Homestead Act of 1862

Homestead Act of 1862, in U.S. history, significant legislative action that promoted the settlement and development of the American West. It was also notable for the opportunity it gave African Americans to own land. Pres. Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862.

From early colonial days, the desire for “free land” had generated successive waves of westward migrations. By the 1850s, prominent individuals such as New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley and organizations such as the Free-Soil Party and labour unions were urging enactment of homestead legislation. In 1846 Congress was presented with the first homestead bill, which Ohio Sen. Benjamin Wade called a “great question of land to the landless.” In 1860 Congress finally passed a Homestead Act, but Democratic Pres. James Buchanan vetoed it. Southerners opposed the act on the grounds that it would result in antislavery people settling the territories. Employers argued that it would deplete the labour market, thereby increasing wages. The Republican Party platform for the 1860 election promised a new homestead bill, and Lincoln’s victory, along with the secession of the Southern states, ensured its passage.

The act, which took effect January 1, 1863, granted 160 acres (65 hectares) of unappropriated public lands to anyone who paid a small filing fee and agreed to work on the land and improve it, including by building a residence, over a five-year period. The Homestead Act proved one of the most important pieces of legislation in the history of the American West, as hundreds of thousands of people moved to the Great Plains in an effort to take advantage of the free land.

The only personal requirement was that the homesteader be either the head of a family or 21 years of age; thus, U.S. citizens, freed slaves, new immigrants intending to become naturalized, single women, and people of all races were eligible. The potential for free land attracted hundreds of thousands of settlers to move to Kansas, Nebraska, the Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), Dakota Territory, and elsewhere in the West and enticed a migratory wave of thousands of African Americans from the South. Rumors of better race relations in the West served as an added attraction; more than 25,000 southern Blacks moved to Kansas during the 1870s and 1880s as a part of the Exoduster Movement—the name given to the migration or “exodus” of African Americans from the South to escape Jim Crow oppression. While the rumors regarding racial attitudes proved to be exaggerations, the Black farmers who took advantage of the Homestead Act found the West more hospitable than the South. While Black access to land never equaled that of whites, the Homestead Act of 1862 gave thousands of ex-slaves the opportunity to own their own land, something that was unattainable in the South.

In all, some 270 million acres (109 million hectares) were distributed under the 1862 Homestead Act. The act remained in effect for more than a century, and the last claim made under it was granted in 1988 for a parcel of land in Alaska.