Download Homestead Act (1862)

Homestead Act (1862)
The Homestead Act, enacted during the Civil War in 1862,
attempted to promote development of western lands by providing
free land to settlers. Both the Free Soil Party and the Republican saw
the distribution of public lands as a way to stop the spread the
slavery. It provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who
had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160
acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to
“improve” the plot by building a dwelling and cultivating the land. After 5 years on the land,
the original filer was entitled to the property, free and clear, except for a small registration fee.
Title could also be acquired after only a 6-month residency and trivial improvements, provided
the claimant paid the government $1.25 per acre. After the Civil War, Union soldiers could
deduct the time they had served from the 5 year waiting time.
The act, however, proved to be no answer for poverty. Very few laborers and farmers could
afford to build a farm or acquire the necessary tools, seed, and livestock. In the end, most of
those who purchased land under the act came from areas quite close to their new homesteads
(Iowans moved to Nebraska, Minnesotans to South Dakota, and so on). Unfortunately, the act
was framed so openly and loosely that it seemed to invite fraud, and early modifications by
Congress only compounded the problem. Most of the land went to speculators, cattlemen,
miners, lumbermen, and railroads. Of some 500 million acres dispersed by the General Land
Office between 1862 and 1904, only 80 million acres went to homesteaders.
Answer the following questions in your notebook.
1. What was the Homestead Act?
2. What prompted Congress to pass the Homestead Act?
3. You be the judge: Was the Homestead act or a success or a failure?
4. What effect did the Homestead Act have on Westward Expansion?
Chinese Exclusion Act
During the middle of the nineteenth
century, two years after the California
Gold rush was sparked by James
Marshall's discovery of gold, and in
response to oppressive conditions in
China stemming from the Opium War
(1839-1842), a tiny trickle of Chinese
immigrants began to arrive in the port
city of San Francisco, California. From
the beginning, even with small numbers of Chinese in California mining camps and
cities, institutionalized discrimination was enacted through a series of Foreign Miner's
Tax Laws - the first of which was passed in 1850. These tax laws extracted the
exorbitant fee of twenty dollars per month on any foreigner (read: Chinese) engaging in
mining. These unfair and oppressive conditions only worsened as more Chinese fled the
poverty of their native land and bloody events such as the T'aip'ing Rebellion (18511864) - many of them hoping to find brighter futures on American soil.
Many white Americans held negative stereotypes of the Chinese people, partly due to
deep-set notions of white superiority, but also due to the arrogant and incorrect belief
that Chinese immigrants - many of whom would work for much smaller wages than
white Americans were used to - were stealing "American" jobs. This was particularly
the case with the railroad, an industry that steadily worked its way from the foundries of
the East into the frontier West. Working conditions laying railroad track were often
inhumane, with long, hot hours in the full glare of the sun, and pay was abysmal. Many
Chinese immigrants died working on the railroads, whether from malnutrition,
dehydration, or the violent explosions caused by blast equipment. Despite this harsh
environment, the immigrants were able to carve a place for themselves in society,
founding a thriving, bustling community in what would become Chinatown, San
Francisco, and governing their own affairs through the creation of the Six Chinese
Companies - or Tongs (founded in the 1860s). With their willingness to acquiesce to
harder working conditions than white Americans, by 1865 ninety percent of railroad
workers were of Chinese descent, and because they formed tight-knit communities, they
were even able to win several key victories to earn better wages.
The success of Chinese immigrants in assimilating to an "American" lifestyle infuriated
many white Americans. In large part, this was the case because although the Chinese
thrived in the American economy, they largely kept their own social customs, traditions,
and behaviors. For instance, one can see in many pictures the presence of traditional
Chinese dress, and open-air style markets. In fact, Chinatown was a nearly selfsufficient community, with its inhabitants providing their own services and operating
independently of (mostly) white San Francisco. However, many white Americans whose belief in their own apparent physical and cultural superiority to other ethnic
groups is evident in Western imperialism and the treatment of black Americans under
Jim Crow law - believed that Chinese were the most "offensive" because, unlike black
Americans, the Chinese rejected the Christian religion. While some Americans such as
Otis Gibson took a kinder (but also patronizing and condescending) view towards
Chinese immigrants, others, such as Frank M. Pixley believed that the immigrants had
no souls, and were damned by their very nature. Within this framework, the Chinese
Exclusion Act of 1882 was born.
The Chinese Exclusion Act involved a ten year period of
limitation on Chinese immigrants to 105 per year, and was
strengthened in 1884 with additional provisions that
limited the ability of any person of Chinese descent regardless of their country of birth - to freely leave and
enter the United States. The law also gave evidence of
white Americans' economic concerns because it specifically
targeted Chinese laborers, blocking them from entering
American ports. When the law was due to expire in 1892,
