Richard Edwards (15)

This book is a scholarly revisit of the impact of the Homestead Act. The authors use primary documents and quantitative analysis to address many long cited and recited inaccuracies and myths. In particular they delve into four specific areas: the impact of farm formation by individual homesteading farmers, percentage of homesteaders who proved up their claims, corruption and fraud in the homesteading process, and the impact of homesteading on Indian land dispossession. During the process, they also learned about the impact of community with the settlers and the participation of women homesteaders. The results of their findings are enlightening.

The book was enjoyable and easy to read. It was recommended by two Rangers at the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, Nebraska; after reading, I also highly recommend it.… (más)

Though I could say that this is very much an "everything-you-know-is-wrong" kind of book the arguments of the authors are rather more nuanced than that. Using the database of digitized Nebraska homestead patent papers housed at the Homestead National Monument of America they seek to revisit the academic conventional wisdom of the impact of the Homestead Act of 1862, which has become increasingly negative over the years. Their initial conclusions are that, in the main, the Homestead Act did what it was supposed to do; set up "actual settlers" on the land in such a way that communities could emerge and did so with relatively little fraud. The authors' key suspicion is that the requirements for having witnesses for completing the process and publicizing this acted as a check on small-scale chicanery. If there is any darkness to the process it has less to do with massive land speculation enabled by giveaways such as the right-of-ways granted to railroads, military bounty land scrip bought up on the cheap by land agents and the distribution of agricultural college scrip (which seemed dominated by political insiders in the relevant states) and to how the clamor for cheap land in the Dakota Territory and Oklahoma instigated further land theft from the First Nations. Greatly recommended for those interested in learning the best understanding of what homesteading meant in practice.… (más)