very meaningful unless a further study be made of the land ownership after the title had passed to the homesteader, to determine whether he was actually trying to make a farm of his land or was acting for lumber interests, as was charged. The proportion of entire entries carried to patent in 5 years in the southern states was the smallest of all states, ranging from 20 percent in Mississippi to 37 percent in Alabama. A few may have been commuted though the total of all sales by cash and warrants in the five states was only 12,216 acres from 1867 to 1876, or the equivalent of 152 homesteads of 80 acres. Some of the homesteads were doubtless for temporary occupancy while the timber was being stripped off and were then abandoned. Perhaps more were abandoned by actual settlers as too unpromising to struggle with further. Original Homestead Entries in the Five Southern Public Land States 1866-1876" State Number of Original Acreage Homestead Entries 1,547,197 2,367,884 747,377 968,391 758,456 21 I have dealt with this measure and the Southern Homestead Act in "Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866-1868," Journal of Southern History, VI (August 1940) , 303 ff. Alabama__________ 16,288 Arkansas__________ 26,405 Louisiana_________ 6,451 Florida___________ 8,745 Mississippi________ 8,397 ° Compiled from GLO Reports, 1866-76. Southern representatives not only found the Southern Homestead Act rankly discriminatory but they also maintained that it retarded the development of the South. Until the act was repealed the lumber industry in their states could not flourish, they declared. On the other hand S. S. Burdett, Commissioner of the General Land Office, who also advocated repeal, argued in 1875 that these southern timbered areas were attracting great attention: "they have been subject to wholesale depredations, their product forming the basis of a large commerce, employing extensive mills for manufacture, ships for transportation. . . ." The law encouraged people to file for homesteads on heavily timbered tracts and to abandon them when they had cut all they found profitable. The United States Treasury was thus deprived of a large income. Burdett thought the act not only discriminated against the South but also against southern holders of land Avarrants and scrip who had either to sell their rights to speculators at a ruinous dis- |