men, who have earned their right to the soil by generations of oppression, instead of selling it in large tracts to speculators, and thus laying the foundations of a system of land monopoly in the South scarcely less to be deplored than slavery itself. It should seize all property belonging to traitors, and use it in defraying the expenses of the war. It should, as far as possible, send all disloyal persons beyond our lines. It should see to it that corrupt army contractors are shot. It should deal with rebels as having no rights under the Constitution, or by the laws of war, but the right to die. It should make war its special occupation and study, using every weapon in its terrible armory in blasting forever the organized diabolism which now employs all the enginery of hell in its work of national murder, and threatens to make our country the grave of liberty on earth. Such an earnestness, thus born of the unutterable guilt of the rebels and the peril of great and priceless interests, and sustained by a firm faith in the justice of our cause and the smiles of our Maker, would speedily restore our country to the glad embrace of peace, and reassure its promise of free government to the victims of despotic power throughout the world. Our liberties would be saved from present destruction, and new pulsations of life would be sent down through all the coming generations of men.

HOMESTEADS FOR SOLDIERS ON THE LANDS OF REBELS.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MARCH 18, 1864.

[The measure here advocated passed the House by yeas 75, nays 64, but failed in the Senate through conservative scruples, as did the policy of striking at the fee of rebel land owners, which Mr. Lincoln finally favored. That these mistakes are sadly to be deplored no one can doubt, who will ponder the arguments of this speech in connection with the actual condition of affairs in the South since the close of the war. The dismemberment of the great rebel estates, and their distribution among the poor, was obviously the true policy of Reconstruction.]

MR. SPEAKER, During the past month I prepared and reported from the Committee on Public Lands a bill to provide homesteads for persons in the military and naval service of the United States, on the forfeited and confiscated lands of rebels. The bill was recommitted and printed; and my purpose was to discuss its provisions under the general call of committees for reports, which will bring the subject directly before the House for its action. I find, however, in the crowded state of our business, that this would delay my purpose indefinitely; and I have therefore concluded to avail myself of the opportunity now offered to submit what I have

to say.

The measure referred to will be considered a novel one, but it should not therefore be regarded with surprise or disfavor. Our country is in a novel condition. The civil war in which we are engaged is one of the grandest novelties the world has ever seen. We are every day brought face to face with new questions, and compelled to accept the new duties which lie in our path. Whosoever comprehends this crisis and is willing to assume its burdens, must keep step to the march of events, and turn his back upon the past.

The bill I have reported, however, is less a novelty in its principles than in their application to new and unlooked for conditions. It involves, among other things, the policy of free homesteads to actual settlers; and since this policy is now seriously menaced, 1 may be allowed to refer briefly to the subject by way of preface to what I shall have to say on the special matter before us.

Our Homestead Law was approved May the 20th, 1862. Its enactment was a long delayed, but magnificent triumph of freedom and free labor over the Slave Power. While that power ruled the government, its success was impossible. By recognizing the dignity of labor and the equal rights of the million, it threatened the very life of the oligarchy which had so long stood in its way. The slaveholders understood this perfectly; and hence they resisted it, reinforced by their Northern allies, with all the zeal and desperation with which they resisted" abolitionism "itself. Its final success is among the blessed compensations of the bloody conflict in which we are plunged. This policy takes for granted the notorious fact that our public lands have practically ceased to be a source of revenue. It recognizes the evils of land monopoly on the public domain, as well as in the old States, and looks to its settlement and improvement as the true aim and highest good of the Republic. It disowns, as iniquitous, the principle which would tax our landless poor men a dollar and a quarter per acre for the privilege of cultivating the earth; for the privilege of making it a subject of taxation, a source of national revenue, and a home for themselves and their little ones. It assumes, to use the words of General Jackson, that the wealth and strength of a country are its population," and that "the best part of that population are the cultivators of the soil." This bold and heroic statesman urged this policy thirty-two years ago; and had it then been adopted, coupled with adequate guards against the greed of speculators, millions of landless men who have since gone down to their graves in the weary conflict with poverty and hardship, would have been cheered and blest with independent homes on the public domain. Wealth incalculable, quarried from the mountains and wrung from the forests and prairies of the West, would have poured into the federal coffers. The question of slavery in our national Territories would have found a peaceful solution in the steady advance and sure empire of free labor, whilst slavery in its strongholds, girdled by free institutions, might have been content to die a natural death, instead of ending its godless career in an infernal leap at the nation's throat.

