Homestead Act

“ A short time before the National Homestead Act for aiding citizens to acquire homesteads went into operation, some of the state legislatures had passed homestead and exemption laws designed to protect homesteads or a certain amount of property against loss to the owners in case they should become insolvent debtors, and by the close of the century the legislature of nearly every state in the Union had passed a law of this nature. ”

“ But there was design on the magnificent timber from the very start, and the proposition to throw the reservation open for settlement under the farcical Homestead Act quoted, was merely a ruse to cloak the real motives of those interested, who figured wisely that few honest claimants would attempt to comply with the prohibitive conditions of the law, and go there with the idea of making a home in every sense of the word. ”

“ A very important reform, already referred to, had been made in our Indian treaty policy, by which lands relinquished by any tribe would henceforth fall under the operation of our land laws, instead of being sold in a body to some corporation or individual monopolist. The Southern Homestead law had dedicated to actual settlement millions of acres of the public domain in the land States of the South, while the Homestead Act of 1862 was splendidly vindicating the wisdom of its policy. ”

“ Well, as you remember, that law states pretty plainly the purpose of the Homestead Act. It is to provide, out of the public lands, for any citizen not otherwise provided, with one hundred and sixty acres as a farm to cultivate or a homestead on which to live. ”

“ They form, in honor of the Republican party, one of the greatest monuments to constructive statesmanship that the world has seen.
In the very foremost rank of beneficent legislation of the Civil War era must be placed the Homestead act. As soon as Republicans secured an influential footing in Congress they moved for legislation which would make it possible for actual settlers to acquire farms in the public domain at a merely nominal cost, and thus develop the agricultural resources of the then unoccupied western prairies and plains. ”

“ Government should so act as to secure homes for the people and prevent land monopoly. The original homestead policy should be enforced, and future settlers upon the public domain should be entitled to a free homestead, while all who have paid an acreage price to the Government under existing laws should have their homestead rights restored. ”

“ Farm tenancy has been abolished, the great plantations have been expropriated and made cooperative, the Homestead Act of 1862 has been applied in the South and every citizen is entitled to claim a quartersection. ”

“ There is no inconsistency between the object of the 1937 Act to limit the sweeping exemption of all lands, granted by the 1936 Act, to homestead lands, and a purpose to enlarge the exemption accorded to the relatively small amount of homestead lands so that it would apply to restricted homesteads passing to Indian heirs or grantees. ”

“ Their sale has brought large sums into the treasury. They have been given to settlers as a stimulus to emigration. They have been granted to endow colleges and schools, to build railroads, to reward the soldiers and support their widows and orphans. In every township to be incorporated hereafter in the great west, a portion of the land must be reserved for school purposes. By the Homestead Act of 1862, any citizen may secure one hundred and sixty acres. ”

“ With this understanding of the circumstances in which the provision was incorporated into the Act of 1903 extending the homestead laws to Alaska, we think the meaning and purpose of the provision are manifest. It is in form a proviso and says 'no more than one hundred and sixty acres shall be entered in any single body' by means of soldiers' additional homestead rights. A purpose to prevent the use of these rights in entering a large acreage in a single body hardly could be more plainly expressed. ”

“ If the homesteader acquired a right in these indemnity lands by entry, occupancy, and purchase under the homestead laws, as he undoubtedly did, it is inconceivable that such right could, under any proper application of the doctrine of relation, be affected or overthrown by referring to an antecedent act performed by a different person, but which, at the time it was performed, did not give any right or interest whatever in the lands, and interposed no legal obstacle that would prevent homesteaders from entering, occupying, or purchasing them. ”

“ Congress was aware that by this act it was making grants of land far beyond the line of the government surveys, in regions occupied and to be occupied largely by settlers awaiting the advent of the surveyor to prefer their claims. By § 6 the homestead law was extended to the even sections after survey, and expressly withheld from the odd sections before and after survey, and yet in § 3 land 'occupied by homestead settlers' was excepted from the grant. Congress knew that unsurveyed land could not be 'entered' as homesteads; it had in terms prohibited homestead 'entry' on these lands ”

“ In other words, one who has taken land under the pre-emption or homestead law acquires an equity of which he cannot be deprived by any individual under the like laws. Now, at the time of the passage of the act of July 3, 1866, Blou was and had been, for several months, in actual occupation under the homestead law. Did Congress intend by its legislation to deprive him of that equity which he had under the general land laws as against anyone proceeding under those laws? ”

“ Nothing herein contained must be taken as intimating that the Act of June 21, 1906, has any application to the acquisition of homestead rights under the general homestead laws by persons of the Indian race who have acquired or seek to acquire such rights as citizens rather than as Indian wards of the United States. ”

