What is the content of the Commons Act in American history?

1862 during the American civil war, 16 president a Lincoln issued a decree aimed at distributing state-owned land in the western United States to immigrants without compensation. This is a famous economic measure in American history.

After the independence of the United States, the federal government nationalized the western land and decided to sell it in batches and blocks to increase government revenue, repay the national debt and meet the requirements of land speculators. However, the land sold is so big and expensive that western immigrants can't afford it, so they launched a long-term struggle for free land distribution. Due to the obstruction of slave owners in the south, until the civil war, the bill to give immigrants free land was rejected by the Senate.

After the political representatives of the southern slave owners withdrew from Congress, the Lincoln administration was able to realize the homestead plan put forward by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The House of Representatives and the Senate passed the homestead law, 1862, on February 28th and May 6th respectively, and Lincoln promulgated the law on May 20th.

According to the Homestead Law, all American citizens who have never participated in the rebellion, as long as they are the head of the family or over 265,438+0 years old, can register and receive a total of no more than 65,438+060 acres of homesteads after swearing that land acquisition is not for land reclamation and paying a fee of $65,438+00. After living and farming on the homestead for five years, the registrant can obtain the land certificate and become the owner of the homestead. That is, if the registrant applies for priority purchase, he can buy it at the price of $65438+$0.25 per acre after six months. This clause was later used by land speculators.

After the Homestead Law came into effect, some supplementary laws were passed one after another, such as the Afforestation Law of 1873 and the Desert Law of 1877. According to statistics, according to the Homestead Law and its supplementary laws, the federal government granted 250 million acres of land to immigrants with 1950.

The Homestead Act, to a certain extent, satisfied the farmers' demand for land in the west and established the ownership of small-scale farmers' land, thus creating favorable conditions for the development of American agricultural capitalism. Its implementation also encouraged the struggle between farmers in the west and slave owners in the south, and curbed the expansion of slave plantations to the west. In the American Civil War, farmers in the west saved more than half of the soldiers and provided enough food for the Federal Republic's army transportation, which played an important role in the victory of the Northern War.