<P> The "yeoman farmer" ideal of Jeffersonian democracy was still a powerful influence in American politics during the 1840--1850s, with many politicians believing a homestead act would help increase the number of "virtuous yeomen". The Free Soil Party of 1848--52, and the new Republican Party after 1854, demanded that the new lands opening up in the west be made available to independent farmers, rather than wealthy planters who would develop it with the use of slaves forcing the yeomen farmers onto marginal lands . Southern Democrats had continually fought (and defeated) previous homestead law proposals, as they feared free land would attract European immigrants and poor Southern whites to the west . After the South seceded and their delegates left Congress in 1861, the Republicans and other supporters from the upper South passed a homestead act . </P> <P> The intent of the first Homestead Act, passed in 1862, was to liberalize the homesteading requirements of the Preemption Act of 1841 . Its leading advocates were Andrew Johnson, George Henry Evans and Horace Greeley . </P> <P> The homestead was an area of public land in the West (usually 160 acres or 65 ha) granted to any US citizen willing to settle on and farm the land for at least five years . The law (and those following it) required a three - step procedure: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title . Any citizen who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government (including freed slaves after the fourteenth amendment) and was at least 21 years old or the head of a household, could file an application to claim a federal land grant . The occupant had to reside on the land for five years, and show evidence of having made improvements . </P> <P> Enacted to allow poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers in the south become land owners in the southern United States during Reconstruction . It was not very successful, as even the low prices and fees were often too much for the applicants to afford . </P>

Law giving 160 acres of western land to anyone who would cultivate it for five years
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