The Homestead Act did not go into effect till the 1st of January, 1863. Within four months from that date, notwithstanding the troubled state of the country, more than a million of acres were taken up under its provisions; and at the close of the year ending September 30th, this amount was increased to nearly a million and a half. Peace will soon revisit the land and resurrect

the nation to a new life. The energy and activity of the people, now directed to the business of war, will be dedicated afresh to industrial pursuits. Many thousands in the loyal States who will have caught the spirit of travel and adventure, and far greater multitudes in the Old World who will be tempted to our shores, will lay hold of the homestead law as their glad refuge and sure help. It will be the day-star of hope to millions beyond the sea, as it is now the fond child of the millions of our own people who march under the old flag of our fathers. Should it stand for ten years to come, its blessings will outstrip the most sanguine anticipations of its friends. Its overthrow, I have said, is threatened; and this is done by indirection, as well as open assault. Since the date of its passage Congress has granted nearly seven millions of acres for the benefit of agricultural colleges, and about twenty millions to aid in the construction of railroads. There are now pending before Congress bills making other grants for railroads, amounting to nearly seventy millions of acres. We have a project before us which grants nearly seven millions of acres for the education of the children of soldiers; another granting two hundred thousand acres in the State of Michigan for the establishment of female colleges, which of course would be extended to the other States; and another granting ten millions of acres for the establishment of normal schools for young ladies. Every day witnesses the birth of new projects, by which our public lands may be frittered away and the beneficent policy of the homestead law mutilated and destroyed. And, simultaneously with the development of this backward movement, and as if to aid it, speculators are hovering over the public domain, picking and culling large tracts of the best lands, and thus cheating the government out of their productive wealth, and the poor man out of the home which else might be his at the end of the war. Whilst the homestead policy is thus invaded by gradual approaches and indirect attack, its overthrow is boldly demanded as a financial necessity. A veteran public journalist, and one of the foremost party leaders of our time,1 proposes to go back from the Christian dispensation of free homes and actual settlement to the Jewish darkness of land speculators and public plunder. He wants money to pay our immense national debt, and seeks to obtain it by levying on the lands which the nation has already dedicated by law to occupancy and cultivation as the sure means of revenue. What we want and the government needs, is Immigration. This is demonstrated by the report of Hon. Sam

1 Thurlow Weed.

uel B. Ruggles to the International Congress which met at Berlin in last September. He takes the eight food-producing States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, and shows that between the years 1850 and 1860 their population increased 3,554,095, of whom a very large proportion were emigrants from the old States and from Europe. He shows that this influx of population increased the quantity of improved land in these States, within the same period, 25,146,054 acres ; that the cereal products of these States increased 248,210,028 bushels; that their swine increased 2,503,224; their cattle, 2,831,098. He further shows that within the same period, the assessed value of real and personal estate of these States was augmented $2,810,000,000. These, to a great extent, are the direct results of immigration; and in the light of these facts the interest and duty of the government are palpable. By all honorable and reasonable means it should tempt Europe to send her people to our shores. From 1850 to 1860 the immigration averaged, annually, 270,762, giving a total of 2,707,620. Within the next ten years, should the homestead policy continue, the number of immigrants will probably far transcend all precedent, while increasing multitudes from our older States will join in the grand procession towards the West. If Thurlow Weed wishes to use the public domain in paying our national debt, here is the process. It is simply to give heed to the divine injunction to "multiply and replenish the earth." It is to give homes to the millions who need them, and at the same time coin their labor into national wealth by marrying it to the virgin soil which woos the cultivator. It is to compel the earth to yield up her fruits, so that commerce may transmute them into silver and gold. Thus only can we solve the problem of our finances, so far as the public lands are concerned. The project of paying a debt of three thousand millions of dollars, or even the interest on it, by the sale of these lands, is sublimely ridiculous; whilst the proposition to repeal the homestead law is a proposition to encourage speculation, to plunder the government, to betray the just rights of millions by violating the plighted faith of the nation, to hinder the march of civilization, and to weaken the force of our example as a Republic, asserting equal rights and equal laws as the basis of its policy.

But I pass from this topic. I have adverted to it, partly because I desired to sound the alarm of danger in the ears of the people, and thus avert its approach, and partly because the considerations I have presented bear directly upon the measure now before the House.