It's all in the tittle. All throughout the first part of the game, Arthur and Hosea keep mentioning to Dutch that they should be heading west, not east to dissapear in the american wilderness live they life free and as they intend to. The final plan is mango harvesting in Tahiti. Couldn't it have been easier to just desappear into on the the territories west of the mississipy river, and claim free land there ? If memory serves right, an adult could claim 80 acres (160 acres for a couple) to build a homestead on. There are what, about 15 able adults in the gang ? Even if half of them claimed land, that would be more than enough for em to live free and far away from anyone else.
Yes, I know they are wanted (in five States, as Arthur says to Eagle's Fly), and they need money, but the homestead act with new borrowed names just seems so much simpler and cheeper than mangoes in Tahiti.
I can't find any records of homesteads in many states east of the Mississippi River. Were certain states just excluded from the act? Would it be possible for a union soldier and his family to homestead in West Virginia under the homestead act post Civil War?
Which states, or regions, did most people rush to after the Homestead Act was put in place? What were the biggest cities that developed (if any) because of it?
Video here: YouTube link He starts talking about it around 9:30.
We were having a discussion at my work about squatters rights and their origins in U.S. law. Upon doing some research, there seems to be a gap from what the law was written for initially, and what it does or is attributed to today.
Maybe the currents laws aren't actually related to their original counterparts.
I was watching something on the History Channel and they briefly mentioned the Homestead Act. Under the Homestead Act, a person had to apply for the title of the land, live there for 5 years, and show that they have improved the land.
My question is how did owners show that they have improved the land and how would the government know that the owners have improved the land (did they send some "agents" to authenticate the improved land)?
Recently a facebook/tumblr post spurred my interest in the homestead act. The post itself said that the homestead act of 1862 "expressly precluded participation by Blacks"
Reading the wikipedia entry on the subject, and the summary above the source, the impression is given that freed slaves did qualify for this Act.
However in the original text, it says the applicants must be citizens of the United States, and I thought freed slaves were not full citizens until 1868 under the 14th amendment.
So my question is: Did free slaves qualify for the Homestead act of 1862 when it was first passed?
In a majority of our American history classes we have heard about the Homstead Act of 1862 which allowed people such as immigrants, women, and many other people to start a new life, and or the so called "American dream" by claiming land. This land was really supposed to be designated as farm land, and I was wondering in today's day and age, are a lot of these pieces of land still considered farm land or have they been bought out by corporations? Also, if a family claimed a piece of land, do a majority of our family farms we here about today come from those same descendants? Lastly, are there any legal ramifications currently and or in the past that would cause disputes as to if this land was really a part of the Homestead Act?
Thanks for the replies and knowledge, I look forward to hearing some enticing stories/information.
IOW, once the land was "yours", if you decided you couldn't make money off of it, could you just walk away and make a new claim somewhere else? Also, instead of walking away, could you just sell it? and what were the rules around that? Was there a waiting period?
I'm just getting into Georgism now (finished Progress and Poverty last week), it brings up so many questions. One thing that came to my mind:
In theory, The Land Monopoly is what makes workers unable to capture the full value of their labor because they have no ability to turn down a job and go use marginal land (wage slavery). The gap between productivity and wages in the US started in the mid-seventies, just as the Homestead Act was being wound up (last claim made in 1979 for land in Alaska).
Just as a bit of background, for those unfamiliar, the Homestead Act was introduced in the 1860s bad allowed anyone to make a claim for a certain number of acres on federal land in the west and if they could keep it under cultivation and use for a certain number of years it would become theirs free and clear.
Is the fact that this ended in the 1970s and that's when the productivity-wage gap opened up just a coincidence, or could the end of the Homestead Act be one of the main causes as I think Georgist theory would predict? Or is this the sort of thing that would require a few years of statistical analysis by some economist to figure out?
