grants for some time. The crisis of 1857 stopped the construction of roads already begun or projected and prevented the formation of plans for building new ones. In 1858 a number of bills granting lands for railroads were introduced in the Senate but were laid on the table on the recommendation of the committee on Public Lands, it being considered inexpedient to act upon them at that time.30 31 32 Without going into a discussion of the crisis of 1857, it may be stated that the great amount of railroad building of the previous years was one of its prominent causes. Wirth so considers it, and comments on the large increase in railroad building at this time.3 The same view is taken by both von Holst and Rhodes.33 Up to 1857 about 5,000 miles of projected road had been aided by grants of government lands.34 The entire railroad construction during the same period was 15,175 miles. The effect of the grants on the other roads was of course considerable, as many were begun in the hope of receivng land grants. Also the land grants stimulated railroad building in the very portion of the country least ready for it. The crisis did not, however, prevent a vigorous debate over the homestead bill during the session of 1858-59. In the first session of the thirty-fifth Congress the bill was discussed at some length in the Senate, but little was brought out concerning its relation to land grants. The bill was finally postponed to the next session.35 Before it came up again in the Senate, the House had passed a homestead bill by a vote of 120 to 76. The division of the vote was on the line between the free and slave states, rather than by the old sectional divisions. The only votes from the free states against the bill were from Pennsylvania, Ohio, In 30 Globe, 1st sess. 35th Cong., 2451. 31 Wirth, Geschichte der Handelskrisen, Frankfurt am Main, 1890, 335. 82 Von Holst, Constitutional History of the United States, VI, 104-10. as "The most prominent element in bringing on the panic of 1857 was the expansion of credit, induced by the rapid building of new railroads and by the new supply of gold from California," Rhodes, History of the United States, III, 52. 34 This is only an estimate of the number of miles of road provided for in the various land-grant bills. Not all of the roads so provided for were constructed. 8 Globe, 1st sess. 35th Cong., 2426. diana, and Illinois. On the other hand the only votes for the bill in the slave states came from Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Arkansas.36 On party lines the division was also significant. The Democrats (I use the classification of the Tribune Almanac) stood 38 for and 60 against the bill, the Republicans 82 for and 1 against, and the Americans 15 against. In the Senate a motion was made February 1 to take up the bill. On this the vote stood 28 to 28 and the vote of Vice-President Breckenridge, of Kentucky, decided the motion in the negative. On February 25 the bill to appropriate $30,000,000 for the purchase of Cuba was before the Senate. During the evening, Doolittle, of Wisconsin, moved to take up the homestead bill.37 Andrew Johnson, a staunch supporter of the bill, asked Doolittle to withdraw his motion as it was needlessly antagonizing the friends of the Cuba bill. Douglas and Rice made similar requests.38 A speech of Toombs accusing the opponents of the Cuba bill with cowardice called forth the report of Wade, "The question will be, shall we give niggers to the niggerless, or lands to the landless?" 39 What seemed at first only a struggle for precedence between the bills was in fact a contest between two opposing doctrines.40 The motion to take up the bill failed.41 A number of votes from the free states were found in opposition to the motion,42 while only one vote from a slave state, that of Johnson, of Tennessee, was cast in favor of it. It was then too late in the session to make another effort for the bill. Before adjournment that evening, Brown, of Mississippi, a friend of the Cuba bill, moved to lay it on the table in order to secure a test vote upon it. The motion was lost, 18 to 30. The only difference between this vote and the one on the homestead 36 Globe, 2d sess. 35th Cong., 727. 37 Ibid., 1351. 38 Ibid., 1352. 39 Ibid., 1354. 40 Seward said: "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." 41 The vote was 19 to 29. Ibid., 1353. 42 One vote from Rhode Island, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Oregon, and California, and two votes from Minnesota, Ibid., 1362. bill was that Johnson voted against the motion, two senators who had voted before were now paired, and there were two new votes, one from Maryland for and one from Oregon against the motion.43 44 With its usual promptness the House passed a homestead bill at the next Congress. The vote was 115 to 65. From Pennsylvania and Delaware came the only free state votes against it, while Missouri was the only slave state in which a representative favored the bill. The affirmative vote was cast by 90 Republicans and 25 Democrats while 48 Democrats and 17 Americans made up the negative. The bill differed in one important particular from the previous ones. Under it the settler could enter 160 acres of land held at $1.25 an acre or 80 acres at $2.50, thus partially opening up the reserved railroad lands.46 Andrew Johnson had introduced a homestead bill in the Senate which was under consideration when the other bill