Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/42

32 J- B. Sanborn Senate, instead of directly voting the bill down, set it aside and passed a substitute which provided that any free white person, head of a family, should be entitled to enter on a quarter-section of pub- lic land and after five years' occupation and cultivation purchase it for twenty-five cents an acre. This substitute contained a number of other provisions, for the right of pre-emption by the states, for a general grant of land to the states for the building of railroads, etc' It seems to have been supported by both the friends and the op- ponents of the regular homestead bill.- This bill went back to the House, but was not acted upon there. It was not until about four years later that the question of home- steads again came before Congress. Early in the session which be- gan in the fall of 1857 ^ bill for free grants was introduced into the Senate but was postponed after a short discussion to January, 1859. There was some factious opposition expressed in a proposition to give to any head of a family a land-warrant for 160 acres, that he might enjoy the benefits of the act without leaving his home and going to the West.^ The doctrine of laisscz faire was brought up as op- posed to the principle of the bill ; it was declared that a person's self-interest should be sufficient to cause the settlement of the new lands as rapidly as was good for the country. Johnson attempted to remove the feeling which he said existed in the South that the homestead bill was a sort of Emigrant Aid Society, by showing that the bill had been before Congress since 1846, before there was, as he expressed it, any question of slavery.' At the short session of this Congress the House passed a home- stead bill by a vote of 120 to 76. The sectional and party divisions are particularly significant at this time, as they show clearly the in- timate connection between slavery and the question of territorial ex- pansion as expressed in the proposed bill. That the bill was a northern Emigrant Aid measure can be doubted by no one who re- members the slowness with which the Southerners could be induced to move into the territories, and the corresponding willingness ot the Northerners to migrate even without homestead inducements. Both sections were alive to this aspect of the bill ; only 7 votes from the free states were cast against it and only 5 votes from the slave states for it. The Democrats were 38 to 60 against it and the Re- publicans 82 to I in its favor. The fear that the bill would en- courage immigration was shown in the votes of the i 5 Americans '^ Globe, 33d Cong., first session, App., 11 22. ^See my Grants in Aid of Railways, 50-51. 3 Globe, 35th Cong., first session, 2240. < Ibid. = Ibid., 2265.