IMPOLICY OF LAND

BOUNTIES-THE HOME

STEAD LAW DEFENDED.

IN COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE ON THE STATE OF THE UNION, JULY 13, 1868.

[The subject of land bounties for soldiers has been agitated in Congress ever since the close of the late war. Several very indefensible, not to say monstrous projects, have from time to time been brought forward and finally defeated, but the friends of these movements evidently do not mean to give the matter up. This speech, while honoring the soldier, seeks to save the public domain for actual settlers; and the facts it sets forth as to the action of Congress and the Executive Departments of the government may interest both the soldier and civilian in the further consideration of the subject. The vigilance and zeal of Mr. Julian in guarding the Homestead Law, at the great hazard of being misunderstood by the soldier, is believed to have commanded the respect of men of all parties.]

MR. CHAIRMAN, -I believe I am justified in saying that during my service in this House I have steadily defended the preëmption and homestead laws of the United States. Whether the attack has come in the form of unwarranted grants of land in aid of railroads and other works of internal improvement, or atrocious jobs under the name of Indian treaties, or plausible schemes of bounty in the pretended interest of the soldier, or whatever other shape it may have assumed, I have constantly and resolutely maintained the rights of settlers on the public domain. I shall not now change my course of action. On the contrary, every passing day invites me to renewed vigilance and zeal by revealing some fresh conspiracy against the rights of our pioneer producers. I have already discussed at some length our general land policy, its evils, and their remedy, during the present session; but I omitted in that discussion a question of grave magnitude, which I then hoped would not again be seriously agitated in Congress. I allude to the question of military land bounties, and I must avail myself of this occasion to consider it, and in doing so to perform what seems to me an imperative duty.

I am opposed, very decidedly, to all schemes providing bounties in land for our soldiers. My opposition is based upon grounds which I desire to state to this House and to the country, and which, in my judgment, leave no room for difference of opinion among

intelligent men who will give the subject their attention. One bounty land project only have I ever supported, and that was introduced by myself in the dark hours of the war when our soldiers so much needed its encouragement and support, while it aimed a deadly thrust at the rebel power. Early in the session of Congress beginning in December, 1863, I reported from the House Committee on the Public Lands a bill providing that all lands which should be sold under the provisions of the Act of 1862 for the collection of direct taxes in the insurrectionary districts, and under the act of the same year to provide internal revenue to support the government, should be bid off to the United States at the minimum price mentioned in said acts, certified over to the Secretary of the Interior, and thenceforward become a part of the public unappropriated domain of the United States. It further provided that all lands against which proceedings in rem should be instituted under the act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion, and to seize and confiscate the property of rebels, should, upon the rendering of final decrees of condemnation, be in like manner certified over to the Secretary of the Interior, and thereafter be regarded and treated in all respects as a further extension of the public domain. This bill, supposing the policy of confiscation to be exacted by the government, would wrest from the rebels and set apart for loyal uses from one half to three fourths of the cultivated lands of the rebellious districts, and without disturbing the rights of property of the great body of their people, who were never permitted by the aristocracy to own land. It would simply reach the lands of the leading rebels, who were at once the chief landholders and slaveholders of the South; and it extended the Homestead Law over these lands, under carefully considered restrictions, and provided for their distribution in small farms among the soldiers and seamen of the Army and Navy as a tribute to their valor, as a fit chastisement of the rebel chiefs, and as the basis of loyalty and democratic institutions in the States of the South. Had it become a law, coupled with the policy of striking at the fee of rebel landholders to which Abraham Lincoln finally assented, the duration of the conflict would certainly have been greatly abridged, while many thousands of lives and many millions of treasure would have been saved. The great landed estates of the South would have been dismembered, and at the end of the war the Freedmen's Bureau would scarcely have been needed, since the return of order and peace would have been heralded by the advent of our loyal sol

diers, with their muskets as their companions, prepared to defend as well as till their homesteads, while ready to act as policemen and avengers in the protection of the defenseless. The bill passed the House by a strong majority; but it failed in the Senate, as did the policy of confiscation, through the hostility of distinguished conservative fanatics who were then pettifogging the cause of the rebels in the name of the Constitution, including the most conspicuous of "the conscientious seven" through whose fatal agency the country was handed over to its enemies in the late trial of Andrew Johnson for high crimes and misdemeanors. So much, Mr. Chairman, for land bounties during the rebellion, the circumstances belonging to the history of the subject, and the moral to which they obviously point.

