Eastern Workingmen and National Land Policy, 1829–1862 9780231881234

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E A S T E R N WORKINGMEN AND NATIONAL LAND POLICY, 1829-1862 COLUMBIA U N I V E R S I T Y STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN A G R I C U L T U R E NUMBER 7

EASTERN WORKINGMEN AND NATIONAL LAND POLICY, 1 8 2 9 - 1 8 6 2

By Helene Sara Zahler

New York : Morningside Heights COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY ι 9 4 ι

PRESS

COPYRIGHT

Ι 941

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW YORK Foreign agents: O X F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S , Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E.C. 4, England, AND Β. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India; M A R U Z E N C O M P A N Y , L T D . , 6 Nihonbashi, Tori-Nichome, Tokyo, Japan M A N U F A C T U R E D I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S OF

AMERICA

COLUMBIA

UNIVERSITY

STUDIES

I N T H E H I S T O R Y OF

AMERICAN

AGRICULTURE

EDITED

BY

HARRY J. CARMAN Professor of History in Columbia University And

REXFORD G. TUGWELL

ADVISORY

BOARD

EVARTS B. GREENE, Chairman Professor of History in Columbia University AVERY O. CRAVEN Professor of History in The University of Chicago

HAROLD A. INNIS Professor of Political Economy in the University of Toronto

EVERETT E. EDWARDS United States Department of Agriculture; Managing Editor of Agricultural History

LOUIS B. SCHMIDT Professor of History in the Iowa State College of Agriculture And Mechanical Arts

LEWIS C. GRAY Economist, Division of Land Economics, United States Department of Agriculture

WALTER P. WEBB Professor of History in The University of Texas

EDITORS'

TJETWEEN

1781

FOREWORD

AND 1 8 0 2 , SEVEN STATES

MASSACHU-

setts, Connecticut, New York, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia—ceded to the United States the trans-Appalachian areas claimed by them under their original charters. The Federal domain thus created "to be disposed of for the common benefit of the United States" was enlarged before the Civil War by the acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase, the Floridas, the great Southwest, and the Oregon territory. Almost before it had acquired the first acreage of its vast estate, the Federal government turned to the problem of formulating a national land policy. From the outset this knotty question gave rise to two schools of political thought, each motivated in no small degree by economic considerations. One, the liberal school, composed of pioneer farmers, land speculators large and small, spokesmen for the laboring classes of Eastern urban communities, and protagonists of the theory that actual ownership of land by the masses promotes true democracy, insisted that the public domain should be disposed of quickly and on easy terms. Opposed to the liberal school were the conservatives, who maintained that the public land should be a great national resource from which the government would derive funds to be spent for the well-being, happiness, and education of all the people. T o this school also

Vlll

EDITORS'

FOREWORD

belonged owners of land in the Eastern states who feared the competition of the cheaper and more fertile lands of the West, and Eastern manufacturers who professed to see in these lands a magnet that would draw away their labor supply. By 1820 it was clearly evident that the liberal school was in the ascendancy. Government land was already being disposed of at a rapid rate and with the increase in population beyond the Alleghenies this rate was accelerated. How much of the public domain went directly to persons who settled on it and made it their permanent home, and how much of it into the hands of speculators who had no intention of ever setting foot on it will, in all probability, never be known. We do know, however, that it was the large speculator and the private transportation company subsidized by lavish grants of public land that came to be regarded as the foes of the common people. In the pages which follow Dr. Zahler has added immensely to our knowledge of the attitude of one segment of the nation's population, namely, the Eastern workingmen, toward our national land policy during the half century preceding the Civil War. H. J . C. R. G. T . Columbia University in the City of New York January 10, 1941

PREFACE

O

N E O F T H E M O S T I M P O R T A N T F A C T S IN T H E

HISTORY

of the United States is the reorientation of public land policy which took place between 1820 and 1862. T h e purpose of this essay is to consider the role of the workingman of the Eastern States in that reorientation. T h e United States began its career as a nation with two conspicuous assets: "the most perfect Constitution ever devised by the mind of man" and a vast, fertile, unoccupied public domain. That domain was to afford security for the national debt, assurance of national solvency, and the means of national improvement. However, in face of a constant and growing demand for readier access to this source of wealth, it became impossible to retain the public lands as a Treasury asset or to reserve them as security for public debt, whether state or Federal. Amid the conflicting aims and slogans of sectional, economic, and party forces—each striving to demonstrate that the land policy best suited to its interests was the policy most conducive to national welfare—the voice of the Eastern workingman was neither unheard nor unregarded. Using, as points of reference, the ideas and activities of George Henry Evans, his associates and converts, I shall attempt to show something of what interest the Eastern workingman had in the public lands, what interest he was thought to have

χ

PREFACE

in them, and something of the relation between that supposed interest and the reorientation of national land policy. For their invaluable aid, my thanks are due and are most gratefully given to Dr. Thomas Martin of the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, and to Professor Eugene H. Byrne of Barnard College. To Professor Harry J . Carman of Columbia University, I am especially indebted. In the preparation of the book, Miss Matilda L . Berg of the Columbia University Press has given me valuable assistance. H . S. Z. New York, Ν. Y. December, 1940

CONTENTS

Editors' Foreword Preface I. Introduction

vii ix 3

II. Organized Labor and the Public Lands, 1829-1837

13

III. The Evolution of National Reform

32

IV. National Reform Propaganda and Its Results

41

V. Organized Labor and the Public Lands, 1837-1862 VI. National Reform in Politics VII. Land Policies and the Worker in Congressional Discussion, 18 2 6-1846 VIII. Homestead: the Preliminary Period, 1846-1851

57 81 109 127

IX. Homestead: the Period of Republican Acceptance, 1854-1862

147

X. Conclusion

177

Appendices

203

Bibliography

211

Index

233

EASTERN WORKINGMEN AND NATIONAL LAND P O L I C Y , 1829-1862

I

INTRODUCTION

LTHOUGH

I T IS POSSIBLE T O W R I T E T H E

HISTORY OF

the United States in terms of the history of its public lands, these did not become a dominant factor in congressional discussion and national politics until after 1815, when the Westward trend of population gave the new states greater representation not only in Congress itself but also in party councils. T h e interest of the Eastern workingman, affected by rapidly changing conditions in the seaboard states, was also stressed by Western advocates of a new land policy which would be less costly to the settler and less liberal to the speculator. T h e original law of 1796 regulating the disposal of the public domain provided that the public lands should be sold at public auction to the highest bidder in tracts not smaller than 640 acres and at a price of not less than $2 an acre. In 1800 the buyer who paid one-twentieth of the purchase price in cash was given four years in which to complete payment and the privilege of making part of that payment in government securities.1 This law was supplemented, in 1807, by a law empowering the president to use soldiers to drive squatters from the public domain.2 T h e policy expressed in this legislation benefited the 1 Thomas Donaldson, Public Domain, pp. 200, 110. T h e privilege of paying for public land in such securities, which had been given by the law of 1800, was withdrawn in 1806 (I/. S. Statutes at Large, II, 74-75, 4 o j ) . 'Donaldson, of. cit., p. 196.

INTRODUCTION

4

speculator rather than the Treasury. Purchasers combined to prevent that competitive bidding at public auction which, by pushing the price above the minimum set by law, would have made the sale of the public domain profitable to the government. Furthermore, corruption even defrauded the government of part of the proceeds of sales at the minimum price. 3 T h e liberal credit allowed by the law of 1800 tempted buyers beyond their resources, so that many tracts became liable to forfeit because of nonpayment of installments. Constant demands for relief were met with constant congressional postponement of the day of reckoning until, in 1820, the credit system was abolished and the minimum price of public land was reduced to $1.25 an acre.4 T h e policy of using the public domain as a source of revenue was even less conducive to promoting sectional harmony than it was to filling the Treasury. T h e pioneer regarded the revenue policy as a gratuitous insult to his hopes and hardships ·, Eastern statesmen considered the pioneer "rapacious for land as a tiger for blood" and devoid of any desire to preserve the public domain as the property of the nation. 5 Western petitioners, on the other hand, declared that the uninhabited holdings of Eastern capitalists prevented a compact advance of settlement, scattered the population, and lessened the tax resources of their communities. 8 3

American

State Papers: Public Lands Series, V I I , 283, 734 (Senate Com-

mittee on Public Lands, Report, 23C 2S, M a r c h 3, 1 8 3 5 ) . 4

Donaldson, of. cit., pp. 200, 203.

6

C. F . Adams, ed., Memoirs

of John Quincy

Adams,

X , 19. T h i s was

stated so frequently in the debates on preemption that Norvell of Michigan and Y o u n g of Illinois protested against such abuse of the pioneer ( C o n gressional 6

Globe,

25th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sen., pp. 129, 1 3 1 ,

144).

HR MSS, Wisconsin petitions for preemption, Dec. 14, 1 8 3 7 ; Feb. 14,

1838, referred to the Committee on Public Lands (this Committee is cited hereafter as C P L ) .

INTRODUCTION

5

Western congressmen, who became increasingly active in congressional committees on public lands, expressed these views of their constituents with clarity, vociferousness, and with growing effect as the Westward movement of population gave that section greater representation in Congress. Such Western influence may be seen in the Act of 1820 which, along with the elimination of credit to the purchasers of public land, reduced the minimum price from $2.00 to $1.25 an acre and the minimum quantity purchasable, to 80 acres.7 During the thirties and forties, gifts of public land to newly admitted states became common. 8 However, it was in the preemption law of 1841 that the Western idea—settle the public lands as rapidly as possible—triumphed over the land policy favored by the East—reserve the public domain as a source of revenue even if settlement be hindered thereby. Under preemption, the squatter was given the right to buy his claim at the minimum price when the area in which he had settled was duly surveyed and offered for sale according to law. Preemption might encourage settlement, but little land was likely to be sold above the minimum price when the settler might be sure of getting land at the lowest price by going beyond the surveyed area. W h i l e Western demand for readier access to the public domain was helping to change the original land policy of the United States, conditions in the East were also contributing to pressure for a reorientation of that policy. When the law of 1796 was enacted, and even in the period of its earlier revisions, the United States was almost 7 Donaldson, of. cit., p. 103. Successive laws had cut the minimum from a full to a quarter section ([/. S. Statutes at Large, II, 281, 556). * Β. H. Hibbard, History of the Public Land Policies, p. 119.

6

INTRODUCTION

entirely an agricultural and commercial nation. During the first three decades of the nineteenth century, however, the Industrial Revolution came to the seaboard states, and manufacturing began to attract some of the capital formerly confined to commerce or land speculation. Machine production and the factory system began to supplant household industry and hand labor. 8 Waterfalls that had once attracted only the poet now drew the industrialist whose enterprize made towns like Lowell appear in places that had been unimportant but a few years earlier. Thousands of people came to live and work in these new towns and their demands for goods and services broadened the markets for the products of agriculture and the objects of commerce. T h e commodities made in these towns and those produced in the older cities became cheaper and more freely available. Fortunes increased and inventions multiplied. T h e modern world of comfort and convenience was being born, for it was these three decades before the Civil W a r that gave the nation gas light and baseburners, box stoves and lucifer matches, railroads and anesthesia, the electric telegraph and the penny newspaper. These decades gave us not only the beginnings of the benefits of industrialization but also striking instances of those social problems of urban life which are still with us and still unsolved. T h e textile towns produced typhus epidemics along with their cheap calicoes. The "young ladies of Lowell," who listened so diligently to sermons and to lecturers like Charles Dickens, toiled longer hours than the slaves they pitied; they slept four, six, and eight in a "single room of moderate dimensions" and, in the opinion of one authority, worked in factories less * R. M. Tryon, Household Manufactures in the United States, p. 211.

INTRODUCTION

7

healthful than the average N e w England jail.

10

Every

two years the labor turnover in the cotton mills totaled IOO percent. A contemporary observer regarded this fact as evidence of the opportunities offered by American life rather than as an indication of the distasteful conditions of factory existence. 11 A s the population of the older cities of the seaboard states increased in the forties and fifties, so did their problems and their awareness of those problems.

The

newspaper reader of those decades was being made familiar with such things as "housing" and "juvenile delinquency." N e w Y o r k City's tenements were injuring public morals as well as endangering the public health. 12 B y 1 8 5 0 , the 10 Such problems had, of course, made their appearance with the first cities (Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, pp. 234-37, 392-95, 407, 434, 475) but they became more acute as cities became larger and more numerous. A defender of the factory system stated that the average working day in Lowell, where it was shortest, was twelve hours the year round but reached thirteen and a half in April. In congressional discussion of the tariff and the factory system, the time cited was 5 A.M. to 7 P.M. with an hour out for meals (H. A. Miles, Lowell, p. 101 j Cong. Globe, App. 700, June 26, 1846). By the law of 1834, slaves in the British West Indies were required to work from six to six, with three hours out for meals. In 1854, slaves hired to Richmond tobacco factories worked ten hours a day. On Southern plantations, fifteen hours was the summer working day but three hours were allowed for meals ( J . E. Alexander, Transatlantic Sketches, I, i i j ; R. Russell, North America, pp. 1 5 2 , 266). Convicts in Massachusetts prisons were allowed an hour and three-quarters for their two meals, factory workers but an hour (Voice of Industry, Sept. 1 1 , 1846). A Lowell doctor described the prevalence of typhus and dysentery there. A Lowell minister wrote: " T h e dwellings of the masses and the factories of the few seem less cared for than our prisons. . . . There is not a State's Prison or House of Correction in New England where the hours of labor are so long, the hours for meals so short, or the ventilation so much neglected as in all the cotton mills with which I am acquainted" (Am. Med. Assoc., Transactions, 1848, pp. 505, 5 1 7 , 5 3 0 - 3 1 ) . 11

Miles, of. cit., p. 1 1 2 . Lucy Larcom did not agree. T o her, a thirteenhour day in a Lowell factory was bondage to machinery made tolerable by the hope that it need not be a permanent livelihood (New England Girlhood, pp. 288, 1 5 5 ) . 12

[ J · Griscom], Sanitary Condition of the Laboring

Population

of Neva

INTRODUCTION

8

need to reclaim young offenders became more urgent than it had been thirty years earlier when the first juvenile reform societies were organized. Towns like Albany feared that their young people were falling into metropolitan depravity. In the metropolis itself, a Children's Aid Society was organized to help young victims of social maladjustment. Some cases of juvenile crime might be attributable to natural depravity but many more were obviously a result of poverty. 13 Poverty itself seemed to be increasing, for each year N e w Y o r k , Boston, and Philadelphia found the cost of poor relief rising. In the early forties, New Yorkers who joined common sense to benevolence organized an Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor whose object was the relief of suffering without the demoralizing effects of indiscriminate charity. 14 Children

forced

to

thievery

by

drunken

parents;

sweated girl workers who became the "fallen women" the Magdalen Society tried to redeem; crowded districts York (pamphlet 1 8 4 5 ) , pp. 7-9, 30, 44-45. D r . Griscom observed, in 1845, that there was no l a w to limit the number of persons living in a given space of the city's " l o w , rotten and crowded tenements" ( A m . Med. Assoc., Transactions, 1848, p. 4 5 6 ) . B y 1857, the New Y o r k Legislature was investigating the tenement house problem ( Ν . Y. Ass. Doc., 1857, Vol. I l l , No. a o j ) . 13 Weekly Argus (Albany, Ν . Y . ) , Jan. 15, 1850; New York Tribune, A p r i l 18, 1854 (hereafter cited as Tribune; the references are to the daily edition unless the weekly is specified). On the subject of juvenile crime, see also T . L . Harris, Juvenile Depravity and Crime in New York City, which has Police Chief Matsell's report in an appendix. Matsell stated that there were 2,955 vagrant children in the worst wards, two-thirds of them girls between the ages of 8 and 16 (p. 1 4 ) . 1 4 In 1845, the New Y o r k Sun of M a y 5 was complaining of street begg i n g as a public nuisance (cf. D'Arusmont, Society and. Manners in America, p. 9, where the N e w Y o r k of a few decades earlier is depicted as a city without b e g g a r s ) . T h e Annual Reports of the A . I . C . P . give an interesting picture of poverty in this period and of the minds of those w h o sought to relieve it.

INTRODUCTION

9

that were foci of disease and c r i m e — N e w Y o r k and Philadelphia knew all these by the middle forties. Immigration further increased the problems of the seaboard cities. Famine and revolution sent the disinherited and discontented of the O l d W o r l d to seek bread and freedom in the N e w . Between 1 8 4 7

an
Feb. 22, 184$. Evans's resolutions denounced feudal tenure, denied the power of any legislature to make grants like the Van Rensselaer manor and advised the legislature to end land monopoly in New York by enacting a land limitation law.

N A T I O N A L REFORM PROPAGANDA

51

tionately" sustained "that spirit of rebellion against the law." 2 9 The fears of the Courier were partially justified since, in return for Anti-Rent support of the Whig gubernatorial candidate, the "Indians" sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Sheriff Steele were pardoned.30 Four years later, in 1850, the Herald found that the trial testing the validity of the Patroon's title was the work of "Socialists," land reformers, and Horace Greeley. 31 Devyr was inclined to agree with the conservative press that an alliance between Anti-Rent and National Reform had not only been concluded but was responsible for the political success of the former. Certainly, the land reformers did try to cooperate with the Anti-Renters; so late as 1 8 5 1 , when the Anti-Rent movement was almost defunct, the two groups conferred on a proposal to join forces on land-reform principles. If its cries of distress 29

The Herald demanded the immediate military suppression of Anti-Rent lest, spreading into other areas of tenancy in the state, it endanger all property rights (Jan. i , 1 8 4 5 ) . Greeley's lack of enthusiasm for the use of the military arm to enforce executions for nonpayment of rent caused the Express to consider him responsible for the murder of Sheriff Steele, who was killed by a member of an Anti-Rent mob of "Indians" gathered to resist a writ of execution (Aug. 3 1 , 27, 30, 1 8 4 5 ) . I ' termed "villainous" the proposal, favored by Greeley, to test the Patroon's title in the courts. It was the land reformers who were the "agitators" responsible for the trouble in Albany, Columbia and Delaware counties (Sept. 16, 1 8 4 5 ) . This had been discovered by the Herald in May (May 7, 1 8 4 5 ) . 30 Cheyney, of. cit., p. 46. The governor who pardoned the rioters was that same John Young whom Greeley had defended against charges of overfriendliness to Anti-Rent when the Courier and the Express opposed Young's nomination by the Whigs (Tribune, Oct. 24, 1846). 31 Herald, April 19, 1850. By this time, Greeley was demanding that the manors be broken up regardless of the validity of the holders' original title. Holdings of arable land larger than 320 acres should be taxed so as to force their sale until "the genuine and thorough Free Soil principles of enabling every man to sit under his own vine and figtree [we prefer the apple] shall be approached" (Weekly Tribune, May 4, 1 8 5 0 ) .

52

NATIONAL REFORM PROPAGANDA

be taken at face value, the conservative press was readyto give the land reformers rather more credit than they claimed, for it made Anti-Rent wholly the result of National Reform's pernicious preachments. Actually, AntiRent gave the National Reformers an opportunity to make themselves heard and heard about rather than any real addition to their voting strength, such as it was.32 Evans and his followers overlooked few possible sources of support. As they found texts in almost every topic of current interest and sought allies among Dorrites and Anti-Renters, so they tried to win the favor of all types of reformers. 33 Even though Evans was not impressed 32

Devyr, Odd Book, pp. 2, 43. Mike Walsh insisted that whatever attention National Reform did attract, it owed to the interest in Anti-Rent (Subterranean, April 24, 1847). 33 Taught a lesson by conservative use of "infidelity" as a weapon against the Working Men's Party, Evans no longer emphasized his anticlerical convictions. He used a motto from Leviticus: "The Land Shall Not Be Sold Forever." Like Henry George, Evans cited the Hebrew institution of the Jubilee to prove that Moses had been his predecessor in agrarian reform. Yet, he did not scorn the somewhat dangerous aid of the "infidels." Evans regularly attended the annual celebrations of Thomas Paine's birthday, and as regularly offered toasts connecting him with land reform: "Agrarian Justice: The proper basis of a Republic; the means of intelligence and progress to a universal brotherhood" (Boston Investigator, Feb. 18, 1 8 4 6 ) ; "Freedom of Opinion: when it shall be enjoyed by a nation of Freeholders, hoary errors will imbibe a quick consumption" (ibid., Feb. 2 1 , 1849) ; "The author of Common Sense and the Crisis: His Rights of Man effective artillery for tearing down rotten Despotisms; his Agrarian Justice excellent material for building up democratic and social republics" (ibid., Feb. 13, 1850). Land reform toasts were offered at other Paine celebrations: Boston, 1847 : "The Public Lands—Free from the grasp of speculators, they should belong only to actual settlers" (Boston Investigator, Feb. 10, 1 8 4 7 ) ; Pawtucket, R. I., 1849: "The proviso of Land Limitation and the Inalienable Homestead—the Proviso that strangles the mammoth vampire of Land monopoly" (ibid., March 14, 1849) 5 Providence, 1850: "Young America and its talented editor G. H. Evans. May its claim to a liberal patronage, as the farent advocate of Land Reform be speedily responded to, and it no longer languish for support" (ibid., March 13, 1 8 5 0 ) ; Providence, 1850: "Land Reform Progress—the 'Brotherhood Unions' and their 'Circles,' the Home-

NATIONAL REFORM PROPAGANDA

53

with the practicability of Fourierism in the United States, he printed sympathetic accounts of its phalanxes, actual and potential, and attempted to win the support of its followers. B y the end of June, 1844, he was pointing out that to secure land for a community without assuming an intolerable burden of debt was the prime difficulty of the Associationists (as Fourier's American followers preferred to be called). National Reform would not only free Western land for the use of Associationist communities but would ultimately reduce the cost of land in the East. 34 Although pleased to see workers aware of social evils, the Associationist Phalanx looked dubiously on National Reform. The Harbinger, best known of Fourierist papers, saw no hope for the worker in Evans's plan: limitation could not be enforced; the entire scheme was too individualistic to help a society already suffering from misapplied individualism.35 Early in January, 1846, when a delegate from the National Reform Association presented land-reform resolutions to the convention of the New England Fourier Society—which welcomed spokesmen from other reform groups—the committee considering those resolutions declared that attention to land reform would be a useless division of workers' efforts. 39 stead Exemption and Freedom of the Public Domain to Actual Settlers, and Land Limitation as opposed to the vampire of Land Monopoly. The argument is no longer valued of 'very good but can't be done' " (loc. cil.) ; Philadelphia, 1 8 5 z : "Land Freedom, Labor's Rights and Universal Happiness—The first two must be obtained before the last can be consummated" {Investigator, Feb. 25, 1852. This toast was offered by land reformer George Lippard). 34 Adv. 2, April 20, June 2, 10, 29, J u l y 20, 1844.. 85 Phalanx ( N . Y . ) , July 27, 1 8 4 5 ; Harbinger (Brook Farm and New York), I, 174-75. 36 Phalanx, Feb. 8, 1845. Brisbane, George Ripley of Brook Farm, and Parke Godwin were the committee dismissing land reform; all but Ripley were to become energetic supporters of it.