it was revived for another ten years under what was
known as the Geary Act, which barred Chinese from
testifying in court, and also required all Chinese to carry resident passports, with the
harsh penalty of deportation enacted if they were found without them - at any time.
The Geary Act was renewed in 1902 with no terminal date attached.
For the next 41 years, Chinese-Americans held status as second-class citizens in the
United States, although they served with valor and distinction in the first World War and
were almost single-handedly responsible for the development of the railroad in California
and the West. Much like black Americans during this time, Chinese-Americans were
seriously limited in terms of the civil rights they possessed, and subject to the violent
whims of white supremacists (especially white, working-class Americans). Nevertheless,
Chinese immigrants continued to seek refuge in the port of San Francisco, and Angel
Island in San Francisco Bay became "the Ellis Island of the West" in 1906. Asian
immigrants continued to be discriminated against in the Immigration Exclusion Act of
1924, and although in subsequent years some of the regulations would loosen - such as
allowing World War servicemen to receive naturalization papers and allowing their wives
to become citizens - the Chinese Exclusion Act/Geary Act was not repealed until the
passage of the Magnuson Act in 1943.
Answer the following questions in your notebook:
1. What was the Chinese Exclusion Act?
2. What prompted Congress to pass this Act?
3. What was the effect of the Exclusion Act?
4. How is the Chinese Exclusion Act related to Westward Migration?
The Dawes Act
By 1871, the federal government stopped signing treaties with Native
Americans and replaced the treaty system with a law giving individual
Indians ownership of land that had been tribal property. This "Indian
Homestead Act," official known as the Dawes Act, was a way for some
Indians to become U.S. citizens.
There were two reasons why the treaty system was abandoned. First,
white settlers needed more and more land, and the fact that tribes
were treated as separate nations with separate citizens made it more
difficult to take land from them and "assimilate" them into the general
population. Assimilation had become the new ideal. The goal was to
absorb the tribes into the European-American culture and make
native people more like mainstream Americans. Second, the House of
Representatives was angry that they did not have a voice in these
policies. Under the constitution, treaties are ratified by the U.S.
Senate, not the House, even though the House has to appropriate the
money to pay for them. So the Congress passed a compromise bill in
1871 that, in effect, brought an end to the treaty system. The bill
contained the following language buried in an appropriations law for the Yankton Indians:
"PROVIDED, That hereafter no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be
acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation, tribe, or power with whom the United States
may contract by treaty. . ."
The end of the treaties meant the end of treating tribes as sovereign nations. Attempts were made to
undermine the power of the tribal leaders and the tribal justice systems. Tribal bonds were viewed as
an obstacle to federal attempts to assimilate the Indian into white society. Assimilation of the
American Indians would become the basis for much of the government policy toward the Native
American from the 1880s to the 1930s.
"It has become the settled policy of the Government to break up reservations, destroy tribal relations,
settle Indians upon their own homesteads, incorporate them into the national life, and deal with them
not as nations or tribes or bands, but as individual citizens." — Commissioner of Indian Affairs
Thomas J. Morgan, 1890.
This set the stage for the passage by Congress of the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Severalty Act)
of 1887.
Congressman Henry Dawes had great faith in the civilizing power of private property. He said that to
be civilized was to "wear civilized clothes ... cultivate the ground, live in houses, ride in Studebaker
wagons, send children to school, drink whiskey [and] own property." This act was designed to turn
Indians into farmers, in the hopes they would become more like mainstream America.
The federal government divided communal tribal lands into 160-acre parcels — known as allotments
— and gave them to individual tribal members. The U.S. Government would then hold the land
allotted to individual Indians in trust for a period of 25 years, so that the Indian would not sell the
land and return to the reservation and/or be swindled out of it by scheming white men. The Act went
on to offer Indians the benefits of U.S. citizenship — if they took an allotment, lived separate form the
tribe and became "civilized."
"And every Indian born within the territorial limits of the United States to whom allotments shall
have been made under the provisions of this act, or under any law or treaty, and every Indian born
within the territorial limits of the United States who has voluntarily taken up, within said limits, his
residence separate and apart from any tribe of Indians therein, and has adopted the habits of civilized
life, is hereby declared to be a citizen of the United States, and is entitled to all the rights, privileges
and immunities of such citizens..."
— Language from the Dawes Act.
The Dawes Act would be the most important method of acquiring citizenship for the Indians prior to
1924. The Dawes Act tied Indian citizenship to the ultimate proof of civilization — individual
ownership of property. The American Indian became an American citizen as soon as he received his
allotment. The Act also declared that Indians could become citizens if they had separated from their
