Essay 13-A: The Homestead Act And The People

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

The Homestead Act of 1862 embodied the idea of popular consent in a republic, enabled 1.6 million individuals, their families, and descendants to pursue the American Dream, and can be used today to jump-start a new golden age for our country.

The principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed stands at the core of the American political identity. Rooted in Locke’s philosophy and articulated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, it shaped our constitutional order. It has been the driving force behind many of the major political transformations in the United States.

The story of our country was written by people asserting the right to control their lives instead of sacrificing themselves in the name of visions and plans set by their masters and rulers. The refusal to bow down to aristocracies and other forms of elitism built a society free from the entrenched privileges that had oppressed the masses in the Old World for thousands of years. This heritage is still etched into the family farms and small towns that dot the American interior.

Nowhere is this shared worldview more evident than in the legacy of the Homestead Act, a legislative milestone that distilled the American creed into policy. The law recognized the right of every individual to claim property over that part of nature that he turns to productive use through labor. The land grant empowered millions to shape their own destiny.

Signed by President Lincoln during the Civil War, the Homestead Act offered 160 acres of public land to any adult citizen (or would-be citizen) willing to pay a nominal filing fee, settle, and improve that land for five years. This was not a handout or an act of charity. The law was an affirmation of the purpose of a republican government rooted in popular consent.

The Act reflected a new belief, popularized by Adam Smith, that the wealth of a nation is not something to be plundered and redistributed through conquest and government fiat. Rather, it is something to be created through entrepreneurship when the productive resources are accessible to all people, not hoarded by distant bureaucracies or monopolized by absentee elites.

The Homestead Act was one of the most inclusive pieces of legislation of that era. It did not discriminate based on race or sex. It did not care about an individual’s background—except for those who had fought against the United States.

The Act provided equal treatment under the law for men and women, the natural-born and the immigrant, the former slave master and the freed slave. Everyone had the opportunity to pursue the American Dream in exchange for good stewardship of our homeland.

The law covered huge chunks of our territories west of the Mississippi River. It became the chief incentive for poor but ambitious people to become pioneers and embark on a perilous journey through the wilderness. The Act propelled America’s Great Western Expansion. Millions took the advice of Horace Greeley: “Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” 

The advice was at first an encouragement for immigrants to move from the overpopulated New York City streets to rural areas from Pennsylvania to Illinois. These people built great cities like Detroit and Chicago from scratch. The Homestead Act pushed them further until 270 million acres of unused territories became fertile farmland. America was united from sea to shining sea.

The Act embodied the principle that the government’s role is to serve the people, not to constrain them. It was an invitation to build a life rooted in productive work and participate in America’s political experiment. Each new farm and town created by homesteaders became a place where citizens produced, traded, innovated, worshipped, educated their children, and exchanged ideas.

Lincoln’s signature enshrined the conviction that a free society depends on widespread ownership that fosters independence and personal responsibility. It bound us together in our shared interest in the nation’s well-being. The law recognized that natural resources should be placed in the hands of those who will use them productively, not held as idle inventory by public servants.

Today, vast tracts of federal territories lie dormant. Such resources could be harnessed for productive use, housing, and economic revitalization if auctioned to those willing to develop them. The greatest asset of a free people is their ability to make something of the land and thereby of themselves.

Today, the Homestead Act still inspires commercials (Tecovas cowboy boots) harkening back to the great westward movement in America:”We may not need more people in the West, but would it hurt to have more of the West in the people?” It proves that land in the hands of the people is land made fertile by liberty and ambition.

Dr. Alex Tokarev grew up in Bulgaria under socialism and received his Ph.D. in Economics from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

Since 2000, Dr. Tokarev has taught over 2 dozen different courses across several colleges and universities and authored more than 300 publications in English and Bulgarian on classical liberal ideas. He has presented his research and given guest lectures at more than 50 forums, and has received scholarships from UCTM, SIUC, RCI/ISNIE, ISI, APEE, AFEE, the Acton Institute, and FMF.

Dr. Tokarev has organized and led international ventures to Bulgaria and Albania and internships for students at the Institute for Market Economics, the Institute for Radical Capitalism Atlas, and the Experts Club for Politics and Economics in Bulgaria. He edited the Bulgarian translation of Hoppe’s “Democracy: The God That Failed,” and has been interviewed by Bulgarian National TV, Bulgarian National Radio, Bulgaria On Air TV, Bloomberg Bulgaria, several Bulgarian magazines, The Academy on Capitalism, The Spark, and the Gwartney Institute.

Since 2012, Dr. Tokarev has been a part of Northwood’s faculty as an associate professor of free market economics and classical liberal philosophy. He is the founder and faculty advisor of Northwood University’s annual student-led Freedom Week. Additionally, Dr. Tokarev is a Mackinac Center for Public Policy Scholar and a Free Market Road Show speaker.

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