Homestead Act

About the Author

Galusha Grow was born in Windham County, Connecticut, in 1823, the second youngest of six children. Grow was four years old when his father died, and he went to live with his grandfather, a hotel owner and a Revolutionary War veteran. In 1834 his mother decided they should migrate westward, along with several other families, to try farming in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. The farming world there was harsher than he had seen in more prosperous Connecticut. Rural poverty seemed the norm, and this circumstance greatly influenced his future views on land reform issues. Like many families, the Grows supplemented farming with other enterprises, including owning a general store and participating in the lumber trade, both of which were adversely affected by the Panic of 1837. Young Grow's lumber-selling trips took him into the Upper South, where his encounters with plantations and slavery left a negative impression and led to his later opposition to the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories.

In the fall of 1840 Grow became a student at Amherst College in Massachusetts, where he distinguished himself as an outstanding orator with serious interests in law and land surveying. Following his graduation in 1844, he returned home to Pennsylvania to read law, was admitted to the bar in 1847, and opened a law office—but politics held a greater fascination. By the late 1840s, national and local party politics were ripe with explosive issues, namely expansionism involving Texas, Oregon, and California and the related issue of slavery. Both the Whig and Democratic parties suffered from internal dissension. Pennsylvania's Twelfth Congressional District, Grow's home, was strongly Democratic, and it was with this party that he initially identified himself. In political philosophy he was a Democrat in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, sometimes with a radical reputation. His district also was home to David Wilmot, a fellow Democrat and the author of the 1846 Wilmot Proviso, which urged the exclusion of slavery in the territories purchased from Mexico. Grow and Wilmot became lifelong friends as a result of their common northern Pennsylvania roots and interests in western development.

Grow's professional political career and Free-Soil ideology put him at the center of the intensifying sectionalism that immediately preceded the secession of southern states after Lincoln won the 1860 presidential election. Grow served in six consecutive Congresses (March 4, 1851, to March 3, 1863); he was elected as a Democrat to the first three and as a Republican to the last three. He served as the chairman of the Committee on Territories for two terms and as the Speaker of the House during his final term. More than anything, Grow historically has been identified as being the primary champion and mover of the homestead bill that became law in 1862. His homestead ideology linked national economic development to the settlement of the West—with actual settlers—by way of a liberal land policy. After May 1862, Grow continued to be active in his political career as a delegate to the Republican National Convention (1864, 1884, and 1892) and as a Republican congressman again in five consecutive Congresses (February 26, 1894, to March 3, 1903). He died in Pennsylvania in 1907.