16 HOW TO GET A FARM, 



knowing that in such a community an aristocracy 

 could not exist. It had uniformly been hostile to 

 pre-emption laws, and all others which tended to 

 aid the settler in acquiring a small tract of land, 

 and hence its bitter opposition to the free-soil scheme. 

 Such settlers would be working men, mostly from 

 the Free States, who would not only till the soil with 

 their own hands, but would build school-houses, 

 establish newspapers, and diffuse education. As no 

 such community of intelligent toilers was permitted 

 in the South, so should it be forbidden in the 

 West. 



On the 20th of January, 1859, a bill relating to 

 pre-emptions being before the House of Represent 

 atives, Mr. Grow, of Pennsylvania, moved a section 

 that no public land should thereafter be exposed to 

 public sale by the President, unless it had been sur 

 veyed for ten or more years before such sale. The 

 force and effect of this provision would be to give 

 pre-emptors a start of ten years ahead of the spec 

 ulators, that is, settlers would have ten years in 

 which to choose, buy, or locate on the public lands 

 before they could be sold to the speculators thus 

 giving the poor and industrious man abundant time 

 to cle-ar up his farm and pay for it from the pro 

 ductions of the soil. 



The slave-power wanted no such liberty extended 

 to the poor man. It therefore sought to defeat the 

 bill; but Mr. Grow s amendment was adopted by a 

 vote of 98 to 81. 



The Republican vote was unanimous in its favor, 

 and the entire slave-power voted against it, nine 