tribes and adopted the ways of civilized life, without ending their rights to tribal or other property. In
a sense, the American Indian could maintain dual citizenship tribal and American.
President Theodore Roosevelt described this important law in his message to Congress of December
3, 1901 as "a mighty pulverizing engine to break up the tribal mass."
The supporters of the Dawes Act not only wanted to destroy the Indian tribal loyalties and the
reservation system but also to open up the reservation lands to white settlement. Hundreds of
thousands of acres of land remained after the individual 160-acre allotments had been made. These
parcels were then sold at bargain prices to land-hungry whites.
Funds from the sale of so-called surplus land were used to establish Indian schools. The idea was
that Indian children could be educated and taught the social habits of white Americans, thus
completing the process of assimilation.
The allotment system turned out to be a monumental disaster for the Indians. In addition to losing
their "surplus" tribal land, many Native American families also lost their allotted land despite the
government's 24-year period of trusteeship. The poorest of the poor were landless and the majority of
Indians still resisted assimilation. Native Americans reached their lowest population numbers shortly
after the turn of the 20th Century.
By 1932, the sale of unclaimed land and allotted land resulted in the loss of two-thirds of the more
than 100-million acres Native Americans had held prior to the Dawes Act.
Because special treaties guaranteed them self-government, the
tribes in the Indian Territory had been excluded from the Dawes
Act. But, the pressures of white settlers and railroads wanting to
acquire Indian land soon resulted in President Harrison declaring in
1889 that lands in the Oklahoma area were open to settlement. The
various tribes in the Indian Territory were pressured into signing
agreements to allot their lands. By 1901, the Native Americans of the
Indian Territory were declared U.S. citizens. In 1907, Oklahoma
became a State in the Union, and the tribes of Oklahoma had lost
their sovereignty and their lands.
Answer the following questions in your notebook:
1. What effect did Westward Expansion have on Native Americans?
2. What was the Dawes Act?
3. What did Congress pass the Dawes Act?
4. What was the effect of the Dawes Act?
5. What effect did the Dawes Act have on Westward Expansion?
The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad
I see over my own continent the Pacific railroad surmounting every barrier.
I see continual trains of cars winding along the Platte,
carrying freight and passengers.
I hear the locomotives rushing and roaring...
Walt Whitman
It had taken the bloodshed and sacrifice of the Civil War to reunite the nation, North and
South. But when the war was over, Americans set out with equal determination to unite the
nation, East and West.
To do it, they would build a railroad. Its completion would be one of the greatest
technological achievements of the age -- signaling at last, as nothing else ever had,
that the United States was not only a continental nation, but on its way to becoming
a world power. And when the railroad was finally built, the pace of change would
shift from the steady gait (slow walk) of a team of oxen, to the powerful surge of a
steam locomotive. The West would be transformed.
Overnight, the railroad would turn barren, empty spots of earth into wild, raucous
boom towns -- North Platte and Julesburg, Abilene, Bear River, Wichita and Dodge.
While many of these towns would die away as the railroad moved on, several grew
into large towns and cities.
More than any other achievement of the 19th century, the railroad had the greatest impact on America’s economy.
Railroads connected the markets of America so that North, East, South and West could easily trade with each other.
The railroad would allow Civil War veterans, poor farmers from the East and landless peasants from Europe to have a
farm they could call their own. With the passage of the Homestead Act in 1861 offering 160 acres of land free to anyone
who would farm it for five years, thousands migrated to the West. In addition, the government had given large amounts
of land to the railroad companies which they sold at cheap prices to western settlers. There these settlers planted foreign
strains of wheat in rich, matted prairie soil that had never known anything but grass.
Railroads would carry hundreds of thousands of western longhorns (cows) to eastern markets -- and
turn the dusty, saddle-sore men, called cowboys, who herded them and becoming the idols of every
eastern schoolboy.
And railroads would bring onto the Great Plains the buffalo hunters, who killed the buffalo by the
thousands to feed the hungry railroad workers. Native Americans would fight back as they saw
their means of survival destroyed. The Buffalo was a part of their lives and their religion.
Tribes would derail trains and attack workers, causing the building of the railroad to fall
behind schedule. Finally the government sent over 5,000 soldiers to protect the crews and
railroad workers, along with the buffalo hunters, continued their work.
These hunters would drive the magnificent animal that symbolized the West to the brink of
extinction -- and with it a way of life with roots reaching back before recorded history.
Perhaps 30 million Buffalo once roamed the Great Plains, but by 1890 barely a couple
thousand would still be alive.
In your notebook answer the following questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
What was the Transcontinental Railroad?
Why did the government think it was necessary to build a Transcontinental Railroad?
What was the effect of the Transcontinental Railroad?
What role did the Transcontinental railroad play Westward Expansion?
Transcontinental Railroad
 Cause:

