• Lighthouse Christian School

• SOCIAL STUDIES 132-144

The Homestead Act and the Exodusters Overview  The Homestead Act of 1862 parceled out millions of acres of land to settlers. All US citizens, including women, African Americans, freed slaves, and immigrants, were eligible to apply to the federal government for a “homestead,” or 160-acre plot of land.  Homesteading was a contentious issue, because Northerners and Republicans wanted to open the land to settlement by individual farmers, while Southern Democrats sought to make the land available only to slaveholders.  The exodusters were African American migrants who left the South after the Civil War to settle in the states of Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Background to the Homestead Act The Homestead Act of 1862 was not the first land-grant legislation in US history. In fact, the practice of governments awarding free land to settlers dates back to early colonial period, when the British encouraged settlement of the “New World” by granting settlers the claims to vast swathes of land. And ever since the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which established the Northwest Territory (modern-day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin) and prohibited the extension of slavery into that territory, land-grant legislation has been inextricably tied to the issue of slavery. A competition ensued over the admission of free states and slave states into the Union.1^11start superscript, 1, end superscript Homesteading was contentious because northerners and Republicans wanted to free up large plots of land to settlement by individual farmers, while Southern Democrats sought to make the lands of the west available only to slave-owners. Congress had passed a homestead act in 1860, but President James Buchanan, a Democrat, vetoed it. Only after the Southern states had seceded from the union in 1861 could the Homestead Act be passed. After Congress was emptied of Southern slaveholding legislators, President Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, signed the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Acts