MINNESOTA HISTORIC FARMS STUDY APPENDIX A FOCUS ON GOVERNMENT LAND PROGRAMS Some Milestones of Government Land Programs 1785 – Land Ordinance established the township and range system 1847 – Survey of present-day Minnesota began 1854 – Preemption extended to unsurveyed lands in Minnesota, beginning a settlement rush 1862 – Homestead Act 1873 – Timber Culture Act 1891 – General Public Lands Reform Act ended dispersal of land through most programs Economist and historian Willard Cochrane wrote that “abundant land” was the stimulus for the nation’s development. He wrote, “Land was the magnet that drew the first settlers to English colonies . It was the magnet that continued to draw them to these shores for almost three centuries. And it was the magnet that drew settlers into the wilderness, over the Appalachians, and across the continent in one century following the Revolutionary War. To the landless and land-hungry people of Western Europe the pull of cheap or free land in North America was overwhelming” (Cochrane 1979: 173). The federal government obtained the majority of its public land during an approximately 90-year time period – between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The government acquired this land under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny – the belief that it had the right to expand U.S. territory and that this was necessary for the public good. Most land was obtained from Native Americans through various land cession treaties. By 1850 the American territory included almost 3 million square miles, and by 1865 there were 1.2 billion acres in the public domain (Schlebecker 1975: 69-70; 139). The public domain was sold (often at auction) and given away through 1891, when the “frontier” was essentially closed with the passage of the General Public Lands Reform Act of 1891. This act discontinued the auctioning of public land. The Land Ordinance of 1785 was the first of a series of federal laws that determined the distribution of the public domain. The Land Ordinance and subsequent measures established the township and range survey system, also called the Public Land Survey System or the quarter-section system. All states except the original 13 colonies were surveyed using this system. The Land Ordinance dictated the minimum acreage that could be purchased and the price per acre. The Land Ordinance also provided for education by reserving five sections in each township – four to be held by the federal government and one section to be reserved for school land. Eventually school land was raised to two sections (Schlebecker 1975: 21; Cochrane 1979: 45). The survey of Minnesota lands began in 1847. As disbursal of the public domain land slowly continued, congressmen from eastern states – states that had virtually no public domain land remaining in the 1800s – favored continuing to sell the public land as a source of federal revenue. Congressmen from western states, however, believed the land should be given away to settlers. Geographer John Fraser Hart explained: Focus on Government Land Programs 8.1 MINNESOTA HISTORIC FARMS STUDY APPENDIX A They [western congressmen] argued that settlers were performing a patriotic service when they tamed the wilderness and advanced the frontier. Land should be free, they said, or at least it should be available in tracts so small and at prices so low that every person who wanted a farm could afford the ‘threshold price’ (the minimal acreage of land multiplied by the minimal price). They gradually managed to hammer down the minimal sales unit from 640 acres in 1785 to 320 acres in 1800, 160 acres in 1804, 80 acres in 1820, and 40 acres from 1832 until 1862, when the Homestead Act gave 160 acres free to anyone who would live on the land and cultivate it for five years (Hart 1998: 156-157). The minimum parcel size in 1785 – 640 acres – comprised one square mile, or one Section as defined by the Public Land Survey System. The parcel size of 160 acres, which was the amount used in the Homestead Act of 1862, “was thought to be the maximum amount of land a family could realistically farm” given available technology at the time, according to the National Park Service which operates Homestead National Monument in Nebraska (National Park 2005). The minimum purchase price for federal land was also reduced through time until in 1820 it was lowered to $1.25 per acre, which translates to about $19.50 in 2003 dollars. MAJOR PROGRAMS UNDER WHICH SETTLERS OBTAINED LAND Most public domain land in Minnesota was not purchased from the federal government at auction, but entered private hands by some other means, including the programs listed below. These patents were the origins of many Minnesota farms. Military Warrants or Scrip. About 73.5 million acres of federal land nationwide were disbursed under military land bounties and warrants to