Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/46

 36 J. B. Satiborn This argument of Buchanan's against the homestead bill is a decidedly weak one. In the constitutional part of it he followed Pierce in his veto of the grant for the insane, but he did not state that argument with the same force as his predecessor. And that argument, in its best form, was valid only on a very strict interpre- tation of the Constitution, an interpretation which every American statesman had exceeded time and again. Much of the remainder of his argument is based on the assumption that the labor of five years which the settler must expend on the land before he could obtain a clear title to it was no return to the government for the lands donated, whereas it is probably no exaggeration to say that the improvement and settlement of the land was of greater value to the country than the price of the land would have been ; for in the case of outright sales there was no guarantee that the land would be settled or cultivated. As for the immigration problem, the for- eigner who was attracted by the prospect of five years' labor on the frontier has proved the most desirable settler that the country has obtained from abroad. The next Congress showed very little opposition to the home- stead bill and it at last became a law. May 20, 1862. Its passage attracted little attention in the war time, but its wisdom has never been seriously questioned and the only amendments have been in- tended to increase its efficiency and liberality. During the period of more than forty years throughout which the homestead bills, in one form or another, were before Congress the most manifold opposition was manifested to them. At first they had to contend with the feeling that to give away any of the public lands would be to waste a large source of revenue at a time when the country needed all the money it could obtain to pay its debts. When the need of the revenue became less pressing it was proposed to keep up the fund from the lands and then distribute it among the states. The actual settler was being more favored in the land legis- lation, but the efforts, feeble up to 1848, to obtain the lands for him without cost met with no success. After 1848 the movement in- creased in force but it found stronger forces in opposition to it. The advocate of state-sovereignty and strict construction saw in the homestead act an increase in the power of the general government and therefore gave his aid to its defeat. To the Know-Nothing it was an inducement to foreigners to come to our country and bring with them subservience to the Pope. And, strongest opponent of all, the slaveholder saw that free homesteads meant the rapid set- tlement of the lands by the people of the North and the passing of the territories from his hands forever. He found himself defeated