was received from the House. The essential difference between the bills as regards railroad lands was that one hundred and sixty acres of the reserved lands could be entered under the Senate bill and only eighty acres under the House bill. There was considerable discussion, however, over which of the bills should be acted upon, but the point in regard to the railroad lands was not mentioned. During the discussion Pugh cited the Southern Pacific bill, then before Congress, as an example of a donation of public land supported by the South. Wigfall, of Texas, claimed that a grant to the Southern Pacific could be made under the power given the government to transport the mails and to provide for an army and navy. He further argued that the railroad would increase the value of the remaining public lands while under the homestead bill only the poorer lands would be left to the government.47 On April 17, Johnson reported from the committee on Pub 43 Ibid., 1363. 44 On March 12. See Rhodes, History of the United States, II, 352-54. 4 Globe, 1st sess. 36th Cong., 1115. 46 Donaldson, Public Domain, 336. lic Lands a substitute for both the bills. This provided for the right of pre-emption by an actual settler at twenty-five cents an acre.48 Wade moved to substitute the House bill for the committee's bill, but the motion was lost.49 Again we find the free and slave states arrayed against each other. The two far western states, California and Oregon, voted against the motion, however, as did Delaware, while Pennsylvania was divided.50 The bill was then passed by a decisive majority.51 The House insisted on its original bill for some time, but as the Senate remained firm the House yielded for this Congress, in hope of obtaining something more at the next. In reporting the result of the conference to the House, Colfax stated that it was the best that could be secured. He said he wished that the bill opened up the railroad lands to settlement, but it was impossible to obtain this concession.52 President Buchanan returned the bill to the Senate without approval.53 He considered the price charged by the bill as merely nominal. Regarding the bill as conferring a gift of the lands, he claimed that Congress had no such power over the public domain. Congress as the trustee of the lands could "dispose of" the lands only in the limited sense required by the act of those creating the trust-the States. Nor did he consider it just to the former settlers because they would have paid the higher price for their lands. It was also unjust to the holders of land warrants, by reducing the value of the lands to which they could be applied. He considered the law wrong also in its discrimination in favor of the agricultural class and in its offer of inducements to emigration from the old states. The message closed with a plea for the continuance of the system of holding the lands for revenue, which in his opinion, ought to amount to ** Ibid., 1751. 49 26 to 31. Bo Ibid., 1999. 51 The vote stood 44 to 8. Those voting against the bill were Bragg (N. C.), Clingman (N. C.), Hamlin (Me.), Hunter (Va.), Mason (Va.), Pearce (Md.), Powell (Ky.), and Thomas (Ga.). Ibid., 2043. 62 Ibid., 3179. 63 June 22. $10,000,000 annually.5 54 After some discussion the vote on the passage of the bill over the veto stood 27 to 18, not the necessary two-thirds.55 In the thirty-seventh Congress matters were very radically changed. The chief opponents of the homestead policy were no longer sitting in that body, and when the homestead bill came up for passage in the House only 16 votes were cast against it.58 The bill was very similar to the one which had passed the House at the previous Congress, providing for the entry of 160 acres of land at $1.25 an acre, or 80 acres at $2.50 an acre. Soon after the bill passed the Senate, the vote being 33 to 7,57 and became a law, May 20, 1862. At this time railroad land grants again came to the front, the first bill for a Pacific railroad being passed in this year, when the mass of the southern representatives had disappeared from Congress, under the pressure of the military importance of the road to the Pacific coast. Grants were also made to Michigan, Iowa, and Colorado. The next year in the grant to Kansas an important change was made. This was the extension of the grant from six to ten miles on each side of the road and of the indemnity limits from fifteen to twenty miles. This was done because the lands along the line had been so largely taken up that the increased grant was in fact no larger than previous ones.58 But having been done once in a particular case it was continued as a matter of practice in others. New grants continued to be made to the states with little consideration, but the most important bills were those renewing previous state grants and those making grants to corporations. The crisis of 1857 and the war had prevented the construction 54 Richardson, Messages and Papers, V, 608-14. 55 Globe, 1st sess. 36th Cong., 3272. 56 These votes were from Rhode Island (1), Pennsylvania (1), New York (2), Virginia (2), Tennessee (1), Kentucky (7), Missouri (1), and Oregon (1). Globe, 2d sess. 37th Cong., 1035. 57 The negative votes were from Delaware (2), Virginia (2), Kentucky (2), and Oregon (1). Ibid., 1951. The fact that Oregon had had a special homestead act may explain the opposition of that state to a more general law. 58 Globe, 3d sess. 37th Cong., 1158. |