Building an American Empire by Frymer Paul

Author:Frymer, Paul
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2017-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 4.7. Homesteads by state, 1880–1904. Report of the Public Lands Commission, “Final Homesteads,” 58th Congress, 3d Session, Document No. 189 (1904), 175–79, table XIII.

As figure 4.7 reflects, homesteading went hand in hand with settlement and population increase. Western states struggling for population were able to further pressure the government to pass laws that expanded opportunities for settlers, many of which were related to Indian lands. The Dawes Act, (the Indian Allotment Act of 1887), and the Burke Act of 1906 were importantly products of western state pressure to make land available for white settlement.

Homesteading was also a policy that helped the Republican Party maintain legislative majorities in the late nineteenth century. Six states were incorporated into the nation between 1889–90: Washington, the two Dakotas, and Montana in 1889; and Idaho and Wyoming in 1890. Republican victories in the 1888 elections gave them the necessary majorities in Congress to open the door for adding new states with additional representatives and electoral college votes that they believed consisted of Republican voters. The party boldly succeeded in dividing the Dakota Territory into two states that they, again, believed would both support Republicans. This was a strategy that had worked in the past—Republicans benefited from the hurried incorporation of Colorado to win the 1876 election, and Democrats were wary of the partisan strategies involved in state incorporation at the time. Nonetheless, only Montana’s introduction was thought to be a state favorable to Democrats.

Land policies were critical to Republicans in facilitating these incorporations. Of course, the Dakotas had been the site of some of the biggest post–Civil War battles between the United States and Indians, as the Sioux forcibly resisted white settlement of the Black Hills, culminating in the Battle of Little Big Horn. A decade later, and to divide the Dakota Territory into two states, the Harrison administration courted settlers to the region by subdividing the Great Sioux Reservation to open more than 11 million acres of land for development.92 Heavy-handed negotiations by Republicans led the Sioux to give up half their land, with would-be settlers camped on the eastern banks of the Missouri River.93 Huge amounts of homesteading helped double the populations in Wyoming and Idaho. Of these, only Idaho created some controversy because of a fear that the Mormon community, estimated at about 20 percent of the population in the territory, were not loyal to the United States because they held religious beliefs that endorsed a hierarchy of priests over national law. As one east coast newspaper remarked, it was “not merely that they regard certain immoral practices as a part of religious duty, but that they hold obedience in civil affairs to their priesthood to be essential to salvation. The records of our courts in Utah and Idaho are crowded with Mormon perjuries committed under directions from priests and bishops, and every function of citizenship is performed, not for the welfare of the State, but for the benefit of the Church and its leaders.”94

This only accentuated with the debate over Utah that centered further on the question of polygamy.

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