Edit: Before all the comments come in, yes I do understand that substantially all of the land in question was stolen, unjustly, from the indigenous population of the continent. I'm only asking the question as an illustration of an economic principle, not as an endorsement of forcibly taking land from other peoples to institute a economic system that will benefit the working class of a particular county.
Just took a trip to the Rockies and some of the ranches there are MASSIVE and clearly have been handed down for generations. Did the people who took advantage of the homestead act picture this to be the case? Just curious as to what the viewed risk/reward was. Obviously the risk was getting to your land and keeping it.
So what if Lincoln wasn't assassinated and successfully pass a homestead act giving former slaves in one or more of the Western territories? Obviously, Africans-Americans in the South will still face violence, discrimination, and segregation due to the Jim Crow Laws, the Klan, and the Black Codes. But if a bunch of former slaves were to gain land in the West territories, how would this affect the development of the West and the admission of theses territories as states into the Union?
As someone from South Dakota, most of my family tree is full of people who traveled from Europe to South Dakota to take advantage of the Homestead Acts, such as those escaping the Great Famine in Ireland or just trying their luck by leaving the Netherlands to farm in South Dakota.
So I wonder, how did Europeans learn about the Homestead Acts and how did they view them? Was it considered crazy to take the trip across the Atlantic and then far into the unsettled "Wild West" of the USA just to get free land and start your own farm or was it considered a rare opportunity for people who were unlikely to inherit or buy land on their own? Why would people be willing to settle in a place with winters as harsh as South Dakota?
Did newspapers in Europe feature tales of people who started a new life in America, or would this have been told in rumors or in letters from family members who immigrated to the USA?
With my own family history, I'd be most interested in how it was treated in Ireland, England, or the Netherlands, but also given the demography of South Dakota, it'd be interesting to hear how it was thought about in Western and Northern Europe in general.
Background of the Confiscation Acts
###A Memo from the US Department of Commerce
> The Department of Homeland Security
> The Department of Agriculture (USDA)
> The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
> The US Department of Justice
###Supporting Companies
> Kenneth M. Sullivan | CEO of Smithfield Foods
> Mark Clouse | CEO of the Campbell Soup Company
> Jim Perdue | Chairman of Perdue
> Frank Yuengling | Yuengling
2023 | Washington D.C.
!!For Immediate Publication Under the Authority of the DHS!!
Recommendation from the USDA, HHS, and DHS**
Order Effective Immediately**
> The US Department of Commerce
Until now, we have allowed titans of traitorous influence to operate on patriotic American soil. As a good neighbor type policy, we have allowed companies that operate headquarters outside of the United States of America to operate within the United States of America unhindered and untouched. Without any touch whatsoever. We felt at the time that this was the best policy going forwards as it would foster a good will between the United States and the rebellious states that continuously seek to do harm against our nation through military means.
However, with the invention of the [Anheuser Blockade](https://www
... keep reading on reddit ➡So what if Lincoln wasn't assassinated and successfully pass a homestead act giving former slaves in one or more of the Western territories? Obviously, Africans-Americans in the South will still face violence, discrimination, and segregation due to the Jim Crow Laws, the Klan, and the Black Codes. But if a bunch of former slaves were to gain land in the West territories, how would this affect the development of the West and the admission of theses territories as states into the Union?
So what if Lincoln wasn't assassinated and successfully pass a homestead act giving former slaves in one or more of the Western territories? Obviously, Africans-Americans in the South will still face violence, discrimination, and segregation due to the Jim Crow Laws, the Klan, and the Black Codes. But if a bunch of former slaves were to gain land in the West territories, how would this affect the development of the West and the admission of theses territories as states into the Union?
So what if Lincoln wasn't assassinated and successfully pass a homestead act giving former slaves in one or more of the Western territories? Obviously, Africans-Americans in the South will still face violence, discrimination, and segregation due to the Jim Crow Laws, the Klan, and the Black Codes. But if a bunch of former slaves were to gain land in the West territories, how would this affect the development of the West and the admission of theses territories as states into the Union?