54

NATIONAL REFORM

PROPAGANDA

But the Associationists did not maintain this hostile attitude long. A t a National Reform meeting in New York, a few weeks after his committee had dismissed land reform so cavalierly, Associationist leader Albert Brisbane announced that he had come to accept Evans's view that the two plans were complementary. In a few weeks more, by the middle of March, 1845, Evans could declare the Associationists adherents of land reform. There was no real barrier to their cooperation, for individuals might pool their homesteads into phalanxes. 37 T h e Sfirit of the Age, latest of the Fourierist papers, regarded land monopoly as the prime evil of the existing social system: only National Reform could check land monopoly and thus avert industrial feudalism in the United States.38 From positive hostility, the Associationists came to positive endorsement of National Reform. Through its press and through such lecturers as Ryckman and Van Amringe, who were Fourierites before they became land reformers, Association brought Evans's ideas before a new audience, not numerous perhaps but influential by reason of its energy, its articulateness, and its access to such means of influencing public opinion as newspapers and the pulpit. 39 Of most service, however, was the Associationist influence in New England labor circles. By cooperation with the Fourierites, the National Reformers gained a foothold in the reawakening New England labor movement. In their efforts to win the cooperation of all reformers, Evans and his followers did not neglect even such a preAdv. 2, Feb. 22, M a r c h 21, 1845. Sfirit of the Age ( N e w Y o r k , edited by W i l l i a m Henry Channing, minister, philanthropist, and follower of Fourier), July 7, A u g . 25, 1849. 39 Channing's was a rather unorthodox pulpit to be sure, but National Reform sounded more "respectable" from it than from the land reformers' moveable platform. Godwin's influence may have been responsible for the generally favorable attitude of the Evening Post toward land reform, although it had long taken a prolabor stand. 37

88

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M PROPAGANDA

55

sumably outmoded ally as Robert Owen. Their penetration of his World's Convention of October 2-5, 1845, foreshadows their later method of influencing the labor movement. Owen had planned the convention to recall his own ideas to the American public. But when the convention was organized, Bovay was one of its secretaries and Evans was on the business committee.40 Bovay presented land-reform resolutions to the afternoon session of October 4. After a fight for the floor at the next session, Evans spoke twice, presented his complete plan, and made the convention accept most of it. The Herald agreed with an English delegate that land reform was a wild scheme and that its supporters were "crazy." Yet, by printing Evans's plan, the Herald put that craziness before its large public, some elements of which may have been responsive.41 Through its own efforts, then, through alliance with other reform groups and through the publicity it received from its connection with Anti-Rent, National Reform became known the country over. In January and February, 1846, Young America reported land-reform activity in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New Jersey, rural New 40

Tribune, Oct. i , 1845. Evans's plan included the basic assumption that the object of government is the guarantee of the individual's natural rights and specific demands: i.e., adult male suffrage; majority rule; the right of all to life, therefore to water, air, and land, the means of life; land limitation; freedom of trade and migration; the support of government by direct taxes on property, while landlords fought their own wars until the soil was restored to the people; no state debts; construction of public works by the community and not by contractors; a district system of elections; simple legal forms and prompt justice; a circulating medium of intrinsic value regulated by Government; a congress of nations to settle international disputes. Except for the last point, a reflection of the peace movement of the forties, Evans's political program was essentially that of the Loco-Focos. But "the master-evil and the cause of poverty is the monopoly of the soil and the remedy, restoration of the land to the people" by the ballot if possible, by revolution if necessary (Herald, Oct. j , 1 8 4 5 ) . 41

56

NATIONAL REFORM

PROPAGANDA

York, Connecticut, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Virginia.42 New England labor papers, the Lynn Awl and True Workingman and the Lowell Voice of Industry, supported the movement. T h e "infidel" Investigator, whose editor, Horace Seaver, was active in Boston labor circles, added its endorsement. In 1846, Elizur Wright became converted to land reform and his Chronotype often quoted Evans.43 By 1847, the Tribune knew at least fifty papers that endorsed land reform. 44 T w o years later, the cause had made "notable progress" in Ohio without being neglected in other sections.4® In 1850, land reform had come so far that Greeley found pending in Congress a "multiplicity" of bills to change the land system.46 National Reform's propaganda was reaching the stage of political effectiveness. However, before considering that, it will be necessary to return to the attitude of organized labor toward the public domain. 42 Young America, Jan. 3, 1846. In Ohio, Columbus, and Cincinnati were most interested. In Pittsburgh, where John Ferral (whose name was prominent in the New York labor movement of the thirties) was active, there were many subscribers to land reform papers and many others were ready to sign the National Reform political pledge. Louisville's Daily Democrat found National Reform the means by which the masses might escape "an eternity of misery and degradation" ( Young America, Jan. io, 184.6). In Monmouth County, New Jersey, there were full meetings for land reform and the clergy of Pittsgrove endorsed the movement ( Y o u n g America, Jan. j i , 1846). Sending thirty subscriptions, New Haven land reformers asked for a lecturer (Ibid.., Jan. 24, 1846). Otsego and Genesee counties were active in New York {ibid., Jan. 31, 1846). Rochester and Albany were also interested (ibid., Jan. 3, 1846). Illinois and Wisconsin were receptive (ibid., Feb. ϊ ΐ , 1846). There was some interest in land reform even in Virginia (ibid., Jan. 31, Feb. 21, 1846). 43 Voice of Industry, July 24, 1846) Boston Investigator, June 3, 1846; June 23, 1847; Chronotyfe, July 30, 1846; Dec. 10, 1847. Wright shared his energies among conservation, antislavery, actuarial work (he was a pioneer in actuarial research), land reform, and the rendering of La Fontaine into English verse. ** Tribune, Sept. 29, 1847. "Ibid., May IJ, 1849. "Ibid., Feb. 14, 1850.

ν ORGANIZED LABOR AND PUBLIC LANDS,

I

NTELLECTUALS,

EDITORS,

AND

THE

1837-1862

REFORMERS

MIGHT

BE

voices helpful in spreading the propaganda of National Reform but it was to workingmen that the movement looked for the adherents necessary to enact its program into law. Recalling that organized labor in the thirties had at least listened to expositions of its interest in the public domain, land reformers in 1844 tried to win labor organizations to their plan and to use them as nuclei for political action. Evans and his followers stressed their own working-class origins as they tried to show workingmen that their enemy was not the employer but land monopoly, which crowded them into cities until an oversupply of labor inevitably forced wages down. Hence, although he favored unions, Evans urged unionists to attack land monopoly, the real cause of social injustice, instead of confining their efforts to securing petty wage increases. In trusting to organization alone, without reinforcing union activities through more fundamental reforms, workingmen were wasting their energies. Instead of so limiting their efforts, workers should use their organizations as a means of winning the only thorough and effective remedy for their grievances: freedom of the public lands in limited quantities to actual settlers only. 1 1

At one of their first meetings, the National Reformers planned an

58

LABOR A N D LAND,

1837-1862

Labor's early indifference to these arguments and appeals prompted Evans to declare that politicians who exploited the vote of workingmen were deliberately keeping them in the dark about National Reform. If workers would only consider his plan, they must accept it, as its truth was self-evident. 2 However, the indifference of workers did not continue. A t an outdoor meeting early in June, 1844, the stonecutters who had come to mock the evening's orator remained to cheer him. A f t e r the formal meeting, which broke up at ten o'clock, the street was crowded with little groups lingering to discuss the speaker's ideas and program.® Attempting more intensive propaganda in local unions, Evans addressed the Cordwainers Union on June 26,1844, and persuaded his audience to recommend land reform to their fellow craftsmen and brother workers throughout the nation. Though this meeting was small, Evans was encouraged by the number of participants who joined the National Reform Association. T h e cordwainers also called for a national convention of trades' unions and approved the proposal to gather at Fall River, whither the workers Address to the Working

Classes and invited the organized trades to partic-

ipate in the new movement by sending delegates to the sessions of provisional central committee (Adv.

its

2, M a r c h 16, 1 8 4 4 ) . Evans, Windt,

Commerford, Byrdsall, and D e v y r represented themselves as "mechanics" to prove their project had originated with genuine workingmen, not theorists (ibid.,

March 30, 1 8 4 4 ) . Commerford emphasized the connection of the

land reformers with the labor movement of the thirties (ibid.,

A p r i l 6, 10,

1844). In July, Job Hogbin, chairman of an outdoor meeting, announced himself as an "original w o r k y " of 1829; he had been an active, energetic and faithful Loco. A t this meeting, a ladies' auxiliary displayed a banner i t h a d e m b r o i d e r e d w i t h the w o r d s : T H E O N L Y E F F E C T U A L REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES IS TO MAKE THE P U B L I C LANDS FREE T O A C T U A L SETTLERS (ibid.,

10, 1 8 4 4 ) . * Adv. 2, March 30, M a y 1 1 , 1844. ' Ibid., June 8, 1844.

July

L A B O R A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

59

of that town had summoned their fellows to discuss their lot and plan its improvement. T h e Fall River proposal had been made early in the year. In June, Lynn's organized shoemakers endorsed it.4 On August 19, a meeting of Boston workers declared American labor was "fast verging on the servile dependence" of its "brothers of the Old W o r l d " and resolved to organize and be represented at Fall River. "Immediate and radical reform" was necessary that "the now isolated and conflicting interests of individuals may be harmonized so as to subserve the interests of a l l " ; the fight was not against capital, but against its aggressions. Though the phrases were Fourierist, the meeting's action shows almost a "class" feeling, since none but manual laborers might join the "Mutual Benefit Association of the Workingmen of Boston." 5 Through July and August more New England workers accepted the Fall River invitation. Indeed, the response was so general that Boston had to be substituted as a more convenient meeting place. In accordance with their policy of penetration, the National Reformers decided to attend the proposed New England convention. They urged that New York City's unions do likewise. If labor organizations could not afford to send delegates of their own, then, the land reformers suggested, they should allow the National Reform dele* T h e cordwainers approved the proposition " t o make the Public Lands of the States and the United States free to Actual Settlers in limited quantities, enabling every man to become an Independent Landholder, a measure which, as it seems to us, would go f a r towards restoring to Labor its rights." T h e long w o r k i n g day was the main grievance expressed in the F a l l River summons which called American workers to united action lest they fall into the "disagreeable, servile and d e g r a d i n g " position of English workers. {Adv. 2, June 29, 1844.5 Evans had been printing the call, from the F a l l River Mechanic, since early in the year.) ' B o s t o n Investigator, 1844.

A u g . 28, 18445 Boston Press and Post, A u g . 31,

6o

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

gation to represent them. This offer, whether accepted or not, gives some weight to the National Reform Association's claim that it did speak for New York City workers at the New England convention.6 The land reformers were welcomed at Boston and were even given places on important committees. Evans was surprised and encouraged by the favorable reception of his program. 7 In an "Address to the People of the United States," the convention condemned the existing system of labor as false in principle and unjust in practice. Workers must unite to improve their condition. The convention's resolutions, like the "Address," blended labor organization, Association, and land reform. 8 β Adv. 2, July 20, Aug. 17, Oct. 12, 1844. Union representatives who attended the National Reform Association's meetings to choose its delegates to the New England convention were to be allowed to vote on equal terms with the land reformers {ibid., 28, Sept., 1844). 7 Devyr and Mike Walsh were put on the Resolutions Committee. Evans and Bovay, the other members of the land-reform delegation, supported their program from the floor. Evans, speaking in favor of a ten-hour law, deprecated stressing that issue at the expense of more important matters ( A d v . 2, Oct. 19, 1844). Mike Walsh, on his way back to New York, presented the ten-hour day and land reform as companion issues in his lectures at Fall River and Lowell. New England audiences relished his oratory and were astounded at his "social consciousness" ( A d v . i, Nov. 2, 1844, citing the Boston Bee). 8 For Labor, there was endorsement of unionization, protest against long hours of work and a plea that the Massachusetts legislature prohibit any corporation's working any employee more than ten hours a day. For Association, "attractive industry" was declared to be the workers' ultimate goal. National Reform was gratified by the declaration that "in the opinion of this Convention, the present inequality and injustice of society, the abject dependence of honest and willing industry upon idle non-producing capitalists is a great source of crime, misery and degradation, and that all attempt to elevate and redeem the poverty-bowed millions who now toil and starve, can at best but partially tend to the accomplishment of that end, until the shameful and sacrilegious Monopoly of the Soil is entirely abolished and the Public Lands, which are now held by the government, are returned for actual settlement to the people for whom they are kept in trust, and thousands of whom now actually pine in want from an inability to obtain a sufficient

LABOR AND LAND, 1837-1862

61

From October, 1844, to March, 1845, when the New England Workingmen's Association, formed at the Boston convention, was to hold its first meeting at Lowell, Evans and the National Reformers continued trying to persuade the New York City unions to join with them. Their appeals of February and March were vain.® Although discouraged by this apathy, land reformers Bovay, Manning, and Pierson were cheered by reports from New England: the Lynn Awl told how a local committee on improving the condition of the worker had endorsed free land j the New England Mechanic reported similar approval from Boston.10 At the Lowell meeting of the New England Workingmen's Association in March, 1845, a convention was called for Boston in May and an annual industrial congress suggested. A resolution linked "the two great fundamental Rights of Man—the Right of Labor and the Right to the Soil—without which all other rights are rendered, to a very great extent, unavailable and worthless." This phrasing may point to an alliance between the Associationists and the land reformers who attended the Lowell meeting. Nevertheless, in spite of the activity of Associationist delegates like George Ripley and Albert Brisbane, the reformists did not dominate the New England Workingmen's Association. The attention given such problems as amount of compensated labor" (Boston Laborer, Oct. 26, 1 8 4 4 ) . This resolution was adopted precisely as Bovay had presented it in his speech. 8 Adv. 2, Feb. 22, March 8, 1 5 , 22, 1845. Evans had to abandon his plan for convening· the city's organized trades to "consult over the evils of these present times" and to learn that land reform was the only cure for them. 10 The demands for shorter hours of labor, lien laws, universal education, the abolition of chartered monopolies and convict labor show that the Lynn committee was " w o r k e r " not "reformist" in tendency and that its sponsor, the Lynn National Reform Association, represented local labor (Adv. 1, Feb. 1 5 , March 22, 1 8 4 5 ) .

62

LABOR A N D LAND,

1837-1862

the high cost of justice, convict competition, and the tenhour day proved that, whatever their articulateness, the Associationists could not force their doctrines ahead of labor's immediate concerns. While the Lowell meeting took ground broad enough to satisfy the Tribune, it was solidly planted in worker sentiment. The favorable reception of National Reform by the New England Workingmen's Association indicates the real interest its program had for organized workers.11 The New England Workingmen's Association met again at Boston on May 28, 1845, preliminary to organizing an industrial congress. Although liberals like Theodore Parker and Associationists like Ryckman, C. A . Dana, and W . H . Channing, participated in this convention, labor and land reform prevailed in its resolutions. " T e n hours" received much attention. The third resolution expressed sympathy with all those working to aid labor, and found that the progress of National Reform was particu11

The fourth and fifth resolutions of the March meeting were pure National Reform: Europe showed what could happen to labor in a society based on land monopoly; the workingmen of New England were deeply interested in the public lands. The "present monopoly of the same in the hands of speculators" was opposed at once to "national prosperity and natural rights" and the "freedom of these lands to actual settlers is a matter which demands and shall secure our immediate and energetic cooperation" (Tribune, March 14, 1 8 4 5 ) . The National Reformers made the rousing of labor support their peculiar mission. Their lack of success in New York in 1845 did not discourage them. They held their convention at Croton Hall, their regular New York City meeting place, on May 5, 1845. Members of other reform groups were welcomed and, after Robert Owen, Lewis Ryckman, and Allibon, an AntiRenter from Delaware county, had each presented his own program, Evans showed how discussion and mutual tolerance would advance all reforms by furthering cooperation among all reformers. He explained his own plan, emphasizing the need to elect to Congress men imbued with the spirit and doctrines of land reform. The convention adopted a resolution in favor of an industrial congress ( Y o u n g America, May 3, 1845; Herald, May 7,

184s).

L A B O R A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

63

larly cheering to N e w England workers, who looked forward with " a great degree of certainty to the time when the monopoly of the soil shall cease forever." T h e meeting accepted the land reformers' proposal for a joint committee on constitution and agenda. T h e National Reformers and the N e w England Workingmen's Association had cooperated before, but of this closer alliance the industrial congress movement was born. 12 In view of the origin of the industrial congresses, their status as "workers' organizations" is difficult to define. Because of the active part the Associationists took in it, the N e w England Workingmen's Association was tinged with Utopianism. Still, its labor element was aggressive enough to arouse protest from Associationist spokesmen who wished to lead, if not dominate, the rising New E n g land labor movement. 13 T h e National Reformers, however, were closer to labor than the Associationists. Most of their leaders were skilled workers; some had been active in the labor movement of the thirties.14 As craftsmen, these leaders wished to restore the worker to a position of independence. They did not think it sufficient to improve the worker's position within a capitalism to which they were not reconciled. Even though they did not precisely represent the wageworker, if the National Reformers 12

Voice of Industry,

June 1 2 , 1 8 4 5 . A motion to table the l a n d r e f o r m e r s '

proposal w a s defeated. 13

T h e Investigator,

r e p o r t i n g the meeting o f October 16, 1 8 4 4 , stressed

the conspicuous part played by " m e c h a n i c s " ( O c t . 23, 1 8 4 4 ) . R e p l y i n g to a Voice of Industry the Harbinger

criticism of the Associationists* e f f o r t to rule the N . E . W . A . , insisted

that

the

"unjust

position

to

which

society

con-

demned the w o r k e r " forbade him to hope to achieve his emancipation " a l o n e and u n a i d e d " ( I , 2 2 ) . Voice of Industry

reports of local N . E . W . A . meetings

stress " w o r k e r " participation ( J a n . 23, 1 8 4 6 ) . 14

Of

the N a t i o n a l R e f o r m leaders, only B o v a y

w a s not a

craftsman.

Evans, C o m m e r f o r d , M a x w e l l , P y n e , M a n n i n g , and John W i n d t a l l had both c r a f t t r a i n i n g and union experience ( Y o u n g America,

J u l y 5,

1845).

64

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

could convince him that escape to the public domain was not only possible but of immediate and practical help in reducing the pressure of surplus labor on wage levels and employment, they might hope for his support. In order to convince labor of the value of this plan, the National Reformers became active within every workers' organization they could reach. Between May and October, 1845, when the preliminary Industrial Congress was to be held, there was renewed activity in the New York City labor movement which had been quiescent since 1837. This activity took the shape of a conference to devise measures of union and of mutual aid. Although Evans complained that he had not been informed of the plan save by public notice, the National Reformers attended the conference of June 6, 1845, and indeed succeeded in controlling the very committee appointed to draft a plan for reform.15 This incident illustrates the land reformers' method. Labor might be indifferent—some workers might even be hostile—but its ioosely organized public meetings could be taken over by determined and articulate men. Once this had been done, they could declare themselves labor's spokesmen. Were they to repeat the claim often enough, the workingman himself might come to believe it. It has been noted that the May meeting of the New England Workingmen's Association suggested a more general organization of labor, to be called the Industrial Congress, and that it accepted the land reformers' proposal for joint action. In September, 1845, the two groups 1 5 T h e meeting of June 6 accepted Devyr's suggestion that a committee of nine, plus one member from each organized trade, be appointed to draft and report a plan for reform. D e v y r , Bovay, and Evans were appointed to the committee of nine; land reformers Commerford, Pierson, Ransom Smith, Beeny, and later M a x w e l l and Masquerier, were elected from the trades (Young America, July 7, 14, 1 8 4 5 ) .

