When was homestead established and by whom

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Signed by President Kennedy in as an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the law mandates equal pay for equal work by forbidding employers from paying men and women FOIA plays an important role in keeping government transparent and accountable, and has been used to expose a The small landholders are the most precious part of the state.

He resisted what he viewed as any form of intrusion by a large6 powerful national government. He also disapproved of urbanization and hoped that America would always be a society and an economy based on agricultural pursuits. It is in the Jeffersonian ideal that many historians find the intellectual roots of the free land idea that eventually culminated with the Homestead Act. Commerative Stamp. Thomas Jefferson also greatly influenced the history of the Homestead Act while serving as President of the United States Not long after, Jefferson sent the Corps of Discovery under Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark into the vast Louisiana wilderness to explore and report their findings.

Many of the lands through which they traveled were later made available as homestead lands. In the s, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri called for donations of land from the government to citizens. In the s, Tennessee representative and senator and future President Andrew Johnson also supported several homestead bills in Congress, one of which made it to the desk of President James Buchanan in Buchanan, however, feared the reaction that was sure to come from the southern states, which opposed the spreading of settlement to areas that would not guarantee the presence of slavery.

The fact that African-Americans were eligible to claim homestead lands also caused concern among southerners, who feared that more slaves would attempt escape to apply for homestead lands and move to areas where no legal provisions for slavery existed. In fact, the entire concept of free land was threatening to the south because it represented a diminishing of power for the elite southern planter class i. Always one to appease the south in futile attempts to avoid civil war, Buchanan vetoed the first Homestead Act.

In the early s, Representative Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania became the champion of the free land cause. On February 29, , he delivered an impassioned speech on the subject in the House of Representatives:. Grow eventually authored the Homestead Act that appeared before Lincoln and was signed into law on May 20, By this time, of course, the nation was over a year into the civil war that James Buchanan had tried so pitifully to avoid.

The secession of the southern states gave the passage of the Act a political angle as well. Would it not benefit the United States to have as many free settlers as possible in the western territories? All the better to spread the influence of the Union and contain the forces of slavery and secession. If Grow and Lincoln hoped to entice settlers to leave the east and venture to the public lands of the west, they were wildly successful.

Though homesteads were actually available in many eastern states and in several southern states after the Confederacy was defeated in the Civil War , the majority of those who took Uncle Sam up on his offer of free land moved to midwestern and western areas such as Montana, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado and Kansas.

The Homestead Act was a chief factor in the shifting of settlement demographics in the United States. No longer did people feel they had no choice but to suffer through the drudgery of life in eastern cities. Many who left Europe for a chance at a better life set their sites specifically on areas such as the Great Plains or the Rocky Mountains rather than the tenement buildings of New York, Boston or Philadelphia.

Agriculture in America was largely expanded and revolutionized by the Homestead Act. While the western lands on which many homesteaded were often bleak and dry, many of them were fit for the production of crops that otherwise would never have been grown in the United States. As a result, overlapping claims and border disputes were common. The Land Ordinance of finally implemented a standardized system of Federal land surveys that eased boundary conflicts. Using astronomical starting points, territory was divided into a 6-mile square called a township prior to settlement.

The township was divided into 36 sections, each measuring 1 square mile or acres each. Sale of public land was viewed as a means to generate revenue for the Government rather than as a way to encourage settlement. The investment needed to purchase these large plots and the massive amount of physical labor required to clear the land for agriculture were often insurmountable obstacles.

That year, federal legislation was enacted establishing a graduated scale that adjusted land prices to reflect the desirability of the lot. Soon after, extraordinary bonuses were extended to veterans and those interested in settling the Oregon Territory, making homesteading a viable option for some.

But basically, national public-land-use policy made land ownership financially unattainable for most would-be homesteaders. Before and after the Mexican-American war in the mid s, popular pressure to change policy arose from the evolving economy, new demographics, and shifting social climate of early 19th-century America. In the s and s, rising prices for corn, wheat, and cotton enabled large, well-financed farms, particularly the plantations of the South, to force out smaller ventures.

Displaced farmers then looked westward to unforested country that offered more affordable development. Eastern economic interests opposed this policy as it was feared that the cheap labor base for the factories would be drained. After the war with Mexico, a number of developments supported the growth of the homestead movement. Economic prosperity drew unprecedented numbers of immigrants to America, many of whom also looked westward for a new life.

New canals and roadways reduced western dependence on the harbor in New Orleans, and England's repeal of its corn laws opened new markets to American agriculture. Despite these developments, legislative efforts to improve homesteading laws faced opposition on multiple fronts.

As mentioned above, Northern factories owners feared a mass departure of their cheap labor force and Southern states worried that rapid settlement of western territories would give rise to new states populated by small farmers opposed to slavery.

Preemption became national policy in spite of these sectional concerns, but supporting legislation was stymied. Three times—in , , and —the House of Representatives passed homestead legislation, but on each occasion, the Senate defeated the measure. In , a homestead bill providing Federal land grants to western settlers was passed by Congress only to be vetoed by President Buchanan.

The Civil War removed the slavery issue because the Southern states had seceded from the Union. So finally, in , the Homestead Act was passed and signed into law. The new law established a three-fold homestead acquisition process: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Any U. Government could file an application and lay claim to acres of surveyed Government land.

For the next 5 years, the General Land Office looked for a good faith effort by the homesteaders.