With respect to homesteading in USA it was mainly a way to force the removal of indigenous peoples ...
Pish. Care to back that assertion with some source documentation?
The Homestead Act (responsible for the largest wave of homesteading) was enacted in order to aggrandize the nation (and thereby its 'leaders'), by development of natural resources. The displacement of the indigenous was merely a necessary consequence of this policy.
To truly understand the Homestead Act - its rationale, purpose and objective - one must look back to the very birth of the United States. And no, I don’t mean the English and Dutch Protestant refugees, the Mayflower, the cannibals of Jamestown, the Boston Tea Party or taxation without representation debate.
I am referring to the basic construct and essence behind the conception of the United States.
The United States is the direct product of the Age of Enlightenment. The idea that all men are equal; the flaw behind the dogma of the divine and absolute right of Kings and governments to rule over the people and Dominionism; the belief that the domination of merchant princes and land barons are detrimental to the rights and happiness of the common people; the debasement of humans under the tyranny of feudalism and serfhood; – all these were ideas that traveled across Europe and influenced the intelligentsia. Locke, Hobbes, Descartes and many others shaped a whole new generation of scholars and politicians, and the sociopolitical effects of the Age of Enlightenment inevitably shook Europe.
The first large-scaled effect of the Age of Enlightenment manifested with the French Revolution. The March on Versailles and Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen powered the Third Estate, leading to the toppling of the monarchy.
These ideas resonated with mental giants such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine (I’ll get back to these two later), and before long, these ideas traversed across the Atlantic to the small community of scholars in the 13 colonies. The incubation of these ideas, flavored by local political upheavals and championed by geniuses in the mold of Thomas Jefferson, gave birth to America.
Make no mistake about it – the intelligentsia, guided by a new sense of morality, was the catalyst behind the American Revolution. Franklin campaigned tirelessly across both sides of the Atlantic educating the thought and political leaders; Paine begged and pleaded for money from half a dozen European countries; dozens of others giants of early American history crisscrossed the colonies giving moral and intellectual purpose to the Revolution. The American Revolution was designed to be a moral one, to give everyone the opportunity to achieve happiness.
But the key ingredient in the revolution is Thomas Jefferson. The third American president is not a natural politician, and were it not for the machinations of Alexander Hamilton, Jefferson would have retreated to a life of scholarly pursuits after independence. But I digress. The point is, Thomas Jefferson provided the Revolution with its moral spine. At just 33-years of age, he was entrusted with drafting the Declaration of Independence. A year later, he wrote The Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which would go on to serve as the basis of the Establishment and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. His protégé, James Madison, working under his guidance, would go on to draft the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Sure, many others played a role in the eventual success of the Revolution, but Jefferson was the thought leader of the entire movement. A polyglot (he reportedly could speak 11 languages) and a polymath (lawyer, architect, violinist, philosopher, translator, etc.), Jefferson was hugely respected, massively influential. So much so, 51-year- old Vermont Representative Matthew Lyon once spat tobacco juice at 37-year-old Connecticut Representative Roger Griswold for insulting Jefferson, nearly starting a Congressional free-for-all.
If you spend time reading about Jefferson, you will realize how so many of his ideas remain relevant to this day. He was a man far, far ahead of his time. He believed in the equality of men (he had a black mistress and five children, which Hamilton made public courtesy of poison-letters written by James Callender); he believed in Women's Suffrage (trivia: John Adams’ wife, Abigail, was one of his best friends – platonic relationships were highly irregular then); he insisted on the separation of Church and state; he detested the power of banks, giant companies and religious bodies; he loathed feudalism and the unchecked power of monarchy (ironic that Hamilton accused him of being a royalist, a mole for the English crown); most of all, he believed in the inalienable right of the common man to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
His two protégés, James Madison and James Monroe, would go on to shape the very young United States with the Jeffersonian Ideals following consecutive two-term administrations.
His legacies persist to this day, even if numerous aspects of have been devolved and distorted. But every American president since have been guided by the legacies and principles he laid down.
Abraham Lincoln, by all accounts, was a man of average intelligence, with only a couple of years’ worth of formal education behind him. But like Jefferson, he was a man guided by principles and convictions, and was so open, he was utterly incapable of subterfuge. His nickname, Honest Abe, was a truly deserved one. In the 1860 presidential election, no one thought he could win. Heck, no one even thought he could secure the party’s nomination.
After all, he parroted Jefferson’s beliefs of equality, abolishment of slavery and emancipation and homesteading. But against all odds, the man who had never experienced a life of luxury won the Republican nomination, defeating favorites William Seward and Salmon Chase.
In the run-up to the election, Democratic candidate Sen. Stephen Douglas practically campaigned for Lincoln by focusing his campaign almost exclusively on Lincoln’s radical ideas. And yet, Lincoln won, massively at that, securing 180 out of 303 electoral seats – despite the threat of secession by seven states. His ideals were clearly shared by people of the land (at least a majority of them).
I tell you about these two men so you may accept their words at face value and their reasoning for the Homestead Act, instead of accepting revisionist accounts.
Now, let’s be clear about one thing. Although Jefferson established the Democratic-Republican Party, which is the progenitor of today’s Democratic Party and Republican Party, Jefferson was not a man of one ideology. He displayed strong leanings, in equal measures, to libertarianism, socialism and republicanism. If you do not have the time to spare to read books about this colossus of a man, you can find literally dozens of his quotes which would reflect this.
Here are two contrasting Jefferson quotes that display his John Locke-inspired libertarian and socialist values, specifically in regards to homesteading:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 157—61, 1784 (Volume 5, Page 79-80)
“But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
“As few as possible should be without a little portion of land. The earth is given as common stock for man to labor and live on. The small landholders are the most precious part of the state […] Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if He ever had a chosen people, whose breast He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue."
"These revenues will be levied entirely on the rich .... The Rich alone use imported article, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied. The poor man ... pays not a farthing of tax to the General Government, but on his salt; and should we go into that manufacture also, as is probable, he will pay nothing."Now, compare the above quotes with two of Lincoln’s (in similar order)
“I think that I have said it in your hearing that I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man’s rights—that each community, as a State, has a right to do exactly as it pleases with all the concerns within that State that interfere with the rights of no other State, and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole. I have said that at all times.”
Abraham Lincoln, “Speech at Chicago, Illinois,” July 10, 1858Abraham Lincoln, February 12, 1861
“[…] the wild lands of the country should be distributed so that every man should have the means and opportunity of benefitting his condition.”Over two million claims were made following Lincoln’s Homestead and Morril Act. At least 780,000 were approved after the required five-year residency period (understandably, exact numbers are murky since the internet was over a century away). Regardless, the Act is directly responsible for the settlement of at least ten percent of American land across 49 states. Can we just stop for a second and think of how many families and their descendants who have benefitted directly from the Act?
As I’ve originally stated last week, the Homestead Act is definitively, the single most successful economic policy in the history of the United States – and the most socialist one as well.