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

65

issued a call for the "Farmers, Mechanics and other useful Classes of the Union, and all the Friends of Reform" to meet and consider whether the "elevation of the laboring classes" did not offer a platform upon which all reformers could unite. 16 When the congress was called to order at Croton H a l l on October 19, only twenty-four delegates were present but these were "brimful of zeal and hope for the regeneration of our poor mother earth."" William S. Wait of Illinois, who presided, emphasized land reform in his opening address. After debate, Evans carried a resolution endorsing both land limitation and freedom of the public domain to the landless actual settlers. T h e constitution adopted for the Industrial Congresses at this meeting declared basic the inalienable rights to education and the soil. It welcomed to annual conventions delegates from any group acknowledging the principle that all had an equal right to " L i f e , Liberty, and the use of such a portion of the Earth and other elements as shall be sufficient to provide them with the means of subsistence and comfort." 18 Delegates to the New York congress were pledged to work for legislative regulation of child labor 18

T h e call was signed by Fourierites Parke Godwin, W . H. Channing and

Albert Gilbert, for the New England Workingmen's Association, and by Evans, Bovay, and Ransom Smith for the land reformers (Tribune, Sept. 10, 1845; of course, the M a y 5 convention of the land reformers had been first with the formal proposition for the congress). 17

Tribune,

Oct. 14, 1845; Herald,

1 8 Associated

Oct. 15, 1845.

with the Industrial Congresses were to be three societies:

Y o u n g America, for nonproletarian friends of land reform; a female auxiliary; and Industrial Brotherhoods. These were to be benefit societies confined to practical mechanics, farmers and other workers; nonproducers—employers, overseers and superintendents—were expressly excluded. A l l three groups accepted the idea that land limitation and freedom of the public domain were necessary to "secure the right of soil to a l l " ( Y o u n g America, Oct. 18, 15. I 8 4 S ) .

66

LABOR A N D LAND, 1837-1862

and of the hours of labor in factories. Given mere vague commendation, Association, in both Constitution and resolutions, ran a bad third to unionization and land reform. The intellectuals were submerged} Greeley complained that the sympathies of this preliminary Industrial Congress were too exclusively with the employed class.19 Greeley's complaint indicates the tone of the movement. None of the Industrial Congresses was a federation of skilled workers untainted by the presence of Utopians or reformers. This fact, however, did not make the movement misrepresent the worker of the period. It was not yet the accepted notion that labor organization is properly concerned only with improving the worker's position as a wage earner. Even a group excluding all but manual laborers could find it necessary to go beyond the immediate issue, the shorter working day, and consider remedies for fundamental evils. Unions as such were represented at the Industrial Congresses of 1848, 1850, and 1854. 20 Further, union interests were recognized by the movement. Labor organization was recommended at the meeting of 18475 the right to organize was upheld at the Wilmington meeting of 18 Tribune, Oct. 20, 1845. On the committee to draft a constitution, Associationists Ryckman and Brisbane were outnumbered by land reformers Evans, Bovay, Wait, and Masquerier. The camel had driven the Arab out of the tent ( Young America, Oct. 1 8, 1845)· 20 The Spring Garden Mechanics, the Manayunk Ten Hours' Association, the German Union of Workingmen, the Baltimore Working Men's Fraternal Association all had delegates at Philadelphia in 1848 (Weekly Tribune, June 24, 1848, from Young America). Local "mechanics" were represented at Chicago in 1850 (Tribune, May 29, 1850). At Trenton, in 1854, the Ladies' Cordwainers' Association, the German-American Workingmen's Association of Philadelphia, and the Mechanics' Trade Union of Dover, Delaware, were represented (Proceedings of the Ninth Industrial Congress, pamphlet, 1854, p. 4). Some of these may have been purely benefit societies but even those occasionally had union overtones. As most of the Industrial Congresses were sketchily reported, unions may have had representatives at other sessions.

L A B O R A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

67

1853. 2 1 At the Albany session of 1 8 5 1 , Evans himself left the chair to make a special appeal for Fall River weavers who were striking against a wage cut.22 In addition to recognizing the importance of labor organization, the Industrial Congresses voiced labor's demands. During the forties and early fifties, organized labor's main interest, beside wages, was the ten-hours movement, an effort to shorten the working day by legislative declaration. It is significant that even those sessions of the Industrial Congress which showed least apparent interest in labor's immediate concerns emphasized their support of ten hours. The Industrial Congress movement called ten hours and land reform the twin aims of all workingmen. 23 If land reform took precedence over other issues at the Industrial Congresses, it was as a "labor" measure that it prevailed; and if several Industrial Congresses did concentrate on politics, it was on political action as a means of 21

A t New York, in 1847, Evans tried to win union support f o r his program by showing how the General Trades' Union had endorsed free public land in 1834 {Tribune, June 7, 1847; Voice of Industry, June 11, 18, 1846). T h e resolutions of the 1853 Industrial Congress included a statement of labor's right to organize without interference (Gazette, Wilmington, Del., June 3, 1853; Republican, Wilmington, Del., June 9, 1 8 5 3 ) . 22

Tribune, June 14, 18 5 1 . The Boston congress of 1846 appointed Evans, John Ferral, and W. F . Young (editor of the Lowell Voice of Industry and later a National Reformer) as a committee to confer with manufacturers to arrange a general conference on the ten-hour day. Nothing came of this, but it shows how labor could express itself through the movement (Voice of Industry, June 26, 1846). T h e Philadelphia session placed ten hours immediately after land reform in its program (ibid., June 29, J u l y 12,. 1848; National Reform Almanac, pamphlet, 1849, pp. 3-4). Ten hours was endorsed at Cincinnati and Chicago (Cincinnati Morning Chronicle, June 8, 1849; Chicago Commercial Advertiser, June 12, 1850). At Washington in 1852, the demand became more specific, ten hours without reduction of wages ( T r i b u n e , June 1 1 , i 8 j 2 ; Daily National Intelligencer, Washington, D. C., June 9, 18J2). 23

68

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

securing free homes for the worker and of preserving the public domain for his benefit. 24 T h e land reformers approved labor's aims—the shorter working day, higher wages and better living conditions— but were not confident that trade union action alone could achieve them. Remembering 1 8 3 7 , they feared lest advantages won through organization and strikes be but temporary. Lowering the pressure on wage levels by eliminating the latent competition of the unemployed was the only way to keep wages up. Unless the worker secured readier access to the soil, he could not escape the employer's dominance. Offering an alternative to wage labor, free land would draw surplus workers out of the cities and thus enable unions to work in harmony with the law of supply and demand. Free public land would give the worker his home and his opportunity. Homestead exemption would prevent his losing them because of debt. Limitation of the area an individual might own would prevent the concentration of land ownership. Ending the sale of public land and restricting land grants to farms or village lots for actual settlers would prevent monopolists from absorbing the public domain. Inalienability of holdings save to the landless would prevent the establishment of monopoly by pur24 This concern with politics was greater in presidential years. In 1848, the Industrial Congress drafted a questionnaire for candidates and recommended attendance at nominating conventions as a means of influencing the old parties (National Reform Almanac, p. 1 3 ) . Politics were stressed at the Industrial Congress of 1852 (Republic, Washington, D. C., June 7, 1854.). The Trenton congress of 1854 recommended pressure on the Senate to secure the passage of Homestead (Public Ledger, Philadelphia, June 10, 1 8 5 4 ) . Walker's bill to cede the public lands within their borders to states that would make therefrom free, limited, inalienable grants to the landless was endorsed at Chicago and Wilmington. Grants to railroads and corporations were opposed as leading to monopoly (Proceedings of the Ninth Industrial Congress, pamphlet 1854, p. 7 ) .

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

69

chase. Combined, and applied first to the national domain and then to land within the states, these principles of National Reform would free the Eastern worker from the Hobson's choice: work, at the wages offered, or starve. As we have seen, organized labor as such had scant direct representation at the Industrial Congresses. Yet its voice was heard there. Evans was active in founding and maintaining the industrial congress movement} as president or secretary of several sessions, he was able to impress his views upon it. Still, he did not do so against any expressed opposition from organized labor. If land reform became the main concern of the Industrial Congresses it was as a means of relieving the pressure on wages and ultimately of restoring the worker to independence. H o w ever, the great majority of skilled workers were reconciled to the loss of that independent position and were content to remain wage earners. Nor was organized labor yet prepared to avail itself of the opportunity for national federation offered by the industrial congress movement. Turning from the Industrial Congresses to consider organizations more limited in scope, there is visible a like influence of land reform in labor groups. Early in May, 1850, for example, the Pittsburgh trades held a county convention which declared that the public lands, as the public domain, "should be given in limited quantities to actual settlers, and under no circumstances should be permitted to go into the hands of speculators."25 In 1846, Young America knew of no more than a halfdozen unions in New York City but by 1850 there had been such a revival in the local labor movement that the Tribune could term it a "general uprising." The Herald, warned workers against "socialists," " R e d Republicans," 2S

Tribune, May 3, 14.,

I8JO.

ηο

LABOR A N D L A N D ,

1837-1862

and Horace Greeley. 28 Despite such advice, unionization continued and, during June and July, 1850, advanced to local federation. T h e Tribune resented the fact that this federation was composed exclusively of workingmen; the New York City Industrial Congress was an attempt at a central labor union instead of the discussion group that the situation called for. 27 A t an early meeting of the New York City Industrial Congress, land reformer William V. Barr secured the adoption of a resolution which endorsed free land and termed grants to railroads an "act of plunder from the many for the benefit of the few." Delegate McCloskey, from the Bricklayers' and Plasterers' Union, opposed Barr and wished the body adjourned sine die as a "humbug," because of Barr's participation. Other unionists did not agree with McCloskey, however ·, they referred their own ideas to the Congress for approval because "all the trades were represented there." The Congress continued to meet and to be sufficiently receptive to land reform to arouse the Herald's wrath: it not only listened to Barr's speeches but declared, in the second article of its formal constitution, that the right to land was one of its basic principles.28 Until its capture by politicians in 1852, the New York City Industrial Congress continued to be interested in the public lands.29 24 Young America, Feb. 7, 1846; Tribune, April io, 1850; Herald, April z z , 1850. 27 Tribune, July 3, 1850. An Investigator correspondent traced the origin of the New York City Industrial Congress to a conference of Donald C. Henderson, labor news reporter for the Tribune, some unnamed local union leaders, and land reformer John Keyser (March 30, 1 8 5 1 ) . 25 Herald, July 9, z, 1850. It was the sawyers who referred their project for a demonstration parade to the city Congress. An editorial admonished labor to beware becoming further involved with Greeley and his "isms"; and warned that fellows like Barr only wanted to use labor votes for their own political advancement (July 16, 1850). 29 Tribune, July 18, 1850; Herald, July 17, 1850. At its regular weekly

ηι

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

National Reform won the support of New York labor organizations more conservative than the rather militant City Industrial Congress. T h e Mechanics' Mutual Protection, a benevolent society active in New York State from 1841, petitioned the Senate against granting land bounties to veterans of the War of 1812, because such grants were mere attempts to circumvent the growing demand for real reform of the land system. National Reformers Gilbert Price and John Commerford had drafted the memorial for one branch of the society but all its other branches had accepted it. Again, labor organizations followed the lead of the land reformers.30 While such examples are not conclusive evidence, they serve to indicate that organized labor was interested both in the public lands and in Evans's plan for their disposal. The labor press of the period gives further indication of workers' interest in the public domain. In the examples which have survived, labor papers of the forties and fifties accepted Evans's arguments and supported land reform. His program did not conflict with labor's demands, for he defended the right to organize and to take effective meeting of November 12, 1850, this Congress declared complete unity between land and labor reformers ( T r i b u n e , N o v . 13, 1 8 5 0 ) . Evans became increasingly active in its affairs, acted as secretary and pleaded for support of Young America. T h e City Congress appointed a committee to memorialize Congress against the Whitney grant f o r a Pacific railroad and against the Fremont private land-claim bill {ibid.,

N o v . 27, 1 8 5 0 ) . It planned

wide circulation of Walker's Senate speech on land reform (ibid.,

Jan. 27,

1 8 5 1 ) . Dissipating its energies in debate on temperance, women's rights and the recapture of fugitive slaves, the City Industrial Congress disappeared from the labor movement in 1852 (Commons, I, 338). 30

Sen. MSS. Memorial of the Mechanics' Mutual Protection of

New

York, referred to the Committee on Public Lands, July 29, 1850. T h e memorial stressed the fact that all the society's branches had discussed and approved it. (Mechanics' Mirror, society and its a i m s ) .

A l b a n y , I, 123, gives an account of the

Ί2

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

measures against employers and recalcitrant workers. He also endorsed the ten-hours movement j there was thus a real basis for cooperation between organized labor and National Reform, quite apart from congeniality of philosophy and principle. Soon after the land reformers began their work, the Fall River Mechanic noted that New York City's workingmen were interested in a "new and righteous scheme in regard to the sale of public lands." The Lynn True Workingman reprinted Evans's "authorities" for land reform. 31 Citing the Pittsburgh Chronicle on the evils of the factory system, the Lowell Voice of Industry knew a "simple and certain remedy. Limit the quantity of land to each, so that it may be accessible to all, and then the laborer can make fair terms with the capitalist." 32 The Voice sometimes thought National Reform overexclusive in its faith, but it continued to quote Young America, print free-land lyrics, and endorse Evans's plan. 33 By October, 1846, the Voice declared " F r e e Soil" the only remedy for low wages and it continued to argue thus until publication ceased.34 31

Adv. 2, April 20, 1844. Ibid., J u l y 6, 1 8 4 4 ; Young America, July 20, 1845. Reporting· the convention of the New England Workingmen's Association, the Boston Laborer hoped Evans, Walsh, or Devyr would lecture on land reform (Oct. 26, 1844). 83 Voice of Industry, June 19, Nov. 2 1 , Dec. 19, 1845. The last stanza 32

of a poem by " M a r y " (printed on March 23, 1 8 4 6 ) ran: The bold oppressor sleeps in death! T h e victory's won, the Soil is free; Ring on! ring on! ye liberty peals! Send the glad sound o'er earth and sea. 34

Voice of Industry, Nov. 1 2 , Dec. 2, 1 8 4 7 ; Jan. 1 4 , June 2, 1848. When the Voice became the New Era of Industry, at the last date, and while it was edited by John Allen and John Orvis, both former Brook-Farmers, it carried as motto: " E v e r y man should be guaranteed a permanent home on the earth, the choice of industrial pursuits, the power to limit at will the hours of labor, an equivalent for what he produces, the best opportunities

LABOR A N D L A N D ,

1837-1862

A l l these short-lived sheets were in effect labor papers voicing the opinions of the workers who read them. T o be sure, the editors were more favorable to land reform than some of their correspondents were. But such dissenters met with opposition, as those approving land reform were either more numerous or more literate.35 Certainly, editors and correspondents alike stressed the special value of land reform to the worker: free public land would reduce competition for jobs and make possible the continuance of a high wage level. Papers sympathetic to labor also approved Evans's program. In 1846, Elizur Wright's Chronotyfe began telling Boston about National Reform. It approved the proposal to stop all traffic in the public lands and to throw them open, in small tracts, to actual settlers. Only making the land available to workingmen could check the exploitation of labor.36 In 1846, too, Horace Greeley accepted Evans's contention that nothing but free public land could remedy workers' grievances.37 The press favorable to organized labor and its claims agreed with land reformers that opening the public lands f o r education and f r e e d o m in e v e r y t h i n g . " E v e n convinced

Associationists

like these w e r e forced to put l a n d r e f o r m and the demands o f l a b o r b e f o r e their o w n U t o p i a n s l o g a n s . '"Voice

of Industry,

June 26, 1 8 4 7 , " I . W . R . " ;

"W.W.";

M a r c h 29, 1848 ( T h o u g h p r i m a r i l y a n t i c l e r i c a l , the Investigator siderable interest in the l a b o r 36

CAronotype,

Investigator, had con-

movement).

Oct. 10, 20, 1 8 4 6 . W r i g h t a p p r o v e d limitation as w e l l as

free public land. 37

Tribune,

June j ,

1846. D i s c u s s i n g a strike of B r o o k l y n laborers

for

h i g h e r w a g e s , this e d i t o r i a l stated that free land w a s needed f o r the " u l t i mate E m a n c i p a t i o n o f L a b o r f r o m t h r a l l d o m and m i s e r y . " T h e

Constitu-

tional C o n v e n t i o n of 1846 w a s u r g e d to insert land limitation into its revised version of the N e w Y o r k State C o n s t i t u t i o n , f o r a " f r e e s o i l " w o u l d relieve the " a w f u l pressure on the l a b o r

market of our crowded

cities"

( A p r i l 24, 1 8 4 6 ) . " F r e e s o i l " w a s a l a n d r e f o r m s l o g a n b e f o r e a n t i s l a v e r y took it o v e r .

7

4

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

free to the actual settler and reserving them for him alone would draw enough workers from the seaboard cities to cause a permanent rise of the wage level. Therefore, such papers endorsed National Reform and supported Homestead as a step toward its realization. While the labor and prolabor press thus found Evans's plan acceptable and his followers the salt of the earth, the leading conservative papers of the period denounced land reform, its leaders, doctrines, and supporters. The National Reform Association was a "revolutionary club led by foreign Chartists." 38 For supporting National Reform's "deleterious and dangerous" ideas, Greeley was a "prevaricator," "hypocrite," "agrarian," "infidel," and, finally, "lunatic." 39 Land limitation was a "palpable violation of the principles which our institutions profess to cherish." Homestead exemption was a "premium on laziness and vagabondism." T h e National Reformers had not land "enough to raise a single potatoe. Their especial grievance is that other people own all the land, that they have none, and cannot get any without paying for it} and they are too lazy to earn the money which such a process necessitates."40 Nevertheless, the conservative press nowhere attacked land reform because of its supposed tendency to raise wages or to keep them from falling. In New York City, the Courier and the Express carried the conservative banner against National Reform in a long controversy with the Tribune. But natural rights and the safety of the social order were the points at issue, not the maintenance of 38

Courier and Enquirer, Aug. 20, 1845, citing the Charlottesville, Va., Advocate. National Reform was, this early, a bugaboo in the South. 39 The epithets adorned an editorial attack on Greeley for supporting a constitutional convention in 184.6 (Express, Aug. 2, 1846). 40 Courier and Enquirer, April 2 1 , 22, 1847; Herald, April 10, i8jo.

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

75

the wage level. 41 Opposition to efforts to raise wages may have motivated the Express when it described a National Reform meeting as one in which " a spirit of discontent prevailed" and the speaker tried to encourage and further arouse that spirit.42 However, when the distinctive ideas of National Reform gave such splendid opportunities for "society-saving" rhetoric, only an optimist would expect an open declaration that industry would be hurt if wages rose or even if they did not fall. The friends of land reform insisted that opposition to free land stemmed from a desire to retain a supply of defenseless cheap labor for Eastern factories. Attacks on National Reform as an entering wedge for a general division of possessions "by obliterating all titles to landed property" may have been motivated by fear lest its enactment cause a wage rise or prevent wage cuts.43 Still, a desire to keep wages down was never stated as a reason for opposing land reform. Such frankness went out with Federalism. Labor's interest in free public land might actually be rather lukewarm but its sympathizers and opponents both believed that interest to be considerable. Both were convinced that freedom of the public domain would aid the worker and in much the way premised by the National Reformers. The labor press endorsed land reform. Local labor groups allowed themselves to be guided by land reformers. The Industrial Congress accepted the leadership of National Reform. It must be repeated that labor organization in the 41 Tribune, Oct. 1 7 , 1846 to May 6, 1847. The attacks and rejoinders are printed together; the controversy ended only when the other parties refused Greeley the same courtesy—and space. 42 Express, Sept. 25, 1845. 43 Daily National Intelligencer, April 19, 1849, citing the Richmond, Va., Times.

