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Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As a Policy of Public Domain Disposal

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Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As a Policy of Public Domain Disposal University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Great Plains Quarterly Great Plains Studies, Center for 2009 Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As A Policy of Public Domain Disposal Richard Edwards University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly Part of the Other International and Area Studies Commons Edwards, Richard, "Changing Perceptions of Homesteading As A Policy of Public Domain Disposal" (2009). Great Plains Quarterly. 1229. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/greatplainsquarterly/1229 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Great Plains Studies, Center for at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Great Plains Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING AS A POLICY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN DISPOSAL RICHARD EDWARDS The Homestead Act has been heralded as the greatest democratic measure of all history . ... In truth, the Homestead Act was but the proclamation of a promise that was yet to be fulfilled. The enactment of law is one thing; the operation of that law is another. -Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage The Homestead Act was the hope of the poor man. -Mari Sandoz, "The Homestead in Perspective" After 1862, the federal government deeded 285 million acres to homesteaders. Half their claims were fraudulent, backed by false identities, fake improvements, or worse. -Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill's America The inspiring story of homesteaders claiming have often been much more ambivalent, even free land and realizing their dreams became one harshly negative, about how successful it was in of the enduring narratives of American history. practice. While the public often views our his­ But scholars who have studied homesteading tory differently from scholars, in this case the disparity appears both substantial and persis­ tent. Perhaps it is time to revisit homesteading Key Words: commutation, fraud, free land, pre­ and reassess whether homesteading really was a emption, public land, settlement. good idea or not'! Richard Edwards is a Fellow in the Center for Great Certainly homesteading once powerfully Plains Studies and Professor of Economics at the fired the American imagination. The prom­ University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His current interests ise of free land was such a startling idea include the economics, history, and demography of the that it created a sensation on both sides of Great Plains and the conservation of its biodiversity. the Atlantic, much like Henry Ford's later announcement of the five-dollars-a-day wage. [GPQ 29 (Summer 2009): 179-202] It offered a seemingly magical possibility, one 179 180 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 FIG. 1. Large family on a successful homestead. NPS Photo. Courtesy of The Homestead National Monument of America. that people wanted so strongly to believe that tion continued after its adoption as widely it proved essentially impervious to contrary perhaps as before, and within as well as without evidence. This vision, this "hope of the poor the law." Historian Fred Shannon observed, ''A man," became deeply rooted in American premium was put on perjury." Western author culture, literature, and memory-in such (and Stanford University professor) Wallace books as Willa Cather's 0 Pioneers! and O. E. Stegner observed that "[iJn actual practice Rolvaag's Giants in the Earth, in histories like almost the only real benefit that the landless Mari Sandoz's Old Jules and personal jour­ and moneyless man .. could derive from the nals like Elizabeth Corey's Bachelor Bess, in public land laws was the chance for a little Elinore Pruitt Stewart's letters to the Atlantic graft."3 Monthly (later published as Letters of a Woman More recent scholars have seemed to accept Homesteader and the basis for the 1978 movie this earlier generation's negative appraisal of Heartland). President George Bush in his 2005 homesteading. Observing how New Western inaugural address linked the Homestead Act History scholars and others have conducted a with "a broader definition of liberty," and col­ searching reassessment of the very meaning of umnist George Will declared, "Rarely has a success or failure in various western endeavors, social program worked so we11."2 historian Katherine Harris in 1993 noted a The academic counter-story has had a dif­ surprising omission: "One western enterprise, ferent tone. Scholars have stressed the appar­ however, stands outside the debate, thanks ently widespread speculation, monopolization to an uncharacteristic unanimity of opinion. of land, perjury, and even outright fraud that Lacking glamour and now quaintly anach­ seemed to accompany homesteading. Paul W. ronistic, homesteading, all contenders agree, Gates, the premier scholar of public lands, once was a failure." So, too, economic historians noted that "speculation and land