On This Day: Lincoln signs Homestead Act, opening 84 million acres of public land to settlers - May 20, 1862

(edited from Wikipedia)
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Homestead Act of 1862

The Free Soil Party of 1848–52, and the new Republican Party after 1854, demanded that the new lands opening up in the west be made available to independent farmers, rather than wealthy planters who would develop it with the use of slaves forcing the yeomen farmers onto marginal lands. Southern Democrats had continually fought (and defeated) previous homestead law proposals, as they feared free land would attract European immigrants and poor Southern whites to the west.

The intent of the Homestead Act of 1862 was to reduce the cost of homesteading under the Preemption Act; after the South seceded and their delegates left Congress in 1861, the Republicans and supporters from the upper South passed a homestead act signed by Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, which went into effect on Jan. 1st, 1863.

["Vote Yourself a Farm"]

Its leading advocates were Andrew Johnson, George Henry Evans, and Horace Greeley. George Henry Evans famously coined the phrase "Vote Yourself a Farm" in a bid to garner support for the movement.

In addition to the previous requirement in the Preemption Act of being either 21 years old or the head of a family, the 1862 act also allowed for persons under 21 who had served in the regular or volunteer forces of the U.S. army or navy for at least 14 days during "the existence of an actual war domestic or foreign".

The new act also required that the person "has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies"; unlike the 1848 and 1850 laws, it did not have any provision mentioning race. The act insured adult U.S. citizens 160 acres of land from the government to "improve their plot by cultivating the land".

Homestead Acts

The Homestead Acts were several laws in the United States by which an applicant could acquire ownership of government land or the public domain, typically called a homestead. In all, more than 160 million acres (250 thousand sq mi) of public land, or nearly 10 percent of the total area of the United States, was given away free to 1.6 million homesteaders; most of the homesteads were west of the Mississippi River. These acts were the first sovereign decisions of post-war North–South capitalist cooperation in the United States.

An extension of the homestead principle in law, the Homestead Acts were an expression of the Free Soil policy of Northerners who wanted individual farmers to own and operate their own farms, as opposed to Southern slave owners who wanted to buy up large tracts of land and use slave labor, thereby shutting out free white farmers.

[Women and immigrants eligible]

For a number of years individual Congressmen put forward bills providing for homesteading, but it wasn't until 1862 that the first homestead act was passed. The Homestead Act of 1862 opened up millions of acres. Any adult who had never taken up arms against the federal government of the United States could apply. Women and immigrants who had applied for citizenship were eligible.

[Black Americans encouraged to participate]

Several additional laws were enacted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 sought to address land ownership inequalities in the south during Reconstruction. It explicitly included Black Americans and encouraged them to participate, and, although rampant discrimination, systemic barriers, and bureaucratic inertia considerably slowed Black gains, the 1866 law was part of the reason that within a generation after its passage, by 1900, one quarter of all Southern Black farmers were farm owners.

Most homesteading occurred during the period 1900–1930.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Acts

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