ηβ

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

sense of "pure and simple" unionism had not yet become the only "realistic" means for the worker to cope with his problems. Such organizations proved weak enough in the storm of 1 8 3 7 , a n d only in the middle fifties did they begin to flourish once more.44 Passive as it had been since 1 8 3 7 , labor was nevertheless receptive to programs of general reform, and none of the general reforms advocated during this period was more congenial than that advocated by Evans. National Reform presented special points of attraction to labor not only because its arguments appealed to workers' interests but also because its leaders were themselves craftsmen and because it advocated labor's own panacea, the ten-hour day. Furthermore, escape from the dominance of the employer through self-employment on the land seemed possible as well as desirable to dissatisfied workingmen. This was true not only in the United States but even in E n g land where reviving Chartism was associated with an agrarian plan having some likeness to National Reform in aim and philosophy. 45 In 1843, Feargus O'Connor took up the land problem as a Chartist issue. H e planned to accumulate from small subscriptions a fund with which to buy land; this land would be divided into small farms assigned to subscribers by lot. The rent paid to the land 44

1851 45

Pioneering again, the printers held their first national convention in (Investigator,

Sept. 1 7 ,

1851).

In 1 8 3 7 , a London Workingmen's Association protested against A m e r -

ican workers' letting so much of the land pass into the hands of "swindling bankers and grinding capitalists who seek to establish (as in our country) a monopoly in the land which nature bestowed in common upon all her children" ( W . Lovett, Life

and

Struggles,

I, 1 3 4 ) . Bronterre O'Brien, about

this time, proposed that all land brought into market be acquired for w o r k ers' benefit. He approved of land limitation and, like Evans, thought wages could be raised through the absorption of surplus labor on the land. His paper advocating these ideas was called the National mann, Die Agrar-reform

in der Chartistenbewegung,

Reformer pp. 3 9 - 4 1 ) .

( F . Back-

LABOR A N D LAND, 1837-1862 company by the fortunate subscribers would form a revolving fund with which to buy more land to be allotted to other subscribers, until all who wanted four-acre farms should have them.4® This plan, and the National Land Company formed to carry it out, became so popular that American observers thought Chartism was being reborn.47 But O'Connor's company had to be dissolved in 1 8 5 0 - 5 1 , after Parliament had denied the protection of the Friendly Societies' Act 48 to the company's funds. Evans was interested in the English labor movement and often cited the Chartist Northern Star.*9 Devyr and John Cluer, Chartists fleeing prosecution in England, made themselves so conspicuous in National Reform that the conservative press labeled all land reformers "foreign Chartists." 50 However, despite mutual sympathy and the 46 Julius West, History of the Chartist Movement, p. 2 1 3 . ** Chronotyft·., Oct. 2 1 , 1846. 48 West, of. eil., p. 222. 49 Almost the entire Young America of May 3, 1845, was given to an account of the convention of the English National Trades' Union. Nearly every issue cited the Northern Star generally under the head, "News from the Rotten Monarchies." At the complimentary ball tendered him in February, 1 8 4 7 , Evans responded to a toast with: " T h e Chartists, Repealers, Republicans and Communists of England, Ireland, France and Germany, the Noble Pioneers of the 'Good Time Coming', when National Reform for a Free Soil shall be triumphant throughout the world" ( Y o u n g America, March 6, 1 8 4 7 ) . 60 T h e Herald particularly stressed the "foreign Chartist" label, and charged that Evans had absorbed his principles in the "English radical districts" (Dec. 4, 1 8 4 4 ; Jan. 3, 1 8 4 5 ) . "Castigator" criticised National Reform leaders as being inefficient and having too many "noisy Chartists" and "self-conceited noisy Englishmen" among them (Investigator, Nov. 2 1 , 1848). Devyr's Chartist work and his escape are mentioned by Holyoake (Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, I, 1 0 7 ) and Gammage (History of the Chartist Movement, p. 1 3 7 ) . John Cluer became a storm center in the New England labor movement, on strictly moral grounds since he was accused of having a wife too many ( T h e Chronotyfe was busy defending him through April, 1848).

7

8

LABOR A N D LAND,

1837-1862

work of certain Chartist immigrants, it is difficult to establish direct influence between the two movements. Chartism and National Reform both accepted the notion of inalienable natural rights. Like Evans, O'Connor thought land monopoly the root of all evil. 51 T h e rules of the National Land Company were prefaced with a declaration that the soil had fallen "a prey to ruthless monopoly" and that the Chartist purpose was to show the working classes the value of the land as "a means of making them independent of grinding capitalists." Like Evans, O'Connor hated industrialism and wished to help workers escape its bondage. Like the National Reformers, the Chartists hoped their land scheme would relieve pressure on wages, leave jobs for those who did not win allotments and ultimately end the dominance of the employer by giving the worker the option of self-employment in agriculture. 52 In addition to a resemblance in philosophy and the possession of certain members in common, Chartism and National Reform had other points of contact. Evans was interested in the progress of the English trade union movement. American workers were sufficiently aware of Chartism to choose the Northern Star as the most effective vehicle for presenting their views to English workingmen.53 Young America made special appeals to English Chartists and Irish Repealers; Chartist papers cited Evans on the condition of the American labor movement in 1850 6 1 Lovett, of. cit., I, x ; Backmann, of. cit., p. 83. Like Evans and the Loco-Focos, the Chartists demanded absolute free trade, cheaper justice, and the abolition of indirect taxes. 52 British Parliament, Reports of Committees, National Land Comfany ( x i x ) , II, 49-50; Η. T - N . Gaitskell, Chartism, p. 65; Mark Hovell, Chartist Movement, pp. 170, 273; P. Slosson, Decline of the Chartist Movement, p. 86; E. Dolleans, Chartisme, II, 284-85. 53 Voice of Industry, Jan. 23, 1846. In this case the opinion was opposition to war with England over Oregon.

LABOR A N D L A N D , 1837-1862

79

and endorsed the Industrial Congress program of free public land and ten hours.54 The Tribune, noting the likeness between National Reform and Chartism, found that the English labor movement was on the right road at last.86 However, it is scarcely justifiable to claim direct influence either of Chartism on National Reform or of National Reform on Chartism. Dissatisfied workers in both England and America suffered from similar social ills and alike looked to Mother Earth for healing. Sharing the basic notion of a natural right to life and the means of living, both movements saw readier access to the land as labor's one hope of freeing itself from the dependence of urban life. National Reform, then, was not something spun from Evans's brain, but, rather, a plan that answered to convictions deep-rooted in the minds of those American workingmen affected by the Industrial Revolution and still believing that the Declaration of Independence was something more than a collection of "glittering generalities." It must be borne in mind, too, that the forties and fifties, when Evans was carrying on his work for land reform, were decades of ferment in which the reform of dress, diet, religion, social relations, education, and the treatment of dependents and delinquents were all claiming attention. Even slaves and women were discovering that they, too, were human beings with inalienable natural rights.68 '"Power of the Pence ( L o n d o n ) , Nov. n , 1848; Red Republican (Lond o n ) , July 13, 27, 1850; National Instructor ( L o n d o n ) , July 20, 1850. 65 Tribune, M a y 15, 1851. 58 Amelia Bloomer of the Lily (Binghampton, Ν. Y . ) was one of those reforming women's dress. Bronson Alcott gave some of his attention to the effect of food on man's spiritual condition and Sylvester Graham was attempting to convince every young boy of the benefits of unbolted flour and the practical advantages of chastity. N e w religious cults g r e w apace: M o r -

8o

LABOR AND LAND, 1837-1862

The atmosphere of this "gaseous era," which intoxicated poets and produced prophets, could not but affect workingmen. Regular trade unionism, it should be repeated, had not yet firmly reestablished itself in the United States when Evans began his work} in fact, it was only beginning to revive. Moreover, workers sufficiently intelligent and prosperous to maintain a trade union were the more likely to be affected by the numerous current schemes to reform the world. And of all these, none was better suited to labor's interests and comprehension than National Reform with its wage-level argument and its leaders experienced in the earlier period of trade union organization. Whatever the extent or the temperature of organized labor's interest in land reform and the public domain, National Reform did outstrip Fourierism and monetary tinkering, its two foremost rivals for labor's attention. monism was the most successful, Millerism the most spectacular, and Perfectionism the most reprehensible to those who could not conceive how anyone could reach anything like conviction of forgiveness for the sin of having been born human. Robert Dale Owen's influence made Indiana the current Mecca of the unhappily married, while Dorothea Dix was drawing the attention of the public to the maltreatment of the insane and the imprisoned, and Horace Mann was pointing out that the "little red schoolhouse" was sometimes less attractive than a moderately well-kept pigsty. Women began to insist that they, too, were part of humanity, even after they were married, and, being American women, they held conventions to assert their rights. Slaves ran away from their masters and the American child began to dominate the American home. In a world where everything was under challenge, it is no matter for surprise that labor should have been interested in Evans's plan, which was more practicable than most of its rivals for labor's support, and not a whit more optimistic.

VI NATIONAL IN

H

AVING SHOWN T H E

R E F O R M

POLITICS

D E V E L O P M E N T OF E V A N S ' S IDEAS,

the attempts of the land reformers to make them influential, and the place of the public lands in the thinking of organized labor, it now seems necessary to give some attention to the political efforts of the land reformers. It will be evident that these reformers were anything but effective at the polls. However, political influence is not entirely a matter of election returns, for the ideas and phrases of an insignificant minority may serve more skilled and successful politicians. This study of the National Reformers in politics will show them as an insignificant minority, unable to elect even minor officials, and yet seeing their slogans and even their plans cropping up in unexpected places and in oddly "respectable" company. Heeding the experience of the Working Men's Party of 1829, the land reformers reserved independent action as a last resort and ran a separate ticket only if no candidate of the old parties could be found to endorse their program. 1 This policy was applied in local, state, and national politics, with meager results in the way of votes. 1 People's Rights, Aug. 10, 1844. Land reformers were pledged to vote only for such candidates for legislative office as would agree in writing to work for preventing further traffic in the public domain and for keeping it for the free and exclusive use of actual settlers.

82

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

National Reform's political activity is worth attention, however, for the curious sidelights it casts upon certain aspects of political behavior. Soon after organizing, the National Reformers presented a definite program of reform for New York City. 2 When no mayoralty candidate answered their questionnaire, they nominated National Reformer Ransom Smith, who polled only 1 1 7 votes in a total of more than twenty thousand.3 Undismayed, the land reformers persisted, and were rewarded by a fourfold increase of their vote at the fall election of 1 8 4 5 / In January, 1846, Evans announced plans to run a candidate solely to annoy the enemies of National Reform. After a vigorous attempt at ward organization, Smith again made the race for land reform and was again defeated.5 In 1 8 4 7 , the National Reform vote was considered important enough for a supporter of the W h i g mayoralty candidate to forge—in the candidate's name—a favorable reply to the land reformers' questionnaire.® 2 Adv. 2, Sept. 28, 1844. That program included relief of distress as a right, not as charity; economical administration; payment of aldermen and settlement of the poor on the public domain. 8 Young America, March 19, April 6, 12, 184J. Mayoralty elections at this time were held in the Spring. Evans charged that many National Reform ballots had been destroyed or counted as "scattering" which, judging from the political mores of the time, is not wholly the charge of a disgruntled dissenter. * Ibid., Aug. 16, Oct. 8, Nov. 9, 1845. Evans consoled himself with the observation that the candidates most hostile to land reform had been defeated. s Ibid., Jan. 31, March 21, 1846. 6 Young America printed a favorable reply to its questions from Brady, the Whig candidate for Mayor. The Exfress denied that so sound a political standard-bearer could have uttered such heresy; it charged that a friend of Brady's had forged the reply and paid for the Young America "extra" in which it appeared. The representative of Whig orthodoxy did not demand that the votes thus obtained be stricken from its side of the tally (see the Tribune, April 14, 16, 1847, for the "Brady letter" and the Exfress denial).

NATIONAL REFORM IN POLITICS

83

During the years 1850-52, the New York City Industrial Congress replaced the National Reform Association in local politics j the Herald asserted that the Congress had been captured by ambitious men who cherished the "vile purpose" of making Horace Greeley New York's next mayor. Before the fall elections of 1850, workers' organizations in four wards planned an independent labor ticket.7 Although they elected no officials, the National Reformers' use of the pledge technique not only annoyed candidates aware of the advantages of evasion but was said to have created a "notable confusion" in local politics.8 National Reform's first excursion into state-wide politics came in 1846, the year of the regular convention for revising the New York State constitution. Evans welcomed this as a possible opportunity for incorporating "true principles" into the state's fundamental law. Besides a list of political reforms recalling the demands of the Loco-Focos, he advocated making his land program part of the basic law of the state: hereafter, no one was Ex-Loco-Foco Levi D . Slamm, now editor of the " r e g u l a r " Democratic Globe, was most gleeful at this chance to mock W h i g pretensions to superior political virtue ( A p r i l 19, 1 8 4 7 ) . In 1849, t ' l e land reformers offered to withdraw their candidate in favor of the most satisfactory old-party man. T h e man they approved was defeated by the one w h o ignored them ( W e e k l y Tribune, Tribune, 7

M a r c h 31, 18495

A p r i l 16, 1 8 4 9 ) .

Herald,

July

17, 1850; Tribune,

A u g . 5, Oct. 7, 1850. T h e

Ninth,

Tenth, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Wards were active; the last three had had National Reform auxiliaries since 1845. National Reformer Barr often addressed workers' ward meetings. 8

Tribune,

Oct. 15, 28, 1851. Continual questioning of candidates for

local office on their attitude toward land reform and slavery was denounced by the Philadelphia Public Ledger, three years later ( M a y 25, 1 8 5 4 ) . In 1 8 5 1 , the pledge technique was sharply criticized at meetings of the New Y o r k City Industrial Congress and was defended by National formers Barr and W i l l i a m F. Y o u n g , formerly of the Voice of (Tribune,

March 22, A p r i l 9, Sept. 29, 1 8 5 1 ) .

Re-

Industry

84

N A T I O N A L REFORM IN POLITICS

to own more than one 160-acre farm or a village lot of a size to be fixed by local authorities ; such a farm or lot was to be the homestead, inalienable except by voluntary disposal to another landless person. 9 A f t e r a vain attempt to elect land-reform candidates to the convention, Evans asked the aid of all progressives to get at least homestead exemption and land limitation into the new constitution. Despite the failure of these proposals, Evans did not consider his efforts wasted, for the revised constitution made more officials elective, altered feudal tenures and extended the suffrage. Greeley thought that a legislative committee's recommendation of limited homestead exemption was a "sign of the good time coming." 1 0 Amid activity in local politics and concern with the possibilities of a state constitutional convention, land reformers did not neglect the N e w Y o r k State legislature. Of it, they demanded ten-hours laws, homestead exemption, land limitation, and resolutions instructing the state's congressional delegation to work for freedom of the public lands. T h e first of these was a leading "labor" demand, the others, National Reform. However, the order in which they were placed indicates the land reformers' determination to make theirs the pro9 Within five years, corporations were to dispose of all their land holdings save those actually used for business. Association ist communities, however, might pool their members' homesteads. Cases regarding land held on long leases were to be decided, regardless of legal right, by courts made up of landlords and tenants in the proportion each bore to the general population (Young America, July 28, 1 8 4 5 ) . Mike Walsh, in reply to Evans's program, insisted he and his Spartan Band had been w o r k i n g for the same things for years (Subterranean, M a y 20, 1845; cf. Young America., Nov. 24, 1 8 4 5 ) . 10 Tribune, July 3, 1 8 4 7 ; Young America, July 10, 1846. A t the convention election, the land-reform candidate polled 700 votes (Louis Scisco, Political Nativism, p. j 8 ) .

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

85

gram of labor. 11 If legislatures would declare ten hours a legal day's work, the ten-hour day would become the rule in industry. This was a favorite notion of labor in the forties and early fifties. Spreading through the country, the ten-hours movement was closely linked with land reform. New Hampshire was the first state to pass a tenhours law when, in 1847, legislature made ten hours a day's work "in the absence of contract to the contrary." 12 Pennsylvania followed in 1848. Here, workers' attempts to see the law enforced provoked strikes and lockouts but did not shorten the working day. Between 1851 and 1853, New Jersey, Ohio, and Rhode Island followed the New Hampshire method of satisfying labor's legislative demands without interfering with established industrial practice.13 11 In 1850, a state Industrial Congress met at Albany, nominated a full state ticket, with exception of governor and lieutenant governor, and adopted a set of resolutions in which land reform was second to demands for lien laws, ten hours, and the restriction of convict competition. Commerford was active at this convention but his influence could not have been sufficient to carry land reform over opposition. The emphasis on "labor demands," the expression of opinion favorable to the grant to Whitney for a Pacific Railroad—although this was finally denounced—and the denunciation of "agitators" who were not real workingmen: all these show the predominance of labor at this convention. Consequently, the attention given land reform is particularly significant (Tribune, Oct. 6, 1 8 5 0 ) . Another such convention met in 1 8 5 1 . Its resolutions joined labor demands to land reform; they endorsed unions as necessary to protect labor, hailed the success of the eight-hours movement in New York City and denounced land monopoly as "one of the greatest curses ever entailed upon a nation, tending only to abase and degrade the workers of our country." The convention accepted the program offered by Manning, chairman of the State Central Committee of the National Reform Association. This program included division of the state's public land among the landless on National Reform principles, a ten-hours law and the end of convict competition. At a later meeting in New York City, a state ticket of both independent and old-party candidates was to be drawn up (Tribune, Sept. 4, Oct. 17, I 8 J I ) . 12

Tribune, Sept. 14, 1850. Commons and Sumner, V I I I , 84. An abortive attempt at a general strike for ten hours, called for July 4, 18

86

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

T h e legislatures of N e w Y o r k and Massachusetts, however, refused to take even such half-way action to comply with labor's wishes. In Massachusetts as early as 1 8 4 1 - 4 2 , workers had petitioned the legislature for a ten-hours law. T h e grievance of the long working day evoked the call for that F a l l River convention which was the first link in the chain of events leading to the industrial congress movement. In 1 8 4 5 , petitions for a ten-hours law were presented to the Great and General Court of Massachusetts. But the select committee then appointed reported adversely. 1 4 F o u r similar reports on such petitions between 1 8 5 0 and 1 8 5 5 show labor's persistent concern with the issue. 15 It is significant that places like L y n n and L o w e l l were foci of National Reform as well as of the ten-hours movement. T h i s fact, and the place of land monopoly in 1846, preceded labor's drive for legislation although the latter had been demanded as early as 1841 (Voice of Industry, Dec. 1 1 , 19, 1 8 4 5 ) . The Pittsburgh Daily Commercial Journal announced July 2 1 , 1848, that Allegheny City's workers were striking for enforcement of the ten-hours law. In August, the employers, justifying the closing of the mills until the twelve-hours contract was accepted by the workers, insisted they could not otherwise compete with New England factories (Commons and Sumner, VII, 201, 205) • 14 The report declared the law unnecessary, unfair (for corporationowned plants alone were to be regulated), and destructive of Massachusetts industry, which could not compete with plants in states without restrictive laws (Herald, April 24, 1 8 4 5 ) . The committee's chairman, a last-minute appointee of the Speaker, was connected with a Lowell mill (Ware, Industrial Worker, pp. 1 2 7 - 2 8 ) . In New York, Mike Walsh in 1847 persuaded his fellow Assemblymen to investigate the expediency of regulating the working day of minors and limiting that of adults (Subterranean, Aug. 14, 1 8 4 7 ) . The state senate, in 1854, rejected a bill to make ten hours a legal day's work, prohibit the labor of children under ten and limit to five hours a day the labor of persons between 10 and 16. Parents and guardians were forbidden to evade the law by special contract; a five-dollar fine was to penalize each violation (Tribune, April 7, 1 8 5 4 ) . A ten-hours bill introduced in 1 8 5 s attracted little attention (ibid., Jan. 8, 1 8 5 5 ) . 15

Commons and Sumner, VIII, 82.

NATIONAL REFORM IN POLITICS

87

the arguments of advocates of a shorter working day both show how closely land reform and ten hours were joined in the thinking and efforts of workingmen. 16 T h e attempt to shorten the working day by legislation failed, for such laws as were passed were not effectively enforced. As a main concern of organized labor, the eighthour day won by union action supplanted the ten-hour day achieved by legislation. 17 However, National Reform had profited from the ten-hours movement: its acceptance of labor's program had won socially conscious workers from Fourierism to land reform. 18 T h e fact that many of the ten-hours laws were passed in 1851-53, a period of great National Reform activity, may also be significant. T w o years before the National Reformers began their work, the demand for exemption of the homestead from execution for debt had already been heard in New York. However, it did not receive much attention. But by 1849, homestead exemption was a widespread policy. And Greeley credited its general success to the land reformers who had pushed the issue until the old parties had been 1β

L o w e l l ' s N a t i o n a l R e f o r m e r s questioned candidates in

1 8 4 6 on

their

v i e w s c o n c e r n i n g free p u b l i c l a n d and ten hours. T h e y put an independent ticket into the field against Schouler ( L o w e l l W h i g editor and o f the m i l l - o w n e r s " )

and r e g a r d e d his election as due to

e f f o r t s made b y the c o r p o r a t i o n " ( V o i c e of Industry,

"sycophant

"extraordinary

N o v . 6, 1 3 , 1 8 4 6 ) . A

N a t i o n a l R e f o r m C o n v e n t i o n w i t h representatives f r o m m a n y Massachusetts t o w n s met at Boston in 1 8 4 7 and adopted resolutions f o r l a n d r e f o r m , ten hours and lien l a w s (ibid.,

N o v . 5, 1 9 ,

1847).

