What is the Homestead Act?
The Homestead Act was signed on May 20, 1862 by Abraham Lincoln. The Homestead Act was pretty much giving up to 160 acres of free land. The reason why the government wanted them to move to the west is because there weren’t very many people living in the west.
There were three things you needed to do in order to receive land. First, you have to pay a small filing fee. This usually cost anywhere from 10 to 18 dollars. Second you have to live on that land for 5 years. FInally, you have to make an improvement on the land. After you have completed all of these steps you will receive full ownership of the land.
Life on the plains were harder than movies and books made them out to be. You thought that you would have a nice little shack and have cattle and have a big porch and had a beautiful sunset. Life was exactly the opposite of that there was horrible weather and it was hard to find a job because of very small populations in the plains. So life in the great plains was very horrible. In the movie A Million Ways To Die In the west summs up the west in the 1800s.
According to (history.net) The homestead laws were proposed several times before the Civil War, but the southern states always voted against them because the homestead principle was related to the Northern policy of “Free Soil” that enabled people to claim and farm their own land. The rich southern slave owners saw this concept as a threat because they feared that the political influence of the free states will be increased in the west. That’s why the first Homestead Act was passed during the Civil War in 1862, when there was no opposition from the South. By this Act, any adult citizen who never went to war against US government could claim 160 acres of federal land. There were also some conditions that had to be fulfilled: the claimants had the obligation to build a house on the lot they acquired and they had to farm the land. Their task was to improve the land they got. They had to spend 5 years on that land in order to become owners and they only needed to pay a small fee. One of the major land rushes occurred in Oklahoma on April 22, 1889. Around 50,000 people lined up to claim around 2,000,000 acres of prime land. At high noon they were allowed to enter the area and claim the land. Some people snuck onto the land early and hid in order to lay claim to best areas of land first. These people were nicknamed "Sooners". Today the mascot for the University of Oklahoma is the Sooner. Around 10,000 homesteaders settled around the area that is today Oklahoma City. The next day, April 23, 1889, the city was established with a population of over 10,000 people. It would later become the capital of the state of Oklahoma.
The Homestead Act was good and bad. Tt was good because people could get land and live off of the land. However was bad because it was very hard to live off of the land back in the day. Most people could not handle living off the land so they headed back east.
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