A New View Of Homesteading
In April, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act which was designed to "secure homesteads to actual settlers on the public domain". Settlers could file a claim for a tract of land, generally up to 160 acres. After living on the land for five years (later reduced to three years) and making improvements and cultivating the land, they received a patent, making the land their own. The Homestead Act was a way to encourage settlement of the West by individuals seeking a start in life. The Act and its vision have become part of American culture. The National Park Service maintains the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, Nebraska. The Monument is on the site of the patent of the first claimant under the Act, a physician named Daniel Freeman.
The Homestead Act has not fared well at the hand of historians. It has been viewed as ineffective in achieving its goal and as rife with corruption and abuse. It has been viewed as one of the means used to deprive Indians of their land. Historians seem to have lost interest in the Homestead Act and have not produced a major study of homesteading in fifty years.
This recent book, "Homesteading the Plains: Toward a New History" (2017) revisits the Homestead Act to argue that the more celebratory view of the Act reflected in popular culture is more nearly correct than the view of historians. The book is a team effort by Richard Edwards, Director of the Center for Great Plains Economics at the University of Nebraska, Jacob Friefeld, PhD, instructor in history at the University of Nebraska, and Rebecca Wingo, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in digital liberal arts at Manchester College. The study makes use of the ongoing digitalization of the large, difficult to access historical record of the homesteading program to argue for a revised view of the importance of homesteading.
The book is at once a history of the homesteading program, a discussion of how earlier historians have viewed the program, and a new view with suggestions for further study. According to this study, the received scholarly view has found the homesteading program a failure for four reasons: 1. homesteading was a minor factor in land settlement as most new farmers paid for their land; 2. most homesteaders failed to prove up their claims; 3. the homesteading program was rife with corruption and fraud; and 4. homesteading caused Indian land dispossession.
In successive chapters, the book examines and rebuts the arguments used for each of these critiques of the homesteading program. The book then uses the newly-available digitalized records for some of the Great Plains states where homesteading was significant to offer specific rebuttal to each of the four claims and to show the importance and value of homesteading. The study produces statistics of its own to show the scope and success of the homesteading program in settling the West. With the exception of the claim based upon Indian dispossession, in which the record is mixed, prior scholarly criticism of homesteading is argued to be unwarranted and misleading. The program was inspiring, successful, and important. The book makes a strong case for its position, at least in the states for which digitalized homestead records are available. In addition, the work offers a good account of homesteading and of how the program was administered by the General Land Office. The book includes many fascinating stories of the homesteaders and their ongoing struggles and hardships as pioneers. Besides challenging the prevailing scholarly view of homesteading, the book uses the digitalized records to break new ground in showing the large role women, single, married, and widowed, played in homesteading and in showing how the homesteaders in a particular area often worked together to forge the ties of community.
The book celebrates the pioneering, community spirit of the homesteaders and the value of the homestead program. It offers and defends a positive view of the program in face of the view most often taken by historians and encourages students to take a further, close look at homesteading. I found the book both well-argued and inspiring. Readers with a strong interest in the American West will enjoy this book.
Robin Friedman