In an indignant r e f u t a t i o n of the report of the 1845 select committee an a d v o c a t e of ten hours insisted that the A m e r i c a n w o r k e r w o u l d soon cease to be better o f f than his E n g l i s h f e l l o w (the bad position o f E n g l i s h textile operatives in spite o f a shorter w o r k w e e k had been g i v e n as one a r g u m e n t against a ten-hours l a w )

if land m o n o p o l y

A m e r i c a ( J . Q . A . T h a y e r , Review of the Massachusetts

Legislature,

w e r e a l l o w e d to continue

of the Report

of the Special

p a m p h l e t 1 8 4 5 , PP·

in

Committee

'6-17).

17

Tribune,

D e c . 1, 1 8 5 4 .

18

T h e Associationists r e g a r d e d ten hours as a useless distraction o f w o r k -

ers' attention ( V o i c e of Industry,

J u l y 24, 1 8 4 6 ) .

88

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

forced to take it up. In 1850, the New York legislature passed a limited exemption law which was somewhat extended two years later." Such exemption laws as were passed did not satisfy the land reformers. Nevertheless, they were ready to claim credit even for such halfmeasures since they were convinced that their propaganda had been responsible for the laws that were passed. Whether that be true or not—and its truth is doubtful enough—those who favored homestead exemption laws often followed National Reform reasoning.20 19

Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1842, Vol. VIT, No. 145 > Ν. Y . Sen. Doc., 1841, Vol. I l l , No. 76. The New York Assembly's report of March 7, 1850, found that Vermont, Maine, Iowa, Minnesota, Georgia, Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania all had laws reserving part of a man's land from execution for debt. If these states were without social disorder, New York should be equally safe (Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., Vol. V, No. 1 1 3 , p. 6). The New York law of 1850 exempted a homestead to the value of $500 (later raised to $1,000), if the property were formerly registered as a homestead (Tribune, April 13, 1850; March 3, 1 8 5 2 ) . 20 In 1847, John Pierce supported homestead exemption in the Michigan legislature because man had a natural right to life and a place on the earth (Voice of Industry, April 2, 1847, citing the Detroit Daily Free Press). The Investigator was sure of the ultimate prevalence of the measure despite the unfavorable action of the Vermont senate in 1848; "Nothing is more certain to triumph than that the leading reform of this day is to be the establishment of proper relations between Labor and Property, and those who are now so fearfully alarmed at the idea of exempting a man's Homestead from attachment for debts, may expect to die outright of horror and despair when that Homestead is made inalienable and Land Monopoly abolished entirely" (Investigator, Dec. 13, 1848). In 1849, John Dimmock, proponent of the successful Ohio Homestead Exemption law, advocated the restriction of the public domain to actual settlers "so far as practical." He insisted that, unless labor's equal rights and interests were protected, "the day will come when corporate wealth will seize upon the reins of government, usurp monarchical power and forever crush the power and sovereignty of the people" (Investigator, March 28, 1849). Once "agrarian," exemption had become "philanthropy" (ibid., April 18, 1849, citing the Philadelphia Times and Keystone). Homestead exemption was called "This important first installment of Land Reform" (Chronotyfe, Feb. 8, 1849). In 1850, the Investigator announced the New

NATIONAL R E F O R M IN POLITICS

89

T h e proposition to limit the amount of land an individual might own was as vital to National Reform as ten hours, homestead exemption or even free public land itself. 21 And, in spite of its far-reaching implications, limitation received considerable attention from the legislatures of N e w York and Wisconsin. Several times, the N e w York State Assembly heard favorable reports on memorials for limitation, exemption and freedom of the public lands, for the three were usually linked. In 1 8 4 4 , no candidate for the N e w York legislature would even answer the land reformers' questions, but, in 1846, four candidates endorsed their program. 22 B y 1 8 4 7 , the majority report of a special assembly committee on land-reform petitions recommended limitation. Declaring public land the common York Homestead Exemption law as "Great! Good! Glorious!" (April 17, i8jo). National Reform took credit for the success of homestead exemption even though none of the laws was satisfactory because none performed "the far more essential duty of providing homes for those who have them not. . . . The National Reform measure, let it not be forgotten, is to provide for Homestead Exemption and Land Limitation "by one act, so that the landless may not, by their destitution, be compelled to trust their labor and property to the exempted land-holders, and so that in one generation, all may have homes to be exempted" (Spirit of the Age, March 2, 1850, citing Young America). Commenting on land reform propaganda, another observer found that several states had proceeded to exemption: "This is as far as the land reformers have got; but they have made strong efforts to have the national domain—the wild lands of the West—given free of cost to actual settlers. But it will all be swallowed up in railroad grants and soldiers' bounties" ( T . L. Nichols, Forty Years of American Life, II, 2 4 - 1 5 ) . 21 Evans himself would have preferred public land at a high price, with limitation, to cheap or even free land without it {Adv. 2, June 8, 1844). 22 In 1845, the National Reformers had run Bovay for the assembly and an Anti-Renter for the senate and had not elected either (Herald, Oct. 3 1 , 1845). T w o years later, the Tribune's Albany correspondent pointed out that while the Democrats endorsed by the land reformers had done nothing to further their program, the approved Whigs had at least introduced a homestead-exemption measure (April 1 3 , 1 8 4 7 ) .

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN P O L I T I C S property of all the people, the committee instructed the N e w Y o r k congressional delegation to work for laws ending further sale of public land and providing for its allotment in limited quantities to actual settlers. 23 T h e following year, a select committee on these resolutions of instruction and on the renewed petitions for land limitation declared the earth God's gift to man. Future legislation should prevent the accumulations of large areas by individuals and, as soon as possible, should limit holdings of arable land to the amount a man could himself cultivate. Congressional action similar to that requested in the 1 8 4 7 report was also demanded. 24 In 1 8 5 1 , the assembly's committee on public lands attacked land monopoly and, denying that the proposal was "Fourieristic," recommended limitation, though without fixing a maximum area. T h e committee also instructed N e w York's congressmen to work for a law providing for the conveyance of the public domain in limited quantities to such persons as would actually cultivate and occupy it for a term of years. 25 23 Under the existing system of land monopoly the capitalist had "fearful power" over workers whose "ruinous competition" for jobs was being felt even in unsettled regions. Wages were falling while rents were rising, therefore it was necessary to exempt the homestead from alienation for debt, limit holdings in the state to 160 acres and end traffic in the public domain by reserving it for actual settlers. This would provide for the industrious poor whose jobs would be taken by the unemployed. No interference with existing arrangements was contemplated but "no one now landless shall become a monopolist and no monopolist shall increase his monopoly" (Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1 8 4 7 ; Vol. VII, No. 3 0 1 , pp. 4-5, 6-7; cf. Radical, I, j ) .

The minority report of Ansel Bascom evaded limitation, favored exemption, and endorsed Federal laws prohibiting the purchase or holding of more than 340 acres of the public domain (ibid., Vol. VI, No. 233, p. 2 ) . 24 Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1848, Vol. I l l , No. 78, pp. 2-3, 4-5. The committee declared the existing social system wrong because it contradicted the Creator's "obvious intention" to make His children happy. 25 Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1 8 5 1 , Vol. IV, No. 140, pp. 1-2, 4. This committee had before it the Industrial Congress's petition for limitation and the State

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS Except for evasiveness on details, Evans himself might have written these reports. T h e reasoning, the remedies and the hopes are his, expressed almost in his words. 2 * L a n d limitation went no further than these legislative reports in N e w Y o r k but for such a measure to go even so far seems extraordinary enough. Perhaps its reception points toward that alliance with Anti-Rent which the land reformers tried so hard to conclude. T h e use of similar phrases does not prove the existence of a political agreement between the two movements but the coincidence is suggestive. M o r e significant is the personnel of the committees making these reports. 27 Further, the alliance that Senate's resolution recommending such conveyance of land under regulation and restriction. 24 An appendix to the 1851 report even used Evans's list of "authorities" in which Blackstone, Black Hawk, Jefferson, Carlyle, Moses, Moses Jaques, Jackson, W. H. Charming, Spence, Lafayette, Godwin, Cobbett, Η. B. Stanton, Gerrit Smith, Evans himself and his old foe, Skidmore, all spoke for land limitation. 27 Few members of these committees were lawyers. T w o of the three members of the 1847 committee may be called land reformers: J . C. Allaben of Delaware county had attended the 1845 National Reform Convention as spokesman for Anti-Rent; J . C. Ailing was active in land reform circles and his presence was one of the "attractions" at the 1847 National Reform ball (Voice of Industry, Jan. 8, 1 8 4 7 ; Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1847, Vol. I, No. 7 ) . Andrew White wrote that Dr. Allaben was "sturdily on the side of good legislation" (Autobiography, I, 1 1 2 ) . Three of the 1848 committee's five members were from Anti-Rent counties, Delaware, Columbia, and Greene. One was from Madison, which later sent Gerrit Smith to Congress as a land reformer, and the fifth was a "mechanic," J . C. Bowie of New York. Four members of the committee of 1851 were "farmers," one was from an Anti-Rent county, Niagara (Ν. Y . Ass. Doc., 1848, Vol. I, No. 78; ibid., 1 8 5 1 , Vol. I, No. 84). Amid regular land-reform arguments in the 1847 report appeared: "There is no incident of land monopoly so productive of intemperance, pauperism and crime as that of rent." The 1848 report stressed the evils that had followed American acceptance of precedents borrowed from governments based on fraud and violence. The emphasis on arable land also may reflect Anti-Rent opinion. Unlimited ownership of the soil, said the 1851 report, lets the few "reign without title" over the interests of the many.

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS seems adumbrated in the language of these reports and in the probable sympathies of their makers was not only striven for but believed to exist. The conservative press denounced Greeley and the land reformers as responsible for Anti-Rent outrages. In congressional debate on Homestead, Sutherland, a New York representative, declared that the alliance did exist and had been used politically. Whether such an alliance was responsible, or whether the strength of the petitions' arguments was the propulsive force is uncertain} at any event, these three reports of the New York State Assembly did recommend the landreform program: limitation, homestead exemption, and freedom of the public lands to the actual settler. Their arguments and phrasing would have satisfied Evans himself. Though they produced no legislation, these reports were cited as precedents by Wisconsin land reformers trying to enact a land limitation law for their state.28 And the resolutions of instruction may have encouraged Seward to support Homestead in a hostile Senate. Ohio and Illinois had been among the first Western states to show interest in National Reform but it was Wisconsin that was most receptive to the program.29 In the fall of 1848, land reformers of this state organized a committee to pledge candidates to ten hours, freedom of the state's public land, and land limitation.30 So effective was 28

J . G. Gregory, "Land Limitation in Wisconsin," p. m . Ohio had some of the earliest National Reform auxiliaries. Evans thought a bill to grant its unsold public land to settlers a concession to the spirit of land reform (Voice of Industry, Jan. 7, 1848, citing Young America). 80 Wisconsin's land reformers had the support of two Milwaukee papers, the Free Democrat and the Commercial Advertiser (Gregory, of. cit., p. 9 2 ) . In 1848, " A . C . E . " complained, that by adopting land-reform principles, the old parties were killing the movement in Wisconsin (Voice of Industry, J u l y 27, 1 8 4 8 ) . Land reform was sufficiently strong in Wisconsin to cause the incorpora29

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS their work that the Wisconsin State Assembly, in 1 8 5 1 , referred the governor's message on limitation to a committee whose chairman was an active land reformer. T h e committee approved limitation and presented a bill limiting future holdings to 3 2 0 acres or two one-acre city or village lots. 31 Clamor from Milwaukee speculators and business interests soon disturbed the bill's progress and as it passed on to its third reading, the "land reformers" who had pledged their votes fell away. 82 Limitation was then referred to the attorney general who pronounced it unconstitutional. T h e judiciary committee then reported adversely and the bill failed, 2 7 to 3 7 , where it had once succeeded, 4 3 to 15. 3 3 This brief moment of success in the Wisconsin State A s tion into the proposed constitution of 1846 of a provision for homestead exemption; but this, along with a prohibition of banks of issue and permission for married women to hold property independently of their husbands, provoked the rejection of the constitution by the voters (F. Baker, "Elective Franchise in Wisconsin," p. 1 1 9 ; Μ. M. Strong, History of the Territory of Wisconsin, p. 557). 81 The report, which justified limitation on the ground of natural rights, stressed the labor argument: "The workingmen, born without an inheritance of land or money, are thrown into an over-crowded market for labor, into competition with their brethren, and under the necessity of selling their labor or mechanical skill for a rate of wages barely adequate to maintain life." Under the measure, present estates were not to be disturbed but heirs were required to make bona-fide sales of any surplus holdings. Punishment for violation was provided: lots held over the maximum would be subject to progressive taxation (Gregory, op. cit., p. n o ; he reprints the report in full). 32 The Milwaukee Daily Sentinel called the bill an "incipient crusade against the rights of property." It would check enterprise, spoil the sale value of land, and be generally pernicious, all to no good purpose, for the United States was socially perfect and its land laws needed no revision (Commons and Sumner, VIII, 57-58). T o counter such opposition, the friends of limitation held a meeting in support of the bill. Van Amringe, specially invited to be the speaker, stressed the need for limitation in a new state whose sound development was hindered by speculation (Gregory, of. cit., pp. 96, 97-98). 83 Gregory, of. cit., pp. 103, 106, 1 1 2 .

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sembly on February 6, 1851, was the dosest that land limitation ever came to enactment. Nevertheless, National Reform influence in Wisconsin did not end with the failure of the measure. Along with numerous memorials for land reform, Wisconsin voters sent Charles Durkee to the House and Henry Dodge and I. P. Walker to the Senate: all three men favored laws restricting the public domain to the actual settler. Walker, indeed, became land reform's leading advocate in the Upper House and his was the plan favored by National Reformers. Hence, though unsuccessful in its legislative efforts, land reform may have had some degree of influence on Wisconsin's choice of congressmen. T h e National Reformers were most energetic in their efforts to bring pressure on legislators and legislatures, but they were also anxious to elect to executive office men favoring land reform. Presidential candidates could not escape their questioning. In 1844, Evans opposed Clay as a " T o r y , " for Clay was the champion of a national bank, the assumption of defaulted state debts by the Federal government, and the distribution among the states of the proceeds from the sale of public lands. A lawyer, a slaveholder, and a landowner, Polk was himself no better. But the Democrats were more favorable to Dorr than were the Whigs and, while Polk was merely indifferent to the public-lands problem, Clay's stand on preemption showed positive hostility to land reform. 84 In 1848, National Reform was equally active and at 34 Adv. 2, M a y i r , June 8, Sept. 14, 1844. (One of Clay's correspondents went so far as to attribute Clay's defeat to "a motley party of Dorrites and Agrarians, Mormons and Repudiators, the voters of Plaquemine and the outlaws of the Empire Club," Henry Clay, Works, edited by Calvin Colton, V, 526, J. E. Thompson to Clay, A p r i l 8, 1845. T h e "agrarians" are the land reformers.)

NATIONAL R E F O R M IN POLITICS that time it was shown more regard by campaigners than in 1 8 4 4 when only Joseph Smith, the Mormon candidate, answered its queries. Van Buren, who had ignored its questions in 1 8 4 4 , was more gracious now. 3 5 Dissatisfied with the land plank of the Free Soil Party, Rochester's National Reformers again questioned Van Buren

who

finally answered but demanded that his reply be kept secret. 38 Still unsatisfied, the land reformers joined the Liberty League's convention at Canastota, N e w York, in September, 1 8 4 8 . T h e call for this convention had acknowledged the "right of each individual to occupy a portion of the earth's surface," and endorsed limitation, exemption, and free land. L a n d reformers Barr, Ingalls, and Van Amringe were active at the Canastota convention which named a full national ticket headed by Gerrit Smith. T h e vote indicated that the combination of radical antislavery and land reform had some small charm for certain voters in N e w Y o r k and Ohio. 3 7 T h e land reformers began formulating their policy for ss Van Buren told the Philadelphia Industrial Congress that his ten-hours order of 1835 was ample proof of his sympathy for labor (Tribune, Aug. 3, 1848; cf. Adv. 2, June 22, 1 8 4 4 ) . 30 Rochester National Reformers to Van Buren, J u l y 28, 1 8 4 8 ; Van Buren to same, Aug. 22, 1848 (Van Buren MSS, Vol. 5 6 ) . He refused to pledge himself against traffic in the public lands and for their freedom to actual settlers, because the national credit must not be jeopardized and the public lands were security for the public debt. However, he did admit that the country had a greater interest in settling the public domain than in getting the maximum revenue from it (ibid., Aug. 24, 1848; this letter repeats the arguments of the J u l y letter to the Industrial Congress which was printed as campaign material in the Utica, Ν. Y . , Republic). 31 Tribune, Nov. 30, 1848. T h e call for the Canastota convention was printed in the Voice of Industry ( M a y 2 1 , 1847, citing the Albany Patriot). The Voice had appealed to "Conscience Whigs" and "Liberty men" to " g o for the real rights of men" so that land reformers might work with them. It bade workers beware of Van Buren in spite of the Boston Free Soilers' choice of John Turner, a " w o r k y , " as substitute delegate to the Buffalo Convention (June I J , 19, J u l y 6, 27, 1 8 4 8 ) .

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the 1852 campaign in August and, after the defeat of an effort for the support of H a l e and the Free Democrats, they formally endorsed both Scott and the W h i g State ticket. 38 However, their approval of Scott did not prevent a Democratic victory in 1852. Thereafter, National Reform did not participate actively in presidential elections. In addition to these efforts to influence elections and candidates, the land reformers endeavored to influence political parties as such. Land reformers were advised to attend primary meetings in order to secure the selection of candidates favorable to their program. In June, 1845, the National Reformers appealed to N e w Y o r k City's Democratic general committee for support of free land. T h e y were disregarded then, but the following year a regular Democratic committee protested against any disposal of the public domain other than limited grants to actual settlers. 39 As a party, however, the W h i g s of N e w Y o r k State were more responsive than her regular Democrats: in 1848, Governor Y o u n g endorsed reservation of the public domain for actual settlers ·, in 1852, the W h i g state committee approved freedom of the public lands. 40 38 Weekly Tribune, Oct. 23, 1852. A s early as 1851, Greeley had insisted that there was no chance of Isaac P. Walker's receiving the Democratic nomination although he was the land reformers' favorite ( T r i b u n e , A p r i l 28, June 4, 1 8 5 1 ) . In August, the Tribune even printed a letter, supposedly to an Iowa politician, which declared that land-reform resolutions must be quashed in state Democratic conventions lest W a l k e r win the presidential nomination ( A u g . 23, 1 8 5 1 ) .

A t the land-reformers' meeting of August, 1852, Evans declared Scott preferable to Pierce but an independent nomination better than endorsement of the W h i g General. D e v y r , attacking all politicians, thought an endorsement of the Whigs would teach the Democrats a necessary lesson in respect for popular demands (Herald, Aug. 18, 19, 1852; Tribune, A u g . 28, 1 8 5 2 ) . 39 Young America, June 14, 1845. In 1846, both parties of Washtenaw Co., Michigan, were bidding for land-reform support (Tribune, Oct. 12, 1846). 40 Weekly Tribune, Oct. 23, 1852. Governor Young's message to the

NATIONAL REFORM IN POLITICS Neither Whigs nor Democrats paid much attention to the public-lands problem in their presidential platforms. The Whigs did drop Distribution after 1844, but they substituted no other land policy for it. The Democrats, however, continued to flog the dead horse of Distribution even after Homestead had shown its political drawing power. 41 The period between 1848 and i860 was one of political flux; old parties were breaking up and the new ones were ready to use the public domain as a bait for votes. First of the new groups to make itself conspicuous was the Free Soil Party of 1848. Amid the dominant "Barnburner" element at its Buffalo convention were at least two National Reformers, Waterman and Frisbie. The convention even listened to the latter speak on the evils of land speculation in the West. 42 In its advocacy of cheap postage, economical administration and popular election of all officers, the Buffalo platform expressed that thoroughly Jacksonian Democracy with which National Reformers symNew York legislature might have been prompted by the Anti-Rent support given him in the 1846 election; if that were so, it would be another bit of evidence of the cooperation between Anti-Rent and National Reform {Tribune, Jan. 5, 1848). 41 The Whig land plank is given in Τ . H. McKee, National Conventions and Platforms of All Political Parties, 1789-1900, pp. 80, 94; for the Democratic platform, see pp. 76, 89, 108, n o . 42 Williamsburg Daily Gazette, Aug. j , 1848. The "Barnburners" endorsed the Wilmot Proviso and refused to be deprived of their rights at Democratic national conventions by the other faction. So far as is ascertainable, their incendiarism was intellectual, not pyromaniac (H. D. A. Donovan, Barnburners, pp. 88-89). The New York City Barnburners favored freedom of the public lands and opposed "monopoly of them by capitalists holding them in large masses and cultivating them by slaves bought and sold with the land" (Voice of Industry, July 27, 1848). The Barnburner state convention at Utica had declared against monopoly of the public domain by speculators (Chronotyfe, Feb. 2 i , 1848).

