Southern Homestead Act of 1866
The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 is a
Legislative history
A "Second Freedmen's Bureau bill" was introduced December 5, 1865, but was vetoed and weakened before eventually overriding a second veto by president
Until January 1, 1867, the bill specified, only free Blacks and White Unionists would be allowed access to these lands.[2] Accordingly, the primary beneficiaries for the first six months were freedmen who were in desperate need of land to till. However, the law encountered many obstacles, notably: Southern bureaucrats often did not comply with the law or with the orders of the Freedmen's Bureau, notably not informing blacks of their opportunity to acquire land;[3] violence from competing whites; poor quality of the land; and poverty of the farmers who were often unable to effectively use the land without further money to invest.
Ultimately, before too much land was distributed, the law was repealed in June 1876.[4] Nevertheless, free Blacks entered about 6,500 claims to homesteads, and about 1,000 of these eventually resulted in property certificates.[5]
See also
References
- ^ Paul Wallace Gates, "Federal Land Policy in the South 1866-1888." Journal of Southern History (1940) 6#3 pp: 303-330. in JSTOR
- ^ Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule (1978), pp. 86–87.
- ^ Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule (1978), p. 81, 93.
- ^ Paul W. Gates, "Federal Land Policy in the South, 1866-1888," Journal of Southern History, 6 (August 1940), 310-315.
- ^ Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule (1978), p. 188.
Further reading
- Gates, Paul Wallace (1940). "Federal Land Policy in the South 1866-1888". The Journal of Southern History. 6 (3): 303–330. JSTOR 2192139.
- Oubre, Claude F. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen's Bureau and Black Land Ownership. Louisiana State University Press, 1978.