42 OUR USE OF THE LAND 



Lincoln, was the Morrill or Land Grant College Act, which 

 enabled the federal government to give land to a state for the 

 purpose of paying for a state agricultural college. The second 

 was the measure which created a federal bureau of agriculture 

 to find ways to promote methods of increasing agricultural pro' 

 duction. The third was the Homestead Act, most far-reaching 

 of all. This act stated that any American citizen could have 160 

 acres of government land free if he would live on it for five 

 years. At last, under a western President, the West got what 

 it had long demanded, free land. 



There were many reasons for this new land policy. The East 

 was not receiving the revenue it had expected from the sale of 

 western lands. The West had been in constant turmoil over 

 speculators, squatter's rights, high prices. The South, now out 

 of the union, was no longer able to demand large land grants 

 suitable for cotton plantations. Added to these regional prob 

 lems was the fact that new land was needed to supply food for 

 the Union armies. Thus, by the time the war ended, three years 

 later, more than 14,600 homestead entries had been made in 

 Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. 34 



With the passage of the Homestead Act came another 

 change in government policy. This was the giving of huge 

 areas of land to the transcontinental railroads to help pay the 

 cost of building them. Actually, this policy had begun earlier, 

 but it was not until the building of the great transcontinental 

 lines that it got under way in earnest. The total area given by 

 the federal government was equal to more than the area of 

 New England, while the states added enough to make the 

 total more than the area of Texas. This land was to be sold 

 to settlers by the railroads at not more than $2.50 an acre. 



With the giving away of so much public land, the govern" 



34 McMaster, History of the People of the United States during Lincoln's Ad' 

 ministration, D. Appleton'Century Company, New York and London, 1927, p. 

 560. 