monopoliza- have been quick to dismiss homesteading as a CHANGING PERCEPTIONS OF HOMESTEADING 181 failure. Geoff Cunfer, in a widely praised book, one could provide more definitive answers. noted that Nonetheless, some preliminary conclusions seem warranted. An important story of Great Plains history I argue that homesteading created many is that the rural population in the region individual farms occupied by "actual settlers." rose dramatically for fifty years, from about Moreover, the law likely was more progressive 1870 to 1920, and has declined steadily and egalitarian in its land disbursements than since then.... One could make a compel­ other methods of public land distribution, ling argument that the Homestead Act was and it marked an historic and salutary first by a failure if its goal was to spread a strong, permitting usually excluded groups, including prosperous American society across the women and blacks, to share the benefits. But continent. the operation of the Homestead Law was far from perfect. Homesteading was inefficient in For these or other reasons, historians have distributing land to landless settlers, result­ anyway largely lost interest in the general ing in a substantial and unnecessary loss of process of homesteading. Since the 1968 pub­ the public domain to persons not intended lication of Paul Gates's monumental History to receive such land. Partly this inefficiency of Public Land Law Development, few scholars resulted from the substantial abuse and fraud have worked to challenge or reconfirm his gen­ in the operation of the homestead acts. eral findings. So, too, when scholars today cite Although mixed, my assessment is more homesteading-related statistics, they are almost favorable than would be gained from reading always relying on decades-old studies. As noted most of the principal historians of homestead­ below, some outstanding research has appeared ing. The differences are these: I believe that on a few topics, particularly on women's par­ the early homestead scholars were too preoccu­ ticipation in homesteading, but very little on pied with the violations of the homestead laws homesteading in genera1.4 and insufficiently attentive to homesteading's This neglect of homesteading seems mis­ actual outcomes. And many contemporary placed. Even in the minds of its harshest critics, historians, in my view, have been too accepting the lure of free land was understood to be a of this conventional wisdom that homestead­ central and in many ways dominating element ing was largely a disappointment and a scam, in attracting settlers to the Great Plains and leading them to underplay and thereby distort parts of the interior West. And now we learn, homesteading's positive role in American history. for example, that a desire to acquire free land and control it produced powerful and complex HOMESTEADING'S PART IN DISPOSING OF gender dynamics among settler families. So, THE PUBLIC DOMAIN after a long fallow period, perhaps it is time for scholars to revisit the question of how home­ When Abraham Lincoln signed the Home­ steading really worked.5 stead Act of 1862, he brought to a close a long In this paper I review the path that scholars struggle by free-land advocates like New York have followed to arrive at such skepticism Tribune editor Horace Greeley, U.S. House about homesteading's benefits. I then provide Speaker Galusha Grow, the Free Soil Party, a tentative reappraisal of homesteading as a and others to provide free land to settlers. national policy for public land distribution. "Preemption"-the process whereby settlers (One topic I do not treat is homesteading's simply moved on to public lands, started their role in the sad tale of Indian removal from the farms, and were permitted later to purchase regions to be settled.) This reappraisal is unfor­ their land-had been legalized in a series of tunately tentative, reflecting the fact that con­ increasingly permissive laws passed in the ante­ siderable scholarship remains to be done before bellum period, but it still required purchase. 182 GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY, SUMMER 2009 FIG. 2. Family of seven seated in front of their dugout dwelling, 1894. Note the well-equipped work area outside. Photo by J.Y. Dedrick. Courtesy of University of Oklahoma Libraries. The Homestead Act was to be different; it a citizen. The age requirement was reduced permitted the would~be settler or "entryman" for veterans, and the law specifically permit­ to claim 160 acres of public land, or 80 acres ted women-that is, single women, widows, if the land was on a government-retained sec­ even women whose husbands had abandoned tion within a railroad grant (later acts allowed them-to file. It contained no racial restriction. larger claims). It required the settler to register The act also contained a provision permitting his or her claim with a local land office, reside the entryman to "commute" his or her home­ on the land for five years, make some minor steading claim, that is, to purchase it, usually improvements on it, and then prove up his or at the standard price of $1.25 per acre, after an her claim by providing evidence, affirmed by initial short period of residence.
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