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN P O L I T I C S pathized. Although the Free Soilers did not accept the National Reform program, they were more favorable to land reform than the other parties, which ignored it entirely. 43 After Van Buren's defeat in 1848, the "Barnburners" tended to return to the "regular" Democracy. T h e Free Soil organization, with that influence removed, was left open to pressure either from the Whigs or from less orthodox sources. In 1849, antislavery men and land reformers joined forces in Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Massachusetts.44 T h e dissolution and re-formation of parties continued, and by 1850 the Tribune's Harrisburg correspondent reported that Pennsylvania would soon 43

T h e F r e e Soil land p l a n k r e a d : " T h a t the free g r a n t to actual

settlers

in consideration of the expenses they incur in making· settlements in the w i l derness, w h i c h are usually f u l l y equal to their actual cost, and of the public benefits resulting t h e r e f r o m , of reasonable portions of the public lands, under suitable limitation, is a wise and just measure of public p o l i c y w h i c h w i l l p r o m o t e in v a r i o u s w a y s , the interests of a l l the States of this U n i o n ; and w e therefore recommend it to the f a v o r a b l e consideration of the A m e r i c a n p e o p l e . " ( E . S t a n w o o d , History Van

Buren's

letter accepting

of Presidential the

Buffalo

Elections, nomination

pp. 1 7 3 , was

even

175). more

cautious on the public lands. T h e prime interest of the United States in its public d o m a i n w a s not revenue but settlement; liberal facilities f o r acquiri n g small f a r m s should be p r o v i d e d , w h i l e the a c c u m u l a t i o n of l a r g e estates f r o m the public domain w a s to be discouraged. B u t , as the lands

were

p l e d g e d as security f o r the public loan of the previous y e a r a n y legislation must be conditioned b y that f a c t ( V a n Buren M S S , V o l . 56, d r a f t letter o f a c c e p t a n c e ) . T h e inclusion of a free-land lyric in the c a m p a i g n songbook s h o w e d the F r e e Soilers' desire f o r l a n d r e f o r m votes (see A p p e n d i x 44

III).

In Wisconsin, D e m o c r a t s and F r e e Soilers united to oppose the exten-

sion of s l a v e r y and to endorse free public land, homestead exemption and land limitation ( T r i b u n e , M a y 1, 1 8 4 9 ) . In M i c h i g a n , the Free D e m o c r a c y demanded that the public lands be " g r a t u i t o u s l y distributed in limited quantities to a c t u a l settlers and to them o n l y . " A n Indiana district

convention

o f w h i c h S c h u y l e r C o l f a x w a s secretary f o u n d freedom of the public lands compatible w i t h W h i g o r t h o d o x y (ibid.,

J u l y 10, 1 8 4 9 ) . A F r e e Soil con-

vention at W o r c e s t e r , Mass., at w h i c h the o l d W o r k i n g m e n ' s P a r t y

was

represented, demanded the " f r e e g r a n t to actual settlers of reasonable portions o f the public l a n d s " ( S p i r i t of the Age,

M a y 1, 1 8 4 9 ) .

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS have a new party whose platform would combine antislavery, homestead exemption, and freedom of the public domain.45 B y the next presidential election year, the Free Soilers of Massachusetts were reaffirming their endorsement of free land. A t the same time, Pittsburgh's Whigs were annoying the Herald·, they had approved Homestead "as tending to develope [sic] the resources of the country and prevent future speculation by land jobbers." 48 Of the new national parties, the Free Democracy was the most responsive to land reform. 47 It invited the New York City Industrial Congress to send delegates to its Pittsburgh convention of August, 1 8 5 2 . It heard National 45

Tribune, Oct. 30, 1850. Said the Herald, "This is a great country where every man is to be given a farm, if he will have it" (June 3, 1 8 5 2 ) . The Massachusetts resolve declared: "the public domain of the United States should be held as a trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted in limited quantities, without charge, to actual settlers" (Tribune, July 7, 1 8 5 2 ) . In 1 8 5 1 , a county Democratic convention at Rensselaer, Ν. Y . , had declared: "That Recognition of Man's Natural and Inalienable Right to the Soil is a cherished principle of American Democracy; and in our opinion, the Public Domain ought to be, by an Act of Congress, reserved for the free and exclusive use of Actual Settlers, in limited quantities, only at its actual cost to the General Government, thereby preventing rich Capitalists and greedy speculators from buying up these lands in large quantities, and thereby creating those very Patrooneries which have been so inimical to the true interests of the State, and a curse to the whole agricultural community" (Weekly Tribune, Oct. 28, 1 8 5 1 ) . 47 The Liberty Party also declared itself in favor of the government's protecting the citizen from land monopoly (Herald, June 4, 1 8 5 2 ) . Land reform, urged upon antislavery men by the National Reformers, was accepted by the Cleveland convention of the Friends of Freedom, which added free land, internal improvements and the abolition of the army and navy to antislavery's political program (Tribune, Oct. 2, 1 8 5 1 ; cf. Investigator, Sept. 20, 1 8 4 8 ) . 46

Though one of the most spectacular political successes of this period of flux was made by the Native Americans, they took no stand on the public domain, except in the case of some local groups in the period of the party's decline.

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NATIONAL REFORM IN POLITICS

Reform presented by delegates William F . Young and Gerrit Smith whose minority report on platform emphasized the "great and good" cause of land reform; the platform actually adopted acknowledged the natural right to the soil and demanded reservation of the public domain for the landless actual settler. In the balloting for candidates at the Pittsburgh convention, Evans even received three votes for the vice-presidency.48 Although the platform of the Free Democracy was acceptable, the National Reformers refused to endorse its ticket. The motive for this action seems to have been a desire to see the Democrats defeated, but Greeley's influence may also have contributed to evoking the land reformers' pro-Whig manifesto of 1852. 49 Scott's defeat not only blighted Whig hopes of carrying another presidential election by means of a military reputation but also showed the weakness of the National Reformers. However, the size of the vote for the Free 48 Williamsburg Daily Gazette, July 14, 1 8 5 2 ; Tribune, Aug·. 12, 13, 1852. Smith received three votes as presidential nominee; both his and Evans's votes were from New York delegates. The Eleventh and Twelfth resolutions read: " T h a t all men have a natural right to a portion of the soil; and that as the use of the soil is indispensable to life, the right of all men to the soil is as sacred as their right of life itself. That the public lands of the United States belong to the people and should not be sold to individuals, nor granted to corporations, but should be held as a sacred trust for the benefit of the people, and should be granted in limited quantities, free of cost, to landless settlers" (McKee, of. cit.,

P· 7 7 ) . 49 National Reformers feared lest a large vote for the Free Democrats ensure Pierce's victory. William West, reporting the Pittsburgh proceedings to the New York City Industrial Congress, declared the platform good but the candidate unsatisfactory; Hale was best known as an antislavery man, and the National Reformers, though opposed to slavery, were not interested in abolition. Scott, backed by such a supporter of Homestead as Seward, was preferable to Hale (Herald, Aug. 19, 1 8 5 2 ) .

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

IOi

Democracy gave Gerrit Smith hope for land reform; he was himself returned to Congress from Madison and Otsego counties, the latter long a center of National Reform in rural New York. 80 After the election of 1852, the Free Democrats receded as a party before the advance of the Republicans. A l though the new party took rather a cautious stand on the public domain, land reform had some influence on it. Greeley had been a convinced, if compromising, land reformer since 1846. The man credited with organizing and first naming the party was National Reformer Alvan E . Bovay who had left New York for Ripon, Wisconsin, in 1850. Finding the local Whig Party moribund, Bovay formed that Anti-Nebraska coalition of Whigs, dissident Democrats and Free Soilers which was the germ of separate Republican organization.61 The action of early state Republican conventions is further indication of the interest the public domain held for the new party. In 1854, Vermont's convention declared in favor of free grants to actual settlers and Ohio's Republicans demanded the soil of Kansas and Nebraska for "free homes for free men." As they went over to the new party, Pennsylvania's Whigs inscribed on their banners, "Free Men, Free Labor and Free Land." The fact that the issue did not appear in the 1854 program of the Republicans of New York, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, or Indiana does not necessarily indicate that these groups op10 Julian Papers, Smith to Julian, Peterboro, Nov. 18, 1852 (among the unbound papers). In a local election in 1844, Otsego gave the land reformers one of their infrequent political victories (Adv. 2, June 1, 1844). 51 Although challenged in favor of Michigan and Medill, Bovay's influence is generally recognized (I. W. Near, "Native of Jefferson County," p. 99; F. R. Flower, History of the Republican Party, pp. 152-53; A. W. Crandall, Early History of the Republican Party, pp. 20, 2 1 ; F. W. Curtis, History of the Republican Party, I, 174, 176, 1 7 8 ) .

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NATIONAL REFORM IN POLITICS

p o s e d o r w e r e i n d i f f e r e n t to f r e e l a n d , f o r e l e m e n t s of the p a r t y in the three latter states h a d a l r e a d y e n d o r s e d f r e e land and some N e w

Y o r k R e p u b l i c a n s w e r e to

follow

their e x a m p l e s h o r t l y . 6 2 N e v e r t h e l e s s , the R e p u b l i c a n national p l a t f o r m of

1856

n o t o n l y i g n o r e d H o m e s t e a d but e v e n a p p r o v e d g o v e r n m e n t a i d to a P a c i f i c R a i l r o a d , an abomination to a l l N a tional R e f o r m e r s . 5 3 G r e e l e y h a d little confidence in the v o t e - g e t t i n g p o w e r of f r e e land. 6 4 T h e R e p u b l i c a n s

ap-

p e a l e d to w o r k e r s at this election not b y i n v o k i n g H o m e stead but b y attacking B u c h a n a n ' s a l l e g e d a d v o c a c y of a ten-cent d a i l y w a g e a n d b y

f r e q u e n t citation of

e a t e r " slurs on the " m u d - s i l l s of society.' 82

,B6

"fire-

I n a letter to

Flower, of. cit., pp. 1 9 1 , 201, 204. In 1855, New York City Republicans endorsed donations of small quantities of the public domain to actual settlers (Tribune, Aug. 17, 1 8 5 5 ) . In 1856, Lewis Ryckman, Associationist and National Reformer, was Republican candidate for Congress from the Fourth New York District (ibid., Oct. 25, 1856). 53 Stanwood, of. cit., p. 207. Land grants to build a Pacific Railroad would promote land monopoly {Young America, Jan. 28, 1845). An effort of Asa Whitney, pioneer promoter of such a plan, to address a meeting in New York City in 1847, was turned into "a bear garden tumult by a packed party of Agrarians, National Reformers, Fourierists, etc. . . . who seem to think the public lands of the United States have no other legitimate use or purpose than to be distributed without money or price among the landless of the Universe who may come here to clutch a portion of the plunder." The mayor, and divers other worthies at the meeting, left hurriedly by the back door while Ryckman, L. B. Shepherd and John Commerford took over the meeting for National Reform (Ε. V. Smalley, History of the Vorthern Pacific Railroad, p. 59, citing the Courier and Enquirer). In 1848, petitioners in Ceresco, Wis., and Wheeling, Va., protested against the grant to Whitney. In National Reform phrases, they opposed "promoting speculation in the public lands by grants to railroad builders" (HR Μ SS., referred to CPL, 1848). 64 Greeley wrote, in answer to Julian's request for a leaflet on Homestead, " I do not think it advisable to print one expressly on the land issue; all the earnest Land Reformers will vote with us anyhow. I hardly think we could now gain any other on that issue" (Julian Papers, Greeley to Julian, Ν. Y., Oct. 27, 1856). " Buchanan, in discussion of the Subtreasury, had advocated a stable

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN POLITICS

103

a N e w York political committee, however, Fremont devoted space to free public land as an issue of particular interest to the Northern worker.86 Late in 1 8 5 9 , Devyr gave Andrew Johnson the benefit of his views on the relation of political parties to land reform. Nearly all the organizers of the National Reform Association were old-line Jacksonian Democrats, he said, but current measures had driven thousands of such voters away from the Democratic Party. In 1848, "those Impostors at Buffalo" had stolen the land reformers' very name. Devyr insisted that the Democrats had been and would be punished for opposing Homestead. They were allowing the "trivial question" of whether a slave might work on one side of an "imaginary line" to swallow public interest and rob them of states like New York. Even now, at the eleventh hour, if the Democrats would take up "this redeeming law" and oppose to the narrow principle of the Republicans "this great primary principle of land currency as giving· the worker higher real if lower nominal wages ( C r a n dall, o f . cit., p. 2 1 6 ) . Four pages of the Republican Scrap-Book of 1856 are given to Southern papers' and politicians' sneers at the Northern worker (pp. 5 1 - 5 4 ) . Of the seventy-three lyrics in the Republican Campaign Songster of 1856, some nine appeal to workers, mostly on the free-land issue (pp. 46» 57» 67). 58 T h e worker, wrote Fremont, must look to the Republican P a r t y and the Constitution f o r help against the class that "by a monopoly of the soil and of slave labor to till it" might in time reduce him to the extremity of w o r k i n g on like terms with slaves. T h e n , free men of both sections would learn "that the power of the General Government over the public lands may be beneficially exerted to advance their interests and secure their independence. T h e y will not, therefore, fail to maintain that authority in the government essential to liberty." Workers should support those who have more than once shown "the purpose of disposing of the public lands in such a way as would make every settler upon them a freeholder" ( R e publican Scrap-Book, p. 1 9 ) . T h e very phrase "monopoly of the soil" is typically National Reform.

I04

N A T I O N A L R E F O R M IN P O L I T I C S

reform," enough free states could be carried on Homestead to give the party the presidency in i860. John Commerford made the same appraisal of the political situation and gave the South and the Democrats similar advice. " I know," he wrote Johnson, "that the Republicans attribute their success to other issues than the advocacy of the distribution of the land among the people, but I am satisfied that they are mistaken." The masses were not interested in slavery but in the means by which they might "realize permanent happiness by obtaining the guarantee of future and enduring industry." Always a Democrat, Commerford feared he must vote Republican at the coming election. If he did, "like thousands of others," it would be because of the land question." The Democrats did not heed such advice, for not even the Douglas wing of the party had a good word for Homestead in its i860 platform. But the Republicans were more attentive to the issue. On the third day of their Chicago convention they heard, and tabled, a letter asking them to oppose further traffic in the public domain and to endorse freedom of the public lands. 58 Recalling the pro" "Ours was the 'Freesoil' Party up till that time. They deceived and drew from us nineteen-twentieths of our men," Devyr complained. He concluded by offering the Democrats the hope that by enlisting for free land the enthusiasm that "now lies hopeless and idle" they might still combat "this nigger delusion. . . . For, the Buffalo men, and their successors, the Republicans, In February, 1854, Smith repeated some resolutions which had been declared insulting to the House when he read them in January: "Whereas, all the members of the human family, notwithstanding all contrary enactments, have at all times, and under all circumstances, as equal a right to the soil as to the light and air, because as equal a natural need of one as of the other: And whereas, this invariably equal right to the soil leaves no room to buy or sell, or give it away" Congress should pass no law implying it had a right to dispose of the public domain. It was Government's duty to regulate the occupation of land on the principle that "the right of all persons to the soil—to the great source of human subsistence—is as equal, as invariable and as sacred as the right to life itself." This duty would not be fulfilled until Government made "essential to the validity of every claim to land both the fact that it is actually possessed, and the fact that it does not exceed in quantity the maximum which it is the duty of Government to prescribe." Undemocratic and anti-Christian, land monopoly, "that engine of evil," destroyed those "clear, certain, esesntial natural rights which it is the province of Government to protect at all hazards and irrespective of all conscquences" (Cong. Globe, 33rd Cong., 2nd Sess., HR, App., p. 207 note). Sapp of Ohio had learned a like lesson: God designed the soil for man and every human being had an "inalienable right to a reasonable share and a proportionate part of it, upon which to obtain a subsistence." The admitted right to life necessarily implied an "equal right to the enjoyment and use of those means of living without which life would be insupportable except through the charity and mercy of the monopolizing landholder." It was the Government's duty to put the public land within the reach of all citizens. Let the "curse of land monopoly continue, and you thoroughly rivet the chains of slavery upon the honest, laboring poor" (ibid., App., p. 1 7 8 ) .

164

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

tion. In February and March, 1854, Greeley brought forward the labor argument again. Were public lands made free to actual settlers, "earth's landless millions" would be "orphans and mendicants" no longer 5 men could work for wages "relieved from the degrading terror of being turned adrift to starve." Enough workers would leave the cities, were Homestead the law, to lessen the pressure on the urban labor market. Strikes would become unnecessary: if wages fell or employment slackened, the West would be open to the enterprizing. But, "all the gainful arts whereby the few amass riches at the expense of the many" would be brought against the bill in the Senate. The House bill, albeit a half-measure, was better than nothing; to be satisfactory, a Homestead bill must not only make free grants but "refuse to sell or convey more than a section to anybody at any price."39 T h e Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger told how the Nebraska bill and the CobbHunter Graduation measure were endangering Homestead. Favoring the "true policy of preventing speculation by granting the lands only in limited quantities and to actual settlers," "Observer" thought that House action on Nebraska might clear the way for Homestead in the Senate. Even when the latter passed a rival measure, the Ledger was not discouraged, for the Senate's action showed that popular demand could change inflexible resistance into partial acquiescence.40 89 Tribune, Feb. 18, March 7, 13, 1854. The labor argument was repeated in June (June 21, 1854). In July, 1853, the Weekly Tribune had pointed out the benefits to industry: markets would be enlarged and the loss of land revenue would necessitate protection (July 30, 1853). 40 Public Ledger, May 17, 18, 18J4. "Observer" did not fear a veto on the lines of Pierce' action on the Indigent Insane bill since Homestead did not give land away for charity but for an equivalent, increased value (July 24, 1854). Miss Dix's biographer found that the bill to grant public

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862

165

The opposition press continued to fight Homestead. The time had come, said the Philadelphia North American> for Congress to turn its attention to other matters than the squandering of the public domain. The rapid maturing of infant industry would soon render the tariff unproductive and make the land revenue necessary to the government.41 The New York Herald wondered why none of the "members from Buncombe" had proposed clearing and stocking the farms they wanted to grant free. The National Intelligencer appealed to the Senate to decide whether "the rich heritage of the public domain shall be squandered or not," and asked whether the people would "quietly submit to have money paid out of the Treasury that farms might be given away." 42 "The people" seemed obtuse to the fine points of political ethics but the deadlock between the House and Senate bills prevented that obtuseness from affecting the public lands at this session. Representative Branch of North Carolina pronounced Homestead "a most gigantic scheme of confiscation and agrarianism" which gave aid and comfort to all the dangerous radicals in the land. When the large landholders of the North saw their laborers leave them for independence in the West, they would appreciate the merits of slavery and regret their "cruel and merciless" policy of favoring the West over the South.43 Thus land for supporting insane asylums in the old as well as the new states had been hindered both by speculators and by the "agrarian war-cry which had been raised in the Eastern States" ( F . T i f f a n y , Life of Dorothea Lynd'* Dix, p. 1 7 5 ) . The Cobb-Hunter Graduation bill provided for a considerable reduction in the price of public land on a sliding scale over a period of years, but it did not make the public domain free to the actual settler. 41 North American, April 3, M a y 1 2 , 1854. 42 Herald, March 7, 1 8 5 4 ; National Intelligencer, March 7, 8, 1 8 J 4 . " Said Branch: "This bill beaming with all the light of modern phi·

166

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862

a Southern speaker paid tribute to the idea of the relation to free land of labor supply and wage level. The Senate of the Thirty-fourth Congress accepted adverse reports from its Committee on Public Lands on petitions, originating in New York City, Brooklyn, and other towns, which asked free land for the landless, the end of sales of public land, and the enactment of Homestead. 44 All losophy, is the first step, I suppose, towards introducing communism and socialism and the thousand other crude ideas of social reform which are constantly rising- in bubbles, to burst on the surface, from the very bottoms of the cesspools of agitation, which lie about the low places in society, and is to inaugurate the 'Vote-Yourself-a-Farm' school of political economy." Branch tried to join Agrarianism with Abolition in his attack on Homestead as he read a circular from Burlington, Vt., which declared that all men were entitled to a portion of the earth. Land monopoly and slavery were twin evils and to the former was chargeable most of the wrongs for which the latter was responsible, with the balance of wrong against land monopoly since the "subjects of it must either beg, steal or starve. . . . We will seek its abolishment, by procuring Legislative enactment to the effect that public land shall be made free in limited quantities to actual settlers, and the quantity of land to be obtained by any one individual hereafter shall be limited" {Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., ist Sess., HR, Aug. 2, 1856, A p p . , pp.

1155-J6).

