Homestead Act

Impact

As the historian Gates has concluded, despite the country's traditionally weak, “incongruent” land legislation, the federal land system can be judged a success; the homesteading settlers of the environmentally challenging Great Plains and Far West regions would perhaps not be so generous in their overall assessment. Still, as a result of the Homestead Act, Jefferson's vision of small owner-operated (as opposed to tenant or corporate) farms across the Republic was made possible and eventually evident. Setting aside the southern states, Gates notes that more than 1.7 million such farms had been established by 1880. By 1900 public land states contained more than 2.4 million farms, of which 70 percent were still owner-operated enterprises. According to the National Archives Web site, more than 270 million acres were transferred from public to private ownership. Yet Robbins points to discrepancies that suggest the difficulty of homesteading. For example, in a twenty-year period beginning in 1862, from 552,112 original entries only 194,488 final entries were made. Numerous autobiographical accounts of the homesteading experience attest to its hardships. By way of commemoration, in 1936 the Department of the Interior recognized Daniel Freeman, a Union Army scout, as the first to make a claim under the Homestead Act (on January 1, 1863, the day it took effect) and created a monument on his homestead in Beatrice, Nebraska.

The launching of the homesteading era also inaugurated new philosophies about land reform, which led to the passage of several amendments to the 1862 Homestead Act. Because the act had been passed on the heels of southern secession, the end of the Civil War in 1865 forced the question of extending provisions to former Confederate states with public lands. The Southern Homestead Act was passed in June 1866 and was repealed ten years later. Congress also passed a series of soldiers' homestead acts (1864, 1870, and 1872) that granted special privileges, such as allowing soldiers to deduct their time of military service from the residence requirement. A growing realization that not all land could or should be brought under the plow led to new (not always well-reasoned) legislation. The Timber Culture Act (1873) was designed to promote the growth of otherwise scarce timber on the western prairies, while the Desert Land Act (1877) unwisely encouraged the settlement and cultivation of what was deemed “desert” (land west of the one-hundredth meridian). It was not until 1976, when the Federal Land Policy and Management Act was passed, that the Homestead Act was repealed in the lower forty-eight states (with a ten-year extension granted to claims in Alaska).

The 1862 Homestead Act was layered with meaning about national identity and character. Many homesteaders—male, female, American born, and foreign born—were so affected by their consuming and often bitterly disappointing experiences, which forced them to endure hardships beyond reason, that they were moved to write about homesteading. These varied perspectives include those of Norwegian immigrants (Ole Edvart Rölvaag's Giants in the Earth), women (Willa Cather's O Pioneers! and Edith Kohl's Land of the Burnt Thigh), African Americans (Nell Irvin Painter's Exodusters), and families (Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series). Many of these experiences also have been turned into films for television and theater audiences. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, America's farm population had shrunk to about 2 percent of the national population. However, the historical grit, achievements, and drama associated with homesteading continue to offer lessons related to cultural, regional, and national identify; land use, land policy, and the environment; and immigrant, African American, and women's history.