Homestead Act

On May 20, 1862, Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. president from the prairie state of Illinois, signed the Homestead Act into law. He enacted one of the most liberal land laws in history, a policy that theoretically gave free land to actual settlers. The Homestead Act granted adult heads of families 160 acres of surveyed public land, given five years of continuous residence on the land and payment of a government filing fee to secure a deed. The law’s passage was the culmination of almost eighty years of debate. Homesteading symbolized many of the aspirations of Jeffersonian republicanism. From the opening years of the American republic, policy makers including Thomas Jefferson had sought to devise a rational federal land policy with the twin goals of generating much-needed revenue for the national treasury and transferring public lands into private hands. They believed an effective federal land policy also would facilitate the orderly westward expansion and settlement of citizens and the spread of agrarianism and republican democracy. These efforts were, of course, predicated upon the persistent, aggressive dispossession of the Native American peoples of their land base.