Financial History 100th Edition Double Issue (Spring/Summer 2011) | Page 70
The First
Activist Congress
By Michael A. Martorelli
Observers who marvel at the far-reaching nature of the legislation passed by the
111th Congress that met from January
2009 to December 2010 may be even more
amazed at the ground-breaking actions of
the 37th Congress. That group of representatives met in four separate sessions from
March 1861 to March 1863, and passed several acts that profoundly changed the federal government’s involvement in many
aspects of the nation’s business.
The 35th and 36th Congresses had
passed 129 and 157 public acts and resolutions, respectively. The 37th Congress
passed 428, while its successor extended
or passed another 411. Many related not
to contingencies of the on-going Civil
War, but to unfinished Republican Party
business left over from pre-war legislative
sessions. Without representatives from 11
states that had seceded and formed the
Confederate States of America (CSA), the
37th Congress passed landmark legislation
such as the Revenue Act, Legal Tender
Act, Homestead Act, Morrill Act, National
Banking Act and Pacific Railway Act, creating what historian Leonard Curry has
labeled “a blueprint for modern America”
that is still visible some 150 years later.
The Homestead Act
Abraham Lincoln by William F. Cogswel,
1869. Located in the White House,
Washington, DC.
© Corbis
68 Financial History | Spring/Summer 2011 | www.MoAF.org
Congress began authorizing the sale of
public lands as a revenue-raising measure
in 1796. For the next 30 years, settlers,
authors, congressmen and emigrant societies called for the free distribution of
public land to individuals and families
who would establish homesteads. In 1832,
President Andrew Jackson suggested the
federal government no longer needed to
rely on the sale of federal lands to generate
revenue; indeed, he believed they should
be sold at greatly reduced prices or given
free to the states.
Interest in homesteading grew steadily,
prompting political leaders to consider the