“ We adjudge that the rights which bona fide occupancy gave to the settler under the act of 1866 are not defeated by a mere selection afterwards of the lands by the railroad company,-the settler having, after the lands were surveyed, promptly taken the necessary steps to protect his rights under the homestead laws. ”

“ The homestead laws were the next to receive attention. By the Act of May 14, 1898, c. 299, 30 Stat. 409, they were extended to that district with the restrictions (a) that 'no homestead' should exceed eighty acres in extent, and (b) that 'no entry' should extend more than eighty rods along the shore of any navigable water, and along such shore a space of at least eighty rods should be reserved from entry between all such claims. ”

“ In accordance with the provisions of the homestead law, 718,930 homesteads, containing 96,495,414 acres, were established in forty-two years, and besides this principal act, Congress has passed several minor ones of a like nature, that is, acts designed to benefit the actual settler who improves the land. ”

“ Provided, That the title to such homesteads shall be held subject to restrictions * * *.' Those parcels were purchased from the restricted funds of an individual Indian, Wosey John Deere, respondents hold them subject to valid restrictions, [11] and they were properly designated by respondents as homestead lands on December 16, 1937, prior to the 1938 assessment date. [12] In view of the legislative history of the 1937 Act, summarized in note 10 supra, petitioners' argument that the 1937 Act applies only to lands purchased for landless Indians must be rejected. ”

“ Judged by results, it is doubtful whether the Government ever received a better return for any of its lands than it has received for these lands given as a free gift, under the Homestead Law, to our farmers and settlers. A happy, prosperous, and industrious rural population will ever prove to be the sheet-anchor of our industrial, social and political well-being, and will ever afford a solid foundation for the integrity and perpetuity of American institutions. The Homestead Law, with all its blessings, had one defect which has, to some extent, marred its usefulness. ”

“ The Democrats in Congress persistently opposed homestead legislation, because of the attitude of the southern plantation owners. When the first homestead bill was put forward in 1859 every Republican voted for it and every Democrat against it. When it was brought up again in 1860 every Republican voted for it and every Democrat, with the exception of a few from northern states, against it and the Democratic President vetoed it. The Homestead law and its results in the settling and development of the West must be credited, therefore, exclusively to the Republican party. ”

“ This property must be designated as a "homestead" on the margin of the recorded title, and it must be occupied by the owner. "A woman occupying her own property as the home of the family has the right to designate it as a homestead. The husband has the legal right to live with her and enjoy the homestead he has settled upon her." (!) He has, however, the sole right to determine the residence of the family, as in every other State, and by removing from a property the homestead right is destroyed. If the husband abandon the wife and acquire a homestead elsewhere, she has a right only in that. ”

“ Much of our prosperity as a nation has been due to the operation of the homestead law. On the other hand, we should recognize the fact that in the grazing region the man who corresponds to the homesteader may be unable to settle permanently if only allowed to use the same amount of pasture land that his brother, the homesteader, is allowed to use of arable land. ”

“ The more homes the broader the foundation of the nation and the more secure.
Everything that is possible should be done to keep this from being a nation of tenants. The men who cultivate the earth should own it. Something has already been done in our country in that direction, and probably in every State there is a homestead exemption. This exemption has thus far done no harm to the creditor class. When we imprisoned people for debt, debts were as insecure, to say the least, as now. By the homestead laws, a home of a certain value or of a certain extent, is exempt from forced levy or sale ”

“ Is it not reasonable to suggest that the emphasis which frontier life and customs placed upon the importance and value of the homestead gave birth to the laws that are "based upon the idea that as a matter of public policy for the promotion of the property of the State and to render independent and above want each citizen of the Government, it is proper he should have a home--a homestead--where his family may be sheltered and live beyond the reach of financial misfortune?" ”

“ Now, if, as a consequence of the Homestead Bill, there should be occupied, improved, and cultivated, during the next ten years, 100,000 additional farms by settlers, or only 10,000 per annum, it would make an aggregate of 16,000,000 acres. ”

“ The law allows but one homestead privilege: a settler relinquishing or abandoning his claim can not thereafter make a second homestead entry. If a settler has settled on land and filed his preëmption declaration for the same, he may change his filing into a homestead, if he continues in good faith to comply with the preëmption laws until the change is effected ”

“ In that case Chief Justice Hemphill said that 'the Constitution obviously intended that the homestead should be exempted from the operation of any species of execution, or from any forced disposition of the property, whether partial or total, which would disturb the family in the quiet and uninterrupted possession of their home with the property thereto attached. The beneficence of the provision has a much wider range than to protect the family from a sale which would utterly extinguish all right in the property. ”