Compare Olmstead's observation that, with all its evils, slavery protected the South "from the demands for 'Land Limitation' . . . the anti-rent troubles, strikes of workmen, . . . diseased philanthropy, radical democracy, and the progress of socialistic ideas in general" (F. L. Olmstead, Journey in the Seaboard Slave States, I, 204; this variety of abolitionism makes the general coldness of workingmen toward the movement intelligible). In April, 1856, the Tribune had begged Congress not to adjourn before "making some provision whereby some patch of the Public Domain shall be secured in perpetuity to every actual settler" and doing something to "recognize and legalize the principle that he who hews out a civilized home from wastes hitherto unpeopled except by the savage is entitled thereby to exist in such home indefeasibly, and transmit it at death to his children." Canals, soldiers, and railroads were all given grants, but "a bill to grant the smallest legal modicum to the actual settler and cultivator" was thus shabbily treated (April 20, 1856; cf. Cong. Globe, 34th Cong., ist Sess., H R ,

p.

I

9

I J ) .

** Senate Journal, 34th Cong., ist Sess., pp. 180, 315.

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862

167

the pressure of the past three years had not yet won the Upper House to the measure. In the next Congress, Kelly of New York put the labor argument before the House. He resented the sealing of the public lands against "productive labor . . . now unemployed except in clamoring for a subsistence, which, in its present narrow confines, it cannot if it would secure by honest toil." 48 Unmoved by such oratory, the House buried in committee petitions to end the traffic in public lands and to make free grants for the "exclusive use of actual settlers not possessed of other land." Grow's tactics were more successful, however, for he pushed Homestead through the House on the previous question.48 Johnson, now a senator from Tennessee, was the champion of Homestead in the Upper House during the Thirtyfifth Congress. His bill, although approved by the Committee on Public Lands in January, was not discussed until May, i856. 4T Again, a North Carolina senator tried to transmute homesteads into land warrants, lest migration from the old states be encouraged. Pugh retorted that the public lands were such a source of corruption that the only remedy was giving them away to actual settlers. Reid of North Carolina and Clay of Alabama did not agree that the solution for that problem lay in thus throw4S Said Kelly, "The earth which God made, is man's." He described the workers' plight and called large cities "with their superabundant population," the "portals from wretchedness to death" (Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., ist Sess., HR, App., pp. 430-31, 433, 435). 44 House Journal, 35th Cong., 2nd Sess., pp. 309-10. The vote was 120-76, with most but not all the negative votes from the South. Among the buried petitions were ten from New Yorkers (1,400 signers, HR MSS, CPL, Jan. 31, 1859). In 1858, similar petitions had come from people in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Iowa legislature asked both free land and the restriction of land sales to actual settlers (House Journal, 35th Cong., ist Sess., pp. 298, 412, 494, JOI, 1 1 3 3 ) . 47 Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., ist Sess., Sen. Jan. 2 1 , 1858, p. 354.

ι68

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

ing the baby out with the bath. On M a y 20, 1858, Johnson squared off for a set speech. Most of his words were devoted to informing the South that Homestead was not inimical to its sectional interests, but he gave some attention to the labor argument. When the wage earner became an independent farmer on the public domain, he would no longer be miserable, Johnson maintained.48 Doolittle of Wisconsin thought the five-year residence requirement gave the homesteader the best of titles—that derived from occupancy and use. H a l e declared that the same spirit of selfishness which had motivated the slaying of the Gracchi "would lock up your public domain, and keep it to be doled out to great corporations, and to be dealt with in any other way except to make it what I believe God Almighty intended the world should be when he did make it, and that was as homes for man to live on." 49 But Seward and Johnson could not save the bill even with the elimination of the landless clause; Clingman of North Carolina made postponement to the following January a test question, and the Senate agreed to the delay. 60 T h e short session offered the Senate another opportunity for evasion. In its appeal for prompt action, the ** Ibid., pp. 226J-67. Pugh's statement (ibid., pp. 2240-41) was countered by Reid, who feared homestead grants would be made inalienable as well as free and who had never seen a more dangerous measure (ibid., p. 2305). Clay of Alabama discounted popular demand for the bill; agitation in its favor had arisen in Congress, not among the people (ibid., p. 2425). 49 Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., ist Sess., Sen., p. 2308. 80 Ibid., pp. 2272, 2426. The vote was 30-22, most of the votes for postponement were from Southern and Eastern senators. On May 28, 1858, the Committee on Public Lands was discharged from consideration of petitions for homesteads to actual settlers from citizens of New York (twenty petitions), Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, and even Texas and Kentucky (Senate Journal, 35th Cong., ist Sess., pp. 915, J39-40).

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

Tribune again argued that workers who took advantage of Homestead to leave the cities would "leave more room and better chances" for those who remained; the passage of the bill would be "a new Declaration of Independence — t h e emancipation of industrious poverty." Neither this appeal nor Seward's prophecy of the national gain from taking the public lands out of the control of speculators could make the Senate face the issue. Johnson had the House bill reported out of the Committee on Public Lands but, by a tie vote, the Senate chose to discuss appropriations.81 Undaunted, Johnson continued to push his own Homestead bill until the Senate finally took it up on March 19, i860. Nicholson of Tennessee, who "went for" Johnson's bill rather than that of the House, presented the labor argument for enactment: the public domain prevented the "evil consequences of a crowded population to the interests of the laboring man." Strikes in New England and pauperism in New York both proved the presence of a surplus of workers in those areas. But under Homestead, wherever capital pressed too heavily on labor, some workers would have sufficient energy and courage to avail themselves of the public land. They would leave the crowded cities, where competition for work reduced wages to the subsistence level, and move to the West, where S1 Cong. Globe, 35th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sen. Feb. 4, 1859, p. 1076. Said Seward: " T h e States of this Union w i l l be settled, and the resources of the United States developed; the strength and power and integrity of the Republic will be perfected, just as soon as the public lands, hitherto held for the purpose chiefly of speculation by capitalists, at the cost of the labor and industry of the country, shall be taken out of that market."

T h e Tribune made Gwin of California, Lane of Oregon, and "lame ducks" Allen of Rhode Island, Bigler of Pennsylvania, and Fitch of Indiana responsible for the Senate's refusal to consider Homestead (Feb. j , 19, I8J9).

I70

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862

the fruits of labor would be the laborer's.82 Hale declared that the striking workers of New England were demanding not only higher wages but also their right to the land. Speaking against the bill, Johnson of Arkansas and Wigfall of Texas demonstrated to their own satisfaction that Homestead was a demagogic trick of the Black Republicans. Then, the Senate bill was laid aside for the House measure, which made resident foreigners intending to become citizens eligible for the benefits of Homestead; only one entry was permitted and the homestead was exempted from execution for debts incurred before the issue of patent. The landless clause had been eliminated.53 Wilkinson of Minnesota insisted that the current system favored speculation and land monopoly j by checking these, Homestead would help labor which was now crushed by capital.84 Green of Missouri denied the Federal government's power to grant homesteads, for the states alone controlled property rights. Replied Andrew Johnson: "What I mean by a Homestead is to put a man into the possession of a certain amount of soil that he may call his home; and, so far as the Federal Government is concerned, to protect him from any forced sale or execution so long as the title remains there." If the states have not done so, they will, he continued, pass laws "to secure to each individual a 82 Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., ist Sess., Sen. March 25, 1860, pp. 1 2 2 1 - 2 3 . Competition for work had reduced wages to the point at which labor looked "out for relief from the oppressions of capital." The bill's "influence on this subject will be apparent when it is remembered that its direct tendency will be to diminish the competition for employment by drawing off a portion of those seeking it, and thus benefiting those who remain behind, whilst it furnishes remunerative employment to that portion which shall accept the terms offered by the bill." 83 Ibid., pp. 1 2 9 5 , 1297, 1299. 64 Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., ist Sess., Sen., pp. 1308-9.

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

171

certain amount of soil that he can call his own." Green retorted that land was already cheap enough} Homestead was sheer agrarianism.85 At this point in the debate, amendments set the price of land at twenty-five cents an acre and altered the exemption clause to a mere postponement of execution for debt. The bill the Senate passed was not a Homestead measure but a new version of graduation with preemption and a two-year credit feature added for variety.58 The Philadelphia Press found that the Senate at last had given the people what they had been demanding. Homestead was a "just concession to those millions of toiling freemen" who looked to the West for a livelihood unfettered by the "servitude of drudging toil." Should the House accede to the Senate bill, the country would see the wilderness "blossom as a rose." The Tribune announced the Senate's action with " T h e World Does M o v e ! " When the House yielded on most points, the Tribune accepted the resultant measure as a decent halfloaf but warned Congress that the free-land forces would not rest until a genuine Homestead bill should pass." The Herald predicted that Buchanan would veto both the tariff and Homestead, those Republican schemes to "make capital among the manufacturing and 'labor States' 65

Ibid.,

A p r i l j , 1860, pp. 1554, 1555-56.

M

Ibid.,

p. 1043. T h e preemptor might have his claim for two years be-

fore paying for it. Of the eight votes cast against the bill, seven were f r o m the South and one from the East. "Press

( P h i l . ) , M a y 7, i 8 6 0 ; Tribune,

M a y 1 1 , i860. " I t is not the

paltry ten shillings per acre hitherto exacted of pioneers by the Government that is specially objectionable; it is the temptation held out to forestalled and monopolizers of Public Lands that is to be abolished." T h e essence of Republican demands was that the public domain be kept f o r the landless, not the monopolist {ibid., June 21, i 8 6 0 ) .

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

of the North." 58 So far as Homestead was concerned, the Herald was right j Buchanan never had the opportunity to veto the tariff bill, which failed in the Senate. Harmless as it seemed, with payment of twenty-five cents an acre and provision for ceding to the states public land unsold within their borders for twenty years, the bill was still too much for the president. Homestead, said his veto, was unfair to the old states and all previous grantees. It could not help the mechanic and must foster speculation. Further, it would destroy the admirable existing land system. In advancing to their "present condition of power and prosperity," the people of the United States had been guided by the fixed principle of protecting the rights of all, whether they be rich or poor. No agrarian sentiment has ever prevailed among them. The honest poor man, by frugality and industry, can in any part of our country, acquire a competence for himself and his family and in doing this, he feels that he eats the bread of independence. He desires no charity either from the Government or his neighbors. This bill, which proposes to give him land at an almost nominal price, out of the property of the Government, will go far to demoralize and repress this noble spirit of independence. It may introduce among us those pernicious social theories which have proved so disastrous in other countries. 69

This bill, as we have seen, did not embody National Reform's philosophy nor satisfy its demands, yet the phrasing of the veto indicates its supposed influence. Home58

Herald, April 5, i860. Although he had voted for Buchanan in 1856, Commerford had had forebodings of such a veto (Commerford to Johnson, Dec. 1 7 , 1859 Johnson-Patterson Papers). T h e Washington correspondent of the Philadelphia Press thought Buchanan ready for a veto "if he can find reasons enough" (June 2 1 , i 8 6 0 ) . 69 J . D. Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, V, 609, 6 1 2 , 614.

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862 stead had become so closely associated with National Reform that its opponents feared any change in the land system might be an entering wedge for the entire landreform program. Misguided voters must be rescued from the delusion that freedom of the public domain would aid the "mechanic" and restrict the speculator. This much of Evans's reasoning had penetrated so deeply, or had appealed to such strongly rooted sentiments, that only denunciation of Homestead's countenancing of unAmerican social theories could meet the surplus-labor argument in its favor.60 At the next session, Grow forced Homestead through the House without debate, but the Senate buried the bill in its Committee on Public Lands.81 Speculative interests and Southern opposition joined to kill the measure. All other political issues were submerged, then, in the vain effort to preserve peacefully the unity of a nation divided into warring sections. With the integrity of the United States as the gage of uncertain battle, Congress, meeting almost within sound of gun-fire, turned its attention to civil as well as military affairs. The advocates of Homestead returned to the support of freedom of the 60 The Herald noted the Senate vote sustaining the veto with none of the exultation to be expected from so fiery an opponent of the measure (June 24, i860). The Tribune had expected nothing better from Buchanan (June 2 j , i 8 6 0 ) . Attacking the veto, Harlan of Iowa had declared that it asked the Senate's endorsement of a land policy that would keep the East's surplus people "around the old homestead and worn-out lands, to struggle with penury and want—to become the hewers of wood and drawers of water of hard-hearted landlords—rather than to send them to the fertile lands of the new States to build up for themselves fortunes and happy homes" (National Intelligencer, June 26, i 8 6 0 ) . The veto was sustained 28-18; all the votes for rejecting the veto were cast by Northern senators (Senate Journal, 36th Cong., ist Sess., p. 7 5 7 ) . 61 Cong. Globe, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., HR, Dec. 5, i 8 6 0 ; Senate Journal, 36th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 34.

HOMESTEAD,

1854-1862

public lands. And after nearly two decades of struggle they were finally to be successful. In 1 8 6 1 , the supporters of Homestead, fighting proposals for land bounties to soldiers, offered money rewards to short-term volunteers. Fessenden and Conkling wanted Homestead postponed that the public creditors might be secured.62 But Speaker Grow kept the House on the bill despite the demand for a minimum of nonwar legislation. Holman of Indiana, "watchdog of the Treasury," thought Homestead would end the "extraordinary facilities which our land policy has hitherto furnished for capitalists to almost monopolize the public lands, and that, too, at almost nominal prices." Agreeing that the West was "cursed" by the system of selling large tracts of public land to nonresident speculators, Windom, in the name of "the people of the Northwest and the laboring classes of the whole country," 63 called upon the Republicans to redeem their pledges. Once more, Homestead was pushed through the House 011 the previous question. In reply to pleas for delay, Senator Pomeroy of Kansas declared the indiscriminate sale of public land opened the door to the "wildest speculations and the most unprincipled monopolies." The House finally accepted the Senate amendments to its bill: these eliminated soldiers' homestead rights and inserted permission for the homesteader to buy his claim before the end of the five-year 62 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., ind Sess., H R , Dec. 18, 1 8 6 1 , pp. 136-37. Vallandigham of Ohio insisted warrants would wreck Homestead. Vandever of Iowa agreed that these were useless save to the speculator who took advantage of the soldier's needs (ibid., pp. 1 3 3 - 3 4 , 1 3 s ) · 03 Ibid., Feb. 20, 1 8 6 1 , pp. 1 0 3 0 - 3 1 , 1 0 3 3 , 1035. As the lands were yielding no revenue, Grow said, the worker might be protected against the speculator without any real loss of government income (ibid., p. 9 1 0 ) .

HOMESTEAD, 1854-1862 residence period. President Lincoln signed the bill and Homestead at last became the law on May 20, 1 8 6 2 . " The "Act to Secure Homesteads to Actual Settlers on the Public Domain" allowed any loyal head of a family, or any male of twenty-one years, citizen or prospective citizen, to file entry to a single tract of 160 acres of minimum-priced land or 80 acres of double-minimum land. If he already held a smaller preemption, he might file entry to so much contiguous land as would make a total of not more than a quarter-section. Affidavit as to eligibility must be made at the land office. A ten-dollar entry fee was the only charge made for the land. If the applicant had not left the claim for more than six months at one time, patent would issue five years after entry. Should the head of the family die before the term of residence had been completed, the heirs might have the patent, if they had alienated no part of the claim. Partial exemption was provided. Existing preemption rights were not to be interfered with, nor was any individual to acquire more than one quarter-section under the law. The residence requirement might be commuted for payment of the minimum price of the claim.85 64

Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., Sen., M a y IJ, 20, 1862, pp. 1 9 1 5 , 2 1 4 7 , 2364. Pomeroy hoped to induce city dwellers to become pioneers by securing by law a "homestead for the landless of this and every land" (pp. 1 1 3 8 - 3 9 ) . House and Senate votes against the Homestead bill came from Delaware, Virginia, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and Oregon (House Journal, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 377, Representative Corning of New York also voted against the bill; Senate Journal, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 449). 85 Cong. Globe, 37th Cong., 2nd Sess., App., p. 352, Chapter L X X C , "Laws of the United States." No lands acquired "under the provisions of this act shall in any event become liable to the satisfaction of any debt or debts contracted prior to the issuing of the patent therefor." The applicant must swear that the homestead entry was made for his "exclusive use and benefit, and cultivation, and not either directly or indirectly for the use of any other person or persons whatsoever."

i76

H O M E S T E A D , 1854-1862

Grow and Greeley were satisfied with the bill, with Congress, and each other. Greeley thought the law defeated that speculating and railroad element whose hostility he had feared. Henceforth, any man with the month's wages of a farm laborer in his pocket could get a farm of his own. Free homes had been secured. The "long struggle for Land for the Landless was at last consummated." ββ ®® Tribune, May io, 21, 1862.

χ

CONCLUSION

T

H E LAW O F I 8 6 2

INCLUDED N E I T H E R

RESERVATION

of the public domain for the actual settler nor restriction of Homestead to the landless. Yet, even this law shows marks of land-reform influence. Limitation was recognized: the homesteader was restricted to one entry sworn to be for his own use. Exemption was recognized: the homestead was free from execution to satisfy debts incurred before the issue of patent. Under the prohibition of alienating the claim before the receipt of patent, the remnants of inalienability might be seen. And the public lands were opened free to the actual settler. Evans and his followers had not originated the idea of free farms; that demand had come from the West in the twenties, when the men who were to become National Reform leaders were concentrating their energies on winning free education for workers' children. The National Reformers did, however, transform "donation" into "homestead"} they made free homes on the public domain a right of the actual settler instead of an act of charity to the poor. To the Western demand for free farms, the land reformers gave form and philosophy. Their program won them publicity if not political power. It identified with National Reform the issue of making the lands free to the actual settler. So close did that asso-

ιη 8

CONCLUSION

ciation become, indeed, that opposition to Homestead could be based on the bad company the measure had kept. Through Greeley, the land reformers equipped the resurgent Whig element—that realistic, politically competent core of the rising Republican Party—with material to win urban workers, voters unresponsive to antislavery. Except for two brief intervals, national politics since J e f ferson's time had been largely controlled by an alliance of Southern aristocrats, Western small farmers, and urban politicians able to manipulate the votes of workingmen. The Whigs had never been able to carry a presidential election when the issues were at all clear; the voters of the nation were unresponsive to the program of "bank, tariff, and internal improvements." It was Homestead, with its appeal to both farmer and worker, which helped destroy that alliance and return an essentially Hamiltonian party to power. Liberal treatment of the actual settler on the public domain was, originally, not a Northeastern but a Southwestern policy. Benton of Missouri was the pioneer's most effective champion during the thirties and early forties. Robert J . Walker of Mississippi first presented legislation to restrict the sale of public lands to actual settlers and to give the small purchaser special price concessions. Representatives from Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi presented the surplus-labor argument for such measures in a form closely resembling the reasoning of the land reformers. As late as 1850, Houston of Alabama justified his plan for liberalizing the land policy by stressing the interests of the Eastern worker. Homestead itself was presented by Johnson of Tennessee, whose efforts were seconded by McMullen of Virginia and, at first, many

CONCLUSION

179 1

Southern votes were cast in its favor. On the free-land issue, division came between seaboard and interior, between states fearing emigration and states hoping for immigration, rather than between North and South, between slave and free states. Until the late fifties, for example, Missouri and Arkansas tended to support free land and North Carolina to oppose it. As the Republicans took up Homestead, opposition to its sponsorship served to unite the divergent intrasectional interests making up the Southern vote. Southern opposition to Homestead soon solidified and became intransigeant.2 Whether expressed in the Constitutional arguments of Hunter of Virginia, or in the "drunken harangues" of Wigfall of Texas, that opposition offered the Republicans documentary evidence with which to convince the "common people" of the North and West that they could no longer be the political allies of those who reviled them and refused to accede to a measure they desired. The National Reformers worked for freedom of the public lands to the landless through propaganda, pressure, and direct political action. They introduced and pushed 1 In the Thirty-third Congress, Eastern representatives cast nearly as many votes against Homestead as did Southerners (House Journal, 33rd Cong., ist Sess., p. 409: East, 3 1 Nays; South, 35 Nays). By the Thirtyfifth Congress, this attitude was reversed and the Southern vote was broken by but one " A y e , " from Missouri (House Journal, 35th Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 3 1 0 ) . 2 For examples of the Southern attitude on free land and Homestead, see above, pp. 1 1 1 note 5, 120 note 30, 123 notes 38, 39, 130 notes 9, 10, 1 3 2 note 1 3 . As late as 1852, Smith of Alabama was describing the ruinous effect of machinery on the position of the Northern worker and showing how Homestead would put him on the land (Cong. Globe, 32nd Cong., ist Sess., HR, App., pp. 514., 5 1 6 ) . Appreciation of social shortcomings seems to vary inversely with the distance from the evil; it is questionable whether more rhetorical tears were shed for the Northern worker by Southern speakers or for the slaves by Northern orators.

