Westward Expansion and Its Cost, c. 1840–1900

This is Unit Two, part one, on westward expansion, from the Homestead Act to the end of the open range. Unit One closed with Reconstruction's end, and pointed west, to the expansion that ran alongside it. This unit is that expansion. Carry one question through it: in the West, who succeeded? The Homestead Act imagined an independent farmer on free land. Watch, entry by entry, how often success went instead to the operation with capital, on the farm, in the mine, and on the range. By the end you will be able to name the two laws of eighteen sixty-two and what each offered. To separate what expansionists said from what pushed and pulled people west. To say who went west, from the figures rather than the myth. To explain why free land did not make independent farmers. And to give both causes of the open range's end.

Two entries on two laws signed six weeks apart in eighteen sixty-two, one for land and one for a railroad.

The Homestead Act.

USH2 0151 The Homestead Act

The Homestead Act of May twentieth, eighteen sixty-two, offered up to one hundred sixty acres of federal land to settlers who would live on it and improve it. A head of a family, or anyone twenty-one or older, citizen or declared future citizen, could file a claim. The law's text says he or she, so unmarried women could claim land too.

The railroad law signed six weeks later.

USH2 0152 The Pacific Railway Act

The Pacific Railway Act of July first, eighteen sixty-two, funded a transcontinental railroad with federal land grants and government bonds. The Union Pacific built west from Omaha and the Central Pacific east from Sacramento, and the two lines met at Promontory, Utah, in eighteen sixty-nine, completing the first transcontinental railroad.

Three entries on how the West was pictured, and on what actually moved people there.

The map the settlers had to overcome.

USH2 0153 The Great American Desert

Major Stephen Harriman Long, after his expedition of eighteen nineteen and eighteen twenty, described the Great Plains as a great American desert, land thought unfit for farming or settlement. The anchor says the eighteen forties overturned that perception, as settlers crossed the Plains in growing numbers.

The idea that carried them west.

USH2 0154 Manifest Destiny

John O'Sullivan coined the phrase Manifest Destiny in eighteen forty-five, in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, describing expansion as a divine and national right to spread across the continent. Teach it as what expansionists said, not as what was so. Lincoln promoted westward expansion to check the spread of slavery.

What actually pushed and pulled people west.

USH2 0155 Push and Pull

The Panic of eighteen thirty-seven made eastern cities look unreliable, pushing Americans to seek a living in the West. Commercial farming, belief in a national mission, and government incentives pulled them onward. The pull factors were economic, ideological and political at once, and the Homestead and railway acts were the government's contribution.

Three entries on who went, and the third replaces the familiar picture with figures.

How many went, and how much land changed hands.

USH2 0156 The Trail and the Land

More than four hundred thousand settlers travelled the Oregon Trail between eighteen forty-five and eighteen seventy, according to the anchor, and more than two hundred seventy million acres passed to private citizens under the Homestead Act. The California Gold Rush of eighteen forty-eight drew thousands more, long before the railroad was finished.

The Black migrants who went west.

USH2 0157 The Exodusters

More than twenty-five thousand African Americans, called Exodusters, moved to Kansas in eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen eighty alone, and more than five hundred thousand Black people lived west of the Mississippi by eighteen ninety. Both figures are the anchor's. The migrants were leaving a South where Reconstruction had ended.

Who the West really held.

USH2 0158 Who Went West

The West of popular memory is White and male, and the sources say otherwise. The anchor counts more than five hundred thousand Black westerners by eighteen ninety. The Yawp estimates that twelve thousand to forty thousand men worked as cowboys, perhaps a fourth of them African American and more likely Mexican or Mexican American, while the anchor says close to one-third of forty thousand were Hispanic or African American. The two differ, and both break the familiar picture. By eighteen eighty, both agree, more than two hundred thousand Chinese lived in the country. The West was one of the country's most diverse regions.

Four entries on what free land actually cost, starting with the point this unit turns on.

The real price of free land.

USH2 0159 The Cost of Free Land

The Homestead Act gave the land away, but a working farm was not free. The anchor puts the cost of supplies and equipment to establish a farm at about one thousand dollars, far beyond what most settlers had. Digital History adds that one hundred sixty acres was too small to be economical on the dry Plains, and that about a third of those who tried to develop homesteads eventually failed. The familiar version says free land made independent farmers. The land was the cheapest part of the enterprise. Tools, animals, seed, fencing and water were the expensive parts, and settlers without them failed, while large operations with capital succeeded.

What homesteaders lived in, and lived through.

USH2 0160 Sod Houses and Locusts

Homesteaders built sod houses of mud and thatch that let in rain and vermin, and faced drought, blizzards, tornadoes and very low rainfall. Locust swarms lay six to twelve inches deep, and an eighteen seventy-eight Kansas newspaper reported insects devouring everything green. The environment itself was the homesteader's first enemy.

The cost that came after the harvest.

