Homestead Act of 1862: Homesteading Requirements, Reasons for the Enactment of the Homestead Act of 1862, Challenges Facing Homesteaders (Essay Sample)

Homestead Act of 1862
Name
Institution
Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Abstract PAGEREF _Toc439758473 \h 3Introduction PAGEREF _Toc439758474 \h 4Homesteading requirements PAGEREF _Toc439758475 \h 4Procedure PAGEREF _Toc439758476 \h 5Reasons for the enactment of the Homestead Act of 1862 PAGEREF _Toc439758477 \h 6Opposition to the Homestead Act PAGEREF _Toc439758478 \h 7Challenges facing homesteaders PAGEREF _Toc439758479 \h 7Successes of the Homestead Act PAGEREF _Toc439758480 \h 8Consequences of the Homestead Act PAGEREF _Toc439758481 \h 9Criticism of the Act PAGEREF _Toc439758482 \h 11Conclusion PAGEREF _Toc439758483 \h 14References PAGEREF _Toc439758484 \h 15
Abstract
The Homestead Act of 1862 was voted for by Congress amid the United States civil wars. The law afforded 160 acres of land while charging a low-level fee and allowed a considerable duration to make payment. The law is envisaged to be excessively optimistic and consequently did not succeed in various manners. For instance, the homestead act of 1862 was misused by the railroads and several other authoritative persons to generate income. The Act had an intricate legacy among the United States laws. The complicated legacy is seen as so because the law’s enactment was a success for the northern states due to their long time struggle to regulate the future of the federal agricultural policy. Nonetheless, the Act’s drawbacks and misuses implied that the aims of the law would not be achieved. The limitations of the law led to numerous amendments during the time the law was implemented that is 105 years. The act was in the end repealed in 1977.
Introduction
There are several homestead acts in the United States all with the aim of giving the candidates land normally referred to as homestead at a reduced cost. The concept of homestead in law originated with the Northerners who used the expression of the Free-soil policy (Porterfield, 2005). The Northerners expressed the need to possess land from where they could manage their farmsteads converse to the Southerners who owned slaves. The southerners wanted to purchase large tracts of land and utilize the slaves who provide cheap labor and thus opposed the Homestead Act as it would allow the slaves to leave to their cheaply acquired land.
Under the Homestead Act of 1862, settlers above the age of 21, or head a family, and a US national or had professed their intent to become a citizen was given 160 acres. The military men who battle against the United States ruling regime were exempted from those who applied for homesteads. In this regard, the Confederate soldiers were not included. Homesteading traversed a duration of 123 years. The initial homesteader referred to as Freeman, applied for a homestead on January 1st, 1863 immediately after midnight. On the other hand, Deardorff claims an 80 acre of land in 1974 in Alaska, which became recognized as the last application in 2001 under the Homestead Act of 1862 (Porterfield, 2005). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the homestead act of 1862 through examining the reasons for the enactment of the law, its requirements, procedure of application, looking at the opposition to the law, challenges to the homesteaders, success of the act, consequences of application of the law and assessing the criticism leveled against the law.
Homesteading requirements
The Homestead law placed several qualifying standards. In the first place, the individual applying for the land was required to be a head of the family or not below the age of 21 years. The claimant for a homestead had to habituate the allocated land, construct a home and make other developments such as farming for a minimum duration of five years. An individual applying for a homestead has also required a preemption at 1.25 dollars or less each acre or 80 acres or fewer of the unclaimed lands at 2.50 dollars each acre (Northrup, 2011). The people who qualified further be categorized to include settlers, farmers do not own land, none married women and individuals who had previously been slaves. The key racial requirement was that a claimant had to be an American citizen or had declared to be, however, numerous changes occurred on this consideration with the alteration of requirements to being an American national. For example, African-American’s met the qualification of the Homestead Act subsequent to the enactment of the 1868 14th amendment. Though only little arable land remained by 1898, through the ruling of the United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Asians, born in the US in general became eligible to claim land under the Homestead Act (Porterfield, 2005). The core settler qualification was the permit to enter the United States. This qualification was conjoined for the immigrants with filling to be naturalized. Most of the immigrants nonetheless during the 1800s were from Europe, others settlers from Asia who were totally excluded from the advantages of the homestead acts and immigrants from Africa who enjoyed the benefits of the law but were at the same time rare.