ι8ο

CONCLUSION

the issue until rising political groups adopted it. In the period when proposals for free land were heard with jeers, if listened to at all, Homestead measures included partial inalienability and the restriction of grants to the landless. As the demand for Homestead swelled and a carefully nurtured public opinion began to make itself felt, politicians forced the elimination of such clauses. Although not satisfied, the National Reformers accepted what was offered them. Evans, himself, however, opposed these sops, but certain of his followers were less discerning. As late as i860, when it was apparent that no Homestead bill would really incorporate their program, land reformers hailed Johnson as the workers' friend, because, as the champion of Homestead, he had always worked for freedom of the public lands. In early House discussions of Homestead, Johnson had disavowed responsibility for the landless clause, yet he had it restored when eliminated, maintained friendly relations with the National Reformers, used their arguments and phrases in his speeches, and defined Homestead in terms they would have found acceptable, if not sufficiently comprehensive.3 National Reform furnished propaganda and ideas to the congressional efforts in favor of Homestead. Such practical Republican politicians as Grow, Wade, Hamlin, and Hale used its arguments and phrases. Arming a measure 3

Devyr

to Johnson: " Y o u

only

have

raised

workers'

hopes."

John

Keyser, another National Reform leader, thanked Johnson for his reply to the opponents of Homestead, and criticized the Democrats for letting the Republicans steal an issue that was winning· them many votes in the Eastern cities, particularly among the Germans. Commerford had been gratified that Johnson had introduced Homestead in the Senate, although there was little hope that that body would take any action to benefit the poor (Johnson-Patterson Papers, Jan. 1, i 8 6 0 ; A p r i l 14, i 8 6 0 ; Dec. 17, i860).

CONCLUSION

ιβι

with the slogans and the popular appeal that help carry it to victory is surely an achievement for obscure men. Freedom of the public domain to the actual settler rose from soapbox to statute-book in less than twenty years. If, finally, the common man voted himself a farm, National Reform's propaganda had helped make him want to do so. After it had pushed free farms into the foreground of public attention, the land program of National Reform was thrust aside by the expedients of politicians who strove to satisfy the interests of the Eastern capitalist, the Western settler, and the urban worker, without losing the votes of any. National Reform appealed to both farmer and workingman. Although most concerned for the latter, it was influential in rural districts of New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Squatters in Kansas, Iowa, and Minnesota, who faced loss of their homes to speculators when those areas should be exposed for sale, supplemented the "direct action" taken by their claim associations with appeals to Congress for Homestead. It seems significant that these appeals used National Reform phrasing and arguments. 4 Land reformers concentrated their propaganda on the city worker, but there is no satisfactory way to determine his responsiveness. It is difficult to ascertain either the degree of worker interest in the public domain or the effect of worker influence in changing the system of its disposal. If the attitude of early independent labor parties be taken as an index, what interest did exist was scarcely overwhelming. Subsequent labor organizations showed * The preemptor must pay for his land; if he could not raise the money between the time of settling on his claim and the time when the region was exposed for sale, then his land could be bought without any compensation to him for his improvements (House Journal, 35th Cong., ist Sess., p. 1 1 3 3 ; Senate Journal, 35th Cong., ist Sess., pp. J39-40).

i82

CONCLUSION

a diversity of attitudes toward the matured National Reform program for disposing of the public lands. Factory workers at Nashua, New Hampshire, combined their drive for ten hours with propaganda for land reform, and gave the latter an important place on the agenda of their convention of September, 1846. 15 New York City's plasterers dismissed the whole scheme as a "humbug" but its saddlemakers saw salvation for labor in Homestead on the National Reform plan.® These were both regular trade unions, products of the reviving labor movement of the early fifties. Organized labor did not protest against the claim of land reformers to be its spokesmen. As has been shown, the land reformers were allowed to take control of the Industrial Congress movement, the only effort since the late thirties at an organization of labor broader than the local craft. In that movement, regular trade unions were not unrepresented.7 If the "pure and simple" trade unions that took on new life in the fifties did not demand Homestead, neither did they oppose it. So conservative a group as the Mechanics' Mutual Protection was won by the surplus-labor argument to believe that the workingman, as a workingman, would benefit from 5 Lowell sympathizers with the ten-hours movement were advised to sham illness that they might attend the Nashua convention without risking the "blacklist" (Voice of Industry, May 22, Sept. 1 1 , 1846. The editor used the word; the thing had flourished in Lowell since the invention of the "honorable discharge," without which one got no work in any mill there). β Tribune, Aug. i , 1852. In i 8 j j , the Senate tabled a memorial from unemployed workingmen of New York City who petitioned for Homestead and an advance of money for the purchase of farm tools (Senate Journal, 33rd Cong., 2nd Sess., p. 1 6 6 ) . 7 The printers of Louisville, Ky., sent a delegate to the second Industrial Congress; the delegate declared his fellow-craftsmen and the local foundryworkers were both interested in National Reform (Voice of Industry, June 18, 184.6; see also, above, p. 66, note 20).

CONCLUSION

183

Homestead. T h e Brotherhood of the Union, founded expressly to further National Reform, was able to flourish as a benevolent society that drew its members from workers many of whom may also have belonged to regular trade unions. It, too, supported Homestead as a landreform measure that would help the city worker. Fallen on evil days, New York City workingmen at two public meetings during the winter of 1854-55 expressed their conviction that free public land would be a recourse in and a refuge against disaster.8 Workers rarely speak for themselves, and their spokesmen are not often really representative. T h e middle forties, when National Reform began its work, was a period of quiescence for the craft unions which might be supposed to present members' wants and grievances. Workingmen with social interests were attracted by one of those "isms" of which the time was prolific. Of these, National Reform in argument and leadership made a more direct appeal to labor's interest than antislavery— occupied with distant wrongs—or Fourierism—aimed at a Utopia where life would be a thing of mathematical symmetry.® Because its leaders were themselves craftsmen 8 A t the first meeting·, several speakers advocated land reform as a true and permanent remedy for depressions (Tribune, Dec. 23, 1 8 5 4 ) . A t the second, a mass meeting at Mechanics' Hall, Congress was asked to prohibit further traffic in the public lands and to make free, limited, inalienable grants thereof to actual settlers only. T h e State legislature should grant N e w York's public lands on like terms and should fix the quantity of land any individual might own. T h e meeting was large and enthusiastic, and applauded National Reform speeches in both English and German, as well as Commerford's account of his fortunes as a lobbyist for Homestead (Jan. 6, 1 8 5 5 ; unfortunately, his remarks were not reported in detail). β On this point, a lively controversy was carried on in the Boston Investigator between " A W o r k i n g M a n " and W . S. Chase of the Ceresco Phalanx, a Fourierist community near Green Bay, Wisconsin. T h e former decried "workingmen Reformers" who were professionals by occupation and who preached Fourierism and Transcendentalism instead of ten hours,

CONCLUSION with a union background, National Reform could sympathize with the grievances of the skilled worker, who was not content to be an employee and could not become a master under a dominantly capitalist system of production. 10 Many modern historians are convinced of the validity of the theory underlying National Reform, namely, that the mere existence of open land in America prevented the degradation of American workers. Others even go on to assert that fear of a wage rise through the drainage of labor to the West motivated Eastern hostility to changes in the public-land system; and that the worker himself not only desired free land but had appreciable influence in securing the enactment of Homestead. 11 lien laws, and higher wages (Sept. 16, 1844.). Chase retorted that these were petty aims compared with Association or even freedom of the public lands (Oct. 2 1 , 1 8 4 4 ) . " A Working M a n " replied that freedom of the public lands, which was a worthwhile reform, did not originate with the intellectuals but among workingmen themselves (Nov. 4, 1 8 4 4 ) . 10 The prospectus of the Daily Sentinel, with which the Working Men's Advocate merged for a while, gave, as a grievance of its founders, the rise of newspapers owned by men who were not themselves "practical printers" but who grew rich at the expense of those who were (Adv. 1, Feb. 20, 1830). 11 D. R. Fox, Decline of Aristocracy in the Politics of New York, p. 4 2 0 ; P. J . Treat, National Land System, pp. 379-80; B. S. Terry, Homestead Law Agitation, pp. 24, 2 7 ; Commons and Sumner, of. cit., V, 36; Commons and Andrews, of. cit., I, 4-5; F. T . Carlton, "American Utopia," Quarterly Journal of Economics, X X I V ( 1 9 1 0 ) , 4 3 3 ; F . T . Carlton, Organized Labor in American History, p. 1835 R . Meyer, Heimstatten und andere Wirtschaftsgesetze, p. 403 (This writer thinks speculators might have absorbed all the public domain and converted it into landed estates cultivated by tenants). Agar goes so far as to declare Republican acceptance of Homestead a subtle move to postpone or prevent the development of militant unionism by encouraging the discontented to move to the West where they could not disturb the Eastern capitalist (People's Choice, pp. 167-68). On the other side, Hibbard doubts the influence of organized labor in securing Homestead, although he credits it with some contribution to reforming the national land system (History of the Public Land Policies, p. 1 9 1 ) .

CONCLUSION

185

T h e theory that wages were fixed by the ratio between the demand for and the supply of labor was accepted by reformers as well as by conservatives who used the idea as an argument against labor organization. Could the supply of workers be kept limited, wages would remain high. Contemporary Americans were convinced of the effect of the public domain on wages and the worker. Protective tariffs were first demanded as a counterbalance to plentiful cheap land in America—cheap land that kept American wages too high to permit competition with European manufacturers, whose laborers had no such refuge. In connection with the reexamination of the "frontier theory" a lively controversy has developed on the relation of free land to wages. Goodrich and Davison think that wage-earners shared in the westward movement as beneficiaries of lowered potential competition from farm workers rather than as actual migrants (Goodrich and Davison, "Wage-earner and the Westward Movement," Political Science Quarterly, L I ( 1 9 3 6 ) , 1 0 0 - 1 0 1 ) . Shannon goes further: free land did not help workers who could neither reach the frontier nor succeed if they did get there; labor difficulties after the Civil War prove that free land through Homestead did not diminish the labor surplus ( F . A. Shannon, "Homestead Act and the Labor Surplus," American Historical Review, L X I ( 1 9 3 6 ) , 640-41, 644-45). Tucker insists that, if the worker did leave city for frontier, it was in periods of prosperity; therefore, the frontier did not relieve unemployment. Moreover, the industrial states contributed less to the peopling of the frontier than the nonindustrial states (R. S. Tucker, "Frontier as an Outlet for Surplus Labor," Southern Economic Journal, VII ( 1 9 4 0 ) , 160-61, 1 7 1 7 3 ) . Hansen agrees that expansion was principally from rural areas to the frontier ( M . L. Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and the American Peoples, p. 1 1 8 ; Atlantic Migration, pp. 5, 1 6 - 1 7 ) . Ware maintains that westward expansion was a flight from industrialism which saved the individual worker but destroyed his organization (Industrial Worker, p. x x ) . Schäfer defends the "safety-valve" idea by stressing the instances of native workingmen who did move West and succeed as farmers, and by insisting that mechanics could save the cost of a farm out of their wages; see Schäfer, "Was the West a Safety-Valve for Labor?" Mississippi Valley Historical Review, X X I V ( 1 9 3 7 ) , 305-6. Kane, however, maintains that it was not workers but farmers who went West and that the frontier was an ideological rather than an actual outlet; see Murray Kane, "Considerations on the Safety Valve Doctrine," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, X X X I I I ( 1 9 3 6 ) , 188.

ι8 6

CONCLUSION

In 1830, that very James K . Polk who was later to ignore National Reform's queries described Clay's "American system" as a stool with three legs, one of which was "high prices for public lands to prevent emigration to the West that a population of paupers may be kept in the East, and forced to work for low wages in the factories." Discussing the tariff of 1842, Brockway of Connecticut made a moving appeal for New England, which was unable to prevent the constant drain of its most enterprising people to the West. 12 In debate on the Subtreasury, it was asserted that as long as the nation had millions of unsurveyed acres, wages would be high and labor need fear no "vile servitude." 13 T h e labor argument was often brought forward during congressional discussion of land policies, especially in connection with Clay's distribution plan and the Preemption bill of 1841. W e l l before Evans's maturing of National Reform, the main argument of the plan was familiar and accepted. 12 Address of the Friends of Domestic Industry, pamphlet, p. 2 1 ; J. B. McMaster, History of the Peofle of the United States, V I I , 3 5 ; Speech of Mr. Brockway on the Tariff Bills, pamphlet, p. 1.

Somewhat earlier, O. A . Brownson had found the receding wilderness an important factor in the decline of the worker's position: "already the new lands are beyond the reach of the mere laborer and the employer has him at his mercy" (Laboring Classes, pamphlet, p. 1 2 ) . In his Defense of this article, Brownson declared the l o w price of land to be the main reason for the superior position of the American over the European "proletary." " T h e ease with which individuals have been able to procure them farms, and pass from the class of proletaries to that of proprietors, has had a constant tendency to diminish the number of proletaries, and to raise the price of labor. But, this cause becomes less and less powerful. F e w , comparatively speaking, of the proletaries in the old states can ever become land-owners. Land there is already too high for that. T h e new lands are rapidly receding to the West and can even now be reached only by those w h o have some little capital in advance" ( D e f e n c e of the Article on the Laboring Classes, p. 5 5 ) . 1 3 Unless such servitude were brought on by the "unwarned, insidious approach of grasping m o n o p o l y " ( A . C . Hand, Speech, p. 1 ) .

CONCLUSION

187

Southwestern representatives were particularly given to using it as a club with which to belabor the motives of spokesmen for the more industrial East. Judging from newspaper space given them, congressional debates were closely followed. Many people must have absorbed the surplus-labor argument for free land before the National Reformers made its dissemination their mission. Labor's desire for free land on the National Reform plan seemed so patent to certain contemporaries that they prepared to save their country from menacing "agrarianism." Conservative newspapers vilified the land reformers and their ideas. Even when those dangerous notions had been toned down into later Homestead bills, such pillars of society as the Washington National Intelligencer and the New York Express were shaken by the peril to property rights latent in such a law. Seemingly reflecting a like fear is an Atlantic Monthly article of 1859 which congratulated the nation that the fight against slavery had purged American party struggles of radicalism. Workingmen who had fought the Second United States Bank in a spirit of hostility to wealth, and who had even organized politically on class lines were now nothing more dangerous than left-wing Democrats. Hence, there was no reason to abuse men or measures as "agrarian." 14 A l though the article mentions no specific issue, it may be assumed that Homestead was the measure most apt to elicit such reassurances in view of its National Reform support and its watchword, "Homes for the Homeless} Land for the Landless." 14

" A g r a r i a n i s m , " Atlantic Monthly, I I I (1859), 39^-97, 394· One may note that as a t e r m of abuse " a g r a r i a n " succeeded " j a c o b i n " and was supplanted by "socialist." T h e fifties was a transition period when one had the liberty of l a b e l i n g w h a t met with one's disapproval as " a g r a r i a n , " " R e d R e p u b l i c a n , " "socialist," o r even " c o m m u n i s t . "

188

CONCLUSION

In early congressional discussion of Homestead, Eastern opponents like Sutherland of New York argued against it because the drainage of population stimulated by free land would raise wages and lower land values and profits. Whatever the realism of such arguments, they had small political value: the dubious constitutionality of the bill, its encouragement of excessive immigration and its violation of sound American tradition were preferable points of attack. Southern spokesmen took up the populationdrainage argument. Eastern manufacturers might look to Europe for cheap labor to fill the places of urban migrants but the plantation owner could only fear such additions to Southern population. Yet, without increased population, the relative political decline of his section would be accelerated. Were it to be settled by small farmers, the West itself would bar the extension of slave agriculture. 15 Thus, reversing earlier attitudes, Southerners scorned the urban worker and attacked rather than sympathized with the urban proletariat of the North. But even Southern spokesmen found it more effective to attack Homestead as unconstitutional, inequitable, and menacing to all property rights, rather than as injurious to sectional and tidewater interests.18 T h e supposed relation of Homestead to the welfare of the Eastern workingman was, then, generally recognized. Even those who insisted that freedom of the public 15

A n anonymous correspondent f r o m Montgomery, A l a . , called Homestead a plan to abolitionize the West by encouraging Helperites to migrate thither (Johnson Papers, loose letter, dated Feb. 20, i 8 6 0 ) ; Southern speakers in Congress frequently made like charges. 16 D e v y r appealed to Southern senators to refute Republican claims that they were hostile to the Northern poor. " L e t them no longer stand between the laborer and his undoubted r i g h t . " If they accepted Homestead, the Democrats might win the election and save the Union (Johnson-Patterson Papers, leaflet, " T h e Homestead and the U n i o n " ) .

CONCLUSION domain could not help him implicitly admitted the prevalence of the surplus-labor argument. Like native contemporaries, foreign observers thought the size and cheapness of the fertile public domain responsible for the well-being of American workingmen. 17 A French witness of the troubled years 1833-35, saw the West reducing competition among the workers and affording a refuge for the unemployed. Abdy, anticipating a National Reform proposal, advised Philadelphia's philanthropists to lessen the city's burdens by sending some of its paupers to the public domain. George Combe, who combined social and phrenological observation, found that the contiguity of fertile unsettled land maintained the wage level by absorbing surplus labor. Von Raumer, too, decided that the vast stretches of unpeopled land spared the United States the burden of an impoverished factory population.18 Other observers found that thoughtful Americans feared a dangerous concentration of capital, and the menace of 17 Only a higher price for government land and use of revenue therefrom to import immigrants could prevent the city worker from leaving urban industry for the West, concentrate its population, end the need for protective tariffs, and make the United States an industrial nation (E. G. Wakefield, England and America, pp. 221, 123). 18 M. Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amerique du Nord, I, 218; Abdy, Journal, III, 170; G. Combe, Notes on the United States, III, 372; Von Raumer, America, p. 164. Agreeing with Abdy and Evans that the urban poor and unemployed should be sent to the West, the New York City Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor thought that the best way of making them migrate was to strip the city of such attractions as "indiscriminate charity" (Annual Report for 1849, P· 2 7 ) · In the fifties, the population was still being lured from the cities to the West (J. J . Ampere, Promenade en Amerique, p. 9 6 ) . If cities were temporarily overstocked with workers, these rapidly moved to the West, the nation's hope ( F . Bremer, Homes of the New World, I, 2 5 9 ) . The prospect of independence on the land was ever before the worker (G. Poussin, United States, p. 472).

190

CONCLUSION

land monopoly. American cities were affected by the social discontent which was a product of insecurity and the effects of speculation. This discontent was expressed in reform movements, most significant of which was that for free homesteads. Its adherents, Löher noted, were called "National Reformers," "land reformers," or "free soilers." 1 9 They demanded freedom of the public domain, land limitation, and exemption of half the homestead's value from execution for debt. Disgusted with both Whigs and Democrats, the Germans were particularly attracted to the new movement which had risen from small beginnings to considerable importance. T h e fear of the National Reformers that speculators would absorb all the best parts of the public domain was shared by other thoughtful people. Their hopes for the worker were reflected in the fears of conservative opponents of Homestead. Workers' interest in the public domain was acknowledged, and the harmony of the National Reform program with that interest was quite widely admitted. National Reform was further adapted to win labor's support by its accord with the antimonopoly sentiment which has so generally been important in American reform movements. Evans and the workers he attempted to lead had both been reared in an antimonopoly atmosphere. 18 F . Löher, Land und Leute, II, 25-26; I. Golovin, Stars and Strifes, pp. 85-89. Löher's list of labels may be merely the usual foreign misunderstanding of American political slang (and this, the era of "silver-grays," "woolyheads," "old hunkers," "barnburners," "hards," "softs," was likely to provoke misconceptions) ; but his comment on German interest in free land accords with the presence of German names on National Reform petitions, the use of German at land-reform meetings, and Commerford's plaint that, by refusing to accept Homestead, the Democrats had given the German vote to the Republicans.

CONCLUSION

191

Both had sympathized with William Leggett's fight against granting corporate charters by special legislative act.20 Both had been active in the fight against the Second United States Bank and the paper money used to exploit workingmen. In an address before the General Trades' Union in 1 8 3 3 , Eli Moore declared opposition to monopoly was the prime motive of the organization. Like Evans, Moore based his hostility to monopoly on the violation of the "natural l a w " of equal rights.21 Evans was interested in the Loco-Foco Party, an antimonopoly organization in which organized labor participated and from which men like John Windt and Moses Jaques came to the National Reform movement.22 Evans could show that, as the weakest social group, labor suffered most from monopoly. An unstable paper currency—the product of a banking monopoly—increased the cost of living and nullified the effort to raise wages through organization. The sale of convict labor to contractors subjected the worker to unfair competition. In20

William Leggett, assistant editor of the Evening Post in the late 1820's, was a foe of all monopoly. He, Bryant, and the Post fought this method of incorporation not only to avoid the corruption of legislators but also to curb the creation of " a class of men distinguished from the mass by peculiar privileges and prerogatives" (W. C. Bryant, "William Leggett," Democratic Review VI, 1830, 2 2 ) . Parke Godwin found that their views were shared by "workingmen who saw in the great corporations their active enemies and oppressors" (Biography of William Cullen Bryant, I, 3 2 7 ) . 21 Eli Moore, Address before the General Trades' Union, pamphlet, pp. 1 4 - 1 5 ) . Moore was a president of the New York printers' union, a president of the General Trades' Union, an active politician, and the first representative of organized labor to serve in the United States Congress. 22 Evans was vice president and on the Ward Committee of the Mechanics and Workingmen's Committee against Monopolies {Adv. r, Jan. 16, 1 8 3 6 ) . He printed such Loco-Foco