USH2 0161 Freight Rates

Railroads charged such high shipping rates that many Plains farmers could not sell their crops at a profit, paying so much to ship grain east that the harvest earned little or nothing. The railroad that made Plains farming possible also squeezed it, and farmers' anger at the rates grows into the Populist revolt of unit five.

The women who did much of the work.

USH2 0162 Women on the Homestead

Pioneer wives had no right to sell property, seek a divorce in court, sit on juries or vote, yet their labour kept the farm running. A typical farm wife in nineteen hundred gave nine hours a day to chores, and two more to barn and animal work. The law gave her almost no rights over the farm her work sustained.

Three entries on tools, scale and water, and the second answers this unit's question on the farm.

The tools that made the Plains farmable.

USH2 0163 Plows and Windmills

Plains farming depended on new tools: steel plows to cut the grasses' dense roots, and windmill pumps to lift water from deep wells. James Oliver's chilled plow of the late eighteen sixties followed John Deere's steel-faced plows of eighteen thirty-eight. Digital History notes wells drilled several hundred feet down, and drilling and windmills cost more than most farmers could afford.

The farms that could afford everything.

USH2 0164 Bonanza Farms

Bonanza farms of more than twenty thousand acres each, in Minnesota and the Dakotas, succeeded where individual homesteads often failed, with machinery, capital and hired labour working land on a scale no family could match. Economies of scale explain the difference. That is this unit's question answered on the farm: the Plains rewarded the large operation, not the independent farmer the Homestead Act imagined.

The government's answer to the lack of water.

USH2 0165 The Newlands Act

The Newlands Reclamation Act of nineteen oh two used money from public land sales to build irrigation dams in the arid West, storing river water for farms that rainfall alone could not sustain. The anchor calls it the first systematic approach to water management on the Plains. Water, not land, was the West's scarce resource.

Three entries on the other way to get rich in the West, and on how soon it needed capital too.

The Gold Rush.

USH2 0166 The Gold Rush

Gold discovered at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California, in eighteen forty-eight set off the California Gold Rush, with individual prospectors working streams with pans and sluice boxes. That individual method did not last. Later strikes demanded deep shafts, heavy machinery, and the capital to pay for them.

The richest silver strike of all.

USH2 0167 The Comstock Lode

The Comstock Lode in Nevada, the richest silver deposit in American history, yielded more than three hundred million dollars within twenty years, the anchor says, from mine shafts sunk hundreds of feet into the ground. The anchor dates the lode to eighteen fifty-nine under Henry Comstock's name. Digital History says the Grosh brothers found it in eighteen fifty-seven.

The metal that mattered more than silver.

USH2 0168 Copper and Industry

Mines in Arizona and Montana later yielded copper, a metal that gained value as electricity and the telegraph spread, strung as wire between telegraph poles and, soon, electric lines. Western mining was becoming an industrial supplier, and unit three follows copper into the age of electricity.

Three entries on the cattle kingdom, and the last gives its end two causes.

The cattle boom.

USH2 0169 The Cattle Kingdom

The cattle boom ran from eighteen sixty-five to eighteen eighty-five, driving Texas longhorns north along the Chisholm Trail to Kansas railheads. A steer bought for three to five dollars in Texas sold for thirty to fifty at Abilene. Digital History counts five million longhorns in Texas in eighteen sixty, and Joseph McCoy developed Abilene as the trade's first great hub.

The men, and some women, who drove the herds.

USH2 0170 The Cowboys

Cowboys drove the herds for low, insecure wages, twenty to twenty-five dollars a month for beginners, according to the Yawp. Rodeo, bronco and lasso are words cowboys took from the Mexican vaqueros who taught them the work, and much of the cowboy's craft was Mexican in origin. The Yawp records at least sixteen verified accounts of women on the drives.

Why the open range closed.

USH2 0171 One Invention Closes an Era

Joseph Glidden's patented barbed wire let ranchers fence the range cheaply, without lumber. The anchor says it closed the open range to settlers and cowboys alike, and eastern businessmen with capital came to dominate the cattle trade through their control of land and railroads. Digital History adds a second cause: two harsh winters, from eighteen eighty-five to eighteen eighty-seven, followed by two dry summers, killed eighty to ninety percent of the cattle on the range. The familiar version gives the open range one cause, and the sources give two. Fencing made the long drive impossible, and the winters made it ruinous.

Look at what you can now do. You can name the two laws of eighteen sixty-two: the Homestead Act, up to one hundred sixty acres to settlers who would live on the land and improve it, and the Pacific Railway Act, a transcontinental line funded by land grants and bonds. You can separate what expansionists said, Manifest Destiny as a divine right, from what pushed and pulled people west: a panic in the East, and commercial farming, a sense of mission and government incentives. You can say who went west from the figures: Exodusters in Kansas, half a million Black westerners by eighteen ninety, Mexican and Black cowboys, and more than two hundred thousand Chinese in the country by eighteen eighty. You can explain why free land did not make independent farmers. The land was the cheapest part, and the Plains rewarded the operation with capital. And you can give both causes of the open range's end: barbed wire, and the winters.