The war closed in the spring of 1865, and the history of the agitation respecting soldiers' bounties since that time is worth recalling. When Congress met in December following the demand for an equalization of bounties had evidently been resolved upon by those of our soldiers who volunteered in the years 1861 and 1862. It was a reasonable demand, resting upon the fact that multitudes who had enlisted at the beginning of the war and rendered the longest service had received very little bounty, while most liberal bounties were awarded to those who came in toward the end of the conflict. Equality is equity; and the question was how to frame a bounty bill that would place all the soldiers of the war as nearly on a common level as possible. It was no easy task; and the financial situation of the country presented a serious obstacle to the passage of any bill on the subject. It was, however, earnestly agitated in both branches of Congress, and in the executive departments of the government. The President was soon found to be decidedly hostile to any measure of equalization. He did not so avow himself, but his acts proved it. His provost-marshal general, as a sort of flank movement, made an official estimate of the amount required for the purpose of equalization, which, I believe, footed up from six to seven hundred millions of dollars. The pay department exhibited similar gifts in arithmetic, though it made the aggregate amount required some two hundred millions less. The Treasury Department tried its hand with similar results, several of its bureaus furnishing the most exaggerated calculations of the amount called for by the proposed measure, and Mr. McCulloch himself being especially active in the business of dissuading members of Congress from touching so dreadful a project. The effect of those executive demonstrations was soon made

manifest. Congress admitted that justice should be done to our soldiers, but it was felt that insuperable financial difficulties were in the way; and the result was the birth of the project of land bounties, which rapidly began to take shape, and threatened to lure into its support a decided majority of both Houses. We had, it was said, over one thousand millions of acres of public lands, and with them we would pay off the soldiers without adding to the burdens of the people. I saw that the policy would be utterly ruinous to the country, while its promised justice to the soldier would prove a delusion. It was almost as wanton a conspiracy against the Homestead Law and the productive wealth of the nation as the kindred proposition of certain prominent politicians in 1863 to mortgage the public domain to our creditors in security for our debt, which I had the honor to expose and denounce at the time on this floor. Earnestly entertaining these views, I was glad to find an early opportunity to express them in the form of a report from the House Committee on the Public Lands, in response to a memorial from New Hampshire soldiers praying bounties in land. That report, which was laid on the desks of members and con siderably copied into the newspapers, showed so conclusively, by unanswerable facts and figures, the impolicy and iniquity of the proposition, that I hope I shall be pardoned for saying that it very materially aided in its defeat, and in thus saving the public domain from a most frightful scheme of spoliation and plunder.

The way was thus again opened, very naturally, for the consideration of bounties in money, and the subject was examined more earnestly than before. Calculations were made, which I believe were reliable, showing that about one hundred and fifty millions of dollars would be sufficient to pay and equalize bounties on the basis of eight and one third dollars per month for the time of service; and after freely conferring with intelligent soldiers and sailors on the subject I reported to the House a bill framed upon that basis, which was referred to the Committee on Military Affairs. General SCHENCK reported it back, with sundry modifications as to details, and it passed the House by an overwhelming vote. In the Senate, however, it encountered serious opposition. The executive agencies to which I have referred seemed to be far more potent in that body than in the House. The financial difficulty was regarded as insurmountable. Besides, many Senators declared that the soldier, having received what he contracted to fight for, was entitled to nothing more. These Senators, however, were quite anxious for the passage of a

bill to increase their own salaries $2,000 a year, which the House refused to agree to, for the reason, in part at least, that the Senate refused to concur in the Bounty Bill. The final result of this conflict was a compromise, by which the measure now known as the Act of July 28, 1866, was indissolubly married to the proposition to increase the pay of members; and, under the motive power of an argument two thousand dollars strong, this cunning but discreditable project was carried. I am very glad that it had a Democratic parentage, and that a large wing of the Republicans in Congress opposed it from the beginning to the end. The Bounty Bill thus carried through was an insult to the very principle of equalization; and though it takes from the treasury nearly sixty millions of money, it has proved almost as unsatisfactory to our soldiers as if no bill at all had been enacted.

The agitation of the subject, however, now gradually subsided. What had been done for the soldier, though it disappointed him, seemed to create a new obstacle in the way of doing more. The financial condition of the country did not improve, and although the House reënacted General SCHENCK's bill during the last session of the Thirty-ninth Congress, it failed in the Senate, as was naturally to be expected. Thus the matter rested, Mr. Chairman, till the early part of the present session, when a bill was introduced and referred to the Committee on the Public Lands providing for very large bounties in lands. The aggregate number to whom it promised bounty was two millions two hundred and forty-five thousand six hundred and fifty-nine, and it called for three hundred and thirty-four millions nine hundred and seventy thousand three hundred and sixty acres of land, for which warrants were to be issued and made assignable like those of our Mexican War. My facts are official, being based on the careful calculations of the War Department. The effect of throwing upon the market this immense issue of warrants would necessarily bring down their price so low that it would prove a pitiful mockery of the just claim of the soldier, while speculators would buy them up in vast quantities, and make them the basis of new and most fearful monopolies of the public domain. These and kindred facts were forcibly set forth by the committee in an adverse report, accompanied by a bill which they offered as a substitute, and which has passed the House, by which the five-dollar and ten-dollar fees required under the Homestead Law shall be remitted in the case of honorably discharged soldiers and seamen, while the existing conditions of settlement and improvement are adhered to.