Procedure
The homestead act of 1862 instituted a three layer land acquisition process. The three layers include filling a claim, developing the land and applying to issue with a deed of title (Northrup, 2011). After the application, the regional land officers sent the correspondence to the General Land Office in Washington, DC. The Paperwork was sent together with a certificate of qualification. In Dc, the claim was evaluated, and lawful entitlements were granted rights to the land free and openly apart from the required registration fee. The title deed was given to the homesteader after occupying the land for six months and making little developments and as far as the homesteader reimbursed the needed 1.25 dollars. The Union military men time required to stay at the homestead before acquiring a deed was reduced after the civil war.
Reasons for the enactment of the Homestead Act of 1862
The Homestead Act was mostly essential as it enabled important transformations in settling the lands in the west (Northrup, 2011). The law would further enable depopulate the eastern states through encouraging individuals to move and settle in the lands. Consequently, the eastern are less populated as the original inhabitants of the regions moved west to own lands.
The government had accumulated most of the land as much as possible before the Homestead Act. The government in this light was seeking to redistribute the land by giving it to the general public. The redistribution would facilitate the land to be settled on and most importantly ensure the land were utilized for productive purposes.
Under the Homestead Act, the individuals who were formerly slaves were provided with the opportunity to possess their own land and make it productive for farming. This included only the slaves who had been freed. It is important to note that the slaves who were still working under their master were to continue laboring.
The other important basis of the Homestead Act was to enable individuals own land at a very low cost. Apart from clearing the Native Americans from their land as interpreted by some individuals, the Homestead Act was in the long run supposed to enable the government earn revenue through taxes changed from the farmers.
Opposition to the Homestead Act
In the fear of losing cheap labor on the movement of most laborers to the West, the northerners were especially the industrialists strongly opposed the passing of the Homestead Act (Porterfield, 2005). Though the southern states initially advocated for the preemption measures, they later resisted the gist of homestead bills. The states in the south were afraid that the law would threaten the plantation scheme and result to additional states being against slavery leading to dwindling the southern political authority. Further, those against the Homestead Act further argued that the law was unconstitutional as it would decrease the government income, reduce the process of land for the prevailing farms and negatively affect immigration and emigration.
Challenges facing homesteaders
Primary among the challenges was the mere toil of farming on the numerous of the mid and western lands. The land was frequently hard, or the soil was of exceptionally poor quality. For example, Kansas town was said to have soil that was rich, black and sand loamy. The immigrants on reaching the town the found out the region’s soil was all sandy. This resulted to many farmers not making productive the land.
The homesteaders were also met with the challenge of natural disasters. The grassland fires, snowstorms of the winter, insect plagues and windstorms could at time destroy work that had been done over a year within a couple of hours. A few homesteaders submitted to isolation and remoteness of farming in distant lands where they did not see other human beings for months. A homesteader together with his or her household could also be wiped at times due to unfortunate hygiene conducts and absence of appropriate medical care. Mere ailments could escalate to huge diseases without any close by a medical practitioner.
Despite the homestead being granted cheaply to the settlers, the claimant was met with the challenge of acquiring farm tools. Apart from the lack of tools, the new immigrants were challenged by a lack of experience of both surviving in the lands and undertaking farming. The lack of trees in the plains resulted to some of the immigrants building their homes of sod. With some of the homesteader not being able to endure these challenges, they declared bankruptcy while other left the land and went to other regions.
Although, the homesteaders frequently had many things challenging them, most had a robust willpower to succeed and through the recently possessed lands. Some in this determination requested the government for...