The first page of the Pacific Railway Act, 1862.
new idea of giving away federal lands to
individuals who would promise to occupy
and develop them. From 1841 to 1854,
Congress passed laws giving squatters or
settlers free land in Florida, Oregon and
New Mexico; the laws required settlers to
live on the land, fence-in much of it and
bear arms to defend it. From 1844 to 1846,
congressmen from four different states
introduced different versions of a homesteading bill. None could generate enough
interest to be brought to the floor of the
House of Representatives or the Senate
for a vote. In 1850, the five-man Senate
Committee on Public Lands announced
its opposition to homesteading, and its
preference for continuing to raise revenue
by selling public lands. Southern legislators approved of that decision; they had
long been opposed to a homestead law,
fearing that men who received free land as
they settled the West would not be slaveholders and would oppose the extension
of slavery to that territory.
Congressmen from both parties put
homesteading on the back burner throughout much of 1850, as they argued over the
extension of slavery and debated the set
of bills that made up the Compromise of
1850. Later, the supporters of homesteading
renewed their cause. In May 1852, the
House approved a homestead bill by a vote
of 107 to 56, split largely along sectional
lines; the Senate took no action. That pattern of voting (large margins of approval in
the House and no action in the Senate) was
repeated in 1854, 1856 and 1859; nearly all
Southern congressmen continued to vote
against the bills.
In 1860, the House and Senate again
considered homestead legislation, but did
so in an atmosphere of unusual political dissonance. The argument over the
extension of slavery into the territories
had reached a critical stage. Republicans
in both houses of Congress displayed
heretofore unseen flexibility in approving
compromise homestead legislation that
incorporated many Southern-initiated elements they had refused to accept in previous years. In May, the House and Senate
passed the same bill by large majorities; in
June, Democratic President James Buchanan vetoed it. He called the bill unconstitutional (Congress ha