What is it?

Effect:
Homestead Act
 Cause:

What is it?

Effect:
Chinese Exclusion Act
 Cause:

What is it?

Effect:
Nativism
 Cause: “Open Immigration” policy led to a flood of new immigrants to America.
 What is it? Belief that White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) Americans were superior to all races,
religions and nationalities.
 Effect: Groups formed together to pass laws limiting:1) immigration, 2) rights of immigrants.
Dawes Act
 Cause:

What is it?

Effect:
Transcontinental Railroad
 Cause: Republicans wanted to connect the economies of the Northeast and West.
 What is it? Railroad connecting the Eastern and Western US.
 Effect: Western immigration rapidly increased leading to:
o Rise of western cities
o Increased US economy
o Death of Buffalo/N. A. forced onto reservations
Homestead Act
 Cause: Republicans wanted to bring settlers onto Great Plains.
 What is it? Granted 160 acres to any settler who stayed 5 years on land.
 Effect: 500,000 Freedmen, whites and European immigrants moved west.
Chinese Exclusion Act
 Cause: Chinese competed for jobs with Americans.
 What is it? Law ending Chinese immigration.
 Effect: All Chinese immigration to US banned.
Nativism
 Cause: “Open Immigration” policy led to a flood of new immigrants to America.
 What is it? Belief that White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant (WASP) Americans were superior to all races,
religions and nationalities.
 Effect: Groups formed together to pass laws limiting:1) immigration, 2) rights of immigrants.
Dawes Act
 Cause: Reformers wanted to assimilate N. A. by turning tribal reservations into private land.
 What is it? Gave each N. A. family 160 acres - all extra land sold.
Effect: N. A. land greatly reduced, poverty increased.