veterans. Military bounty warrants (later scrip) were issued to veterans of each war from the American Revolution through the Mexican War (1846-1848). (Land bounties for Civil War veterans were addressed under the Homestead Act of 1862. See below.) Military warrants gave 160 acres of free land to every enlisted man who served at least five years. (Officers were included beginning in 1847.) Initially, the land had to be within a federal military reserve and the warrants were nontransferable – both requirements were designed to encourage veterans to settle along the “Indian frontier.” Originally, only the land and not the scrip could be transferred, but in 1852 Congress made the scrip transferable (Schlebecker 1975: 62). It became a widespread practice for land speculators, farmers, timber companies, and others to purchase scrip from veterans at prices far lower than the value of the land based on the minimum purchase price of $1.25 per acre. In Minnesota in the 1850s, for example, lumber companies obtained much of the forest land in the St. Croix Triangle by buying military warrants from veterans. Land in northern Minnesota was similarly purchased with military warrants. Many veterans in other parts of the country sold their warrants to dealers and agents in Minnesota for as little as 10 cents an acre, not knowing or caring about the value of the land and instead seeking the immediate cash (Blegen 1975: 322). By 1856 military warrants for 160 acres of free land were authorized for all veterans of wars or their heirs. Schlebecker wrote, “Since Americans had fought wars almost continuously after 1775 and almost everyone had some relative who had served in one of the wars, the act amounted to a general distribution of land and of warrants” (Schlebecker 1975: 62). The majority of the scrip was transferred to farmers, and not speculators, according to Schlebecker who wrote, “In all states with Focus on Government Land Programs 8.2 MINNESOTA HISTORIC FARMS STUDY APPENDIX A public lands, people obtained a sizeable amount of land with bounties. We can scarcely underestimate the significance of the military acts both in terms of disposal and as a precedent for later free land acts” (Schlebecker 1975: 63). Preemption Act of 1841. Under the federal Preemption Act of 1841, settlers who had settled or “squatted” on land could file a claim for up to 160 acres if they filed at the land office and paid the official price (usually $1.25 an acre). As long as the squatter complied with the terms of the law, his claim “preempted” subsequent claims on the land. The preempted land had to have been federally surveyed, however, which posed problems in developing territories and states like Minnesota where the number of surveyors could not meet the demand for land. Beginning in 1849, residents of the new Minnesota Territory lobbied Congress to extend preemption to unsurveyed lands. Congress did so in 1854, opening large portions of Minnesota to a rush of settlement (Blegen 1975: 174; Brooks and Jacon 1994: 12; Schlebecker 1975: 63). The Preemption Act was repealed in 1891. Homestead Act of 1862. The federal Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres free to any head of a household, widow, or single person, who was at least 21 years old and a citizen of the U.S., on the condition that the homesteader would improve the land (with crops and a minimum 12’ x 14’ dwelling) and reside on it for a minimum of five years. The homesteader also had the option of purchasing the acreage at $1.25 an acre after living there for six months. Like the Preemption Act, the Homestead Act initially applied only to land that had been surveyed, but in 1880 unsurveyed public land was also included. Most land available to homesteaders was located in Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas because the majority of public land in states east of the Mississippi River had already been transferred to private ownership by 1862. The free land offered by the Homestead Act was a great enticement for settlers to move west to places like Minnesota and Dakota Territory from states farther east including Wisconsin, Ohio, and Illinois. In Minnesota from 1862-1880, more than 62,379 homestead entries involving 7.3 million acres – almost one-seventh of the state’s land area – were filed (Jarchow 1949: 65-66). During the 1860s-1880s, more than 200,000 acres in Minnesota were transferred to settlers each year (Blegen 1975: 253, 344). Minnesota total homestead entries averaged 335,226 acres per year from 1890-1900. A total of about 147 million acres were disbursed nationwide under the Act. Soldiers’ Homesteads (within Homestead Act of 1862). The Homestead Act of 1862 also provided Soldiers’ Homesteads, or soldiers’ claims, for veterans of the Civil War. Initially, only Union soldiers qualified, but in 1866 Congress included Confederate veterans.