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Some Political Aspects of Homestead Legislation I'X, against the measure.' The New York Tribune enumerated, as the forces which were opposed to the bill, slavery, railroad grants and bounty land-warrants, the last because homesteads would decrease the value of the warrants. - The bill which the Senate had postponed from the previous ses- sion had not been considered. On February 17, 1859, ^^he House bill came up. A motion to postpone it stood 28 to 28 ; the Vice- President, Breckenridge, voted in the affirmative and so the matter was put off for the moment. On February 25, the Senate had under consideration the bill to appropriate $30,000,000 for the pur- chase of Cuba. The time was particularly inopportune for the forc- ing of a discussion on a measure so opposed to the slavery interests as the homestead bill, but Doolittle of Wisconsin moved to lay the Cuba bill aside and take up the other. Johnson, Douglas and Rice, all supporters of the homestead bill, requested Doolittle to withdraw his motion, as it only served to antagonize the friends of the Cuba bill. Doolittle refused, and the discussion between the slavery and anti-slavery elements in the Senate grew warm. Toombs asserted that the opponents of the Cuba bill were attempting to dodge the issue by killing the bill under the guise of a postponement. Wade denied the charge and said that the anti-slavery men were willing to meet the issue, which he stated as : "Shall we give niggers to the niggerless or lands to the landless?" It was evident that the two measures were in flat opposition, not only as regards precedence on that evening but in their ultimate principles, which Seward more decorously stated as follows : "The homestead bill is a question of homes, of homes for the landless freemen of the United States. The Cuba bill is a question of slaves for the slaveholders of the United States." The motion to take up the homestead bill failed by a vote of 19 to 29, only one person from a slave state, Johnson of Tennessee, voting in favor of it. By almost the same vote (18 to 30) the Senate refused to lay the Cuba bill on the table, the differ- ence being due to the change in Johnson's vote.^ The Southern opposition was not, however, all due to the effect which a homestead act would have on the slavery question. Under '^ House Journal, 35th Cong., second session, 309. I use the classification of the Tribune Almanac for 1859. " The slaveholders voted against it because they despise free labor, and the doughfaces because they love to serve the slaveholders. The South Ameri- cans voted against the bill because it allowed aliens, who had only declared their inten- tion of becoming citizens, to participate in its benefits. ' ' New York Semi- IVeeily Tribune, February 8, 1859. ^Ibid. 'See Globe, 35th Cong., second session, 1351-1354, 1363. By the time the vote was taken on the Cuba bill two senators who had voted on the homestead bill were paired and there was a vote from Maryland for and one from Oregon against the bill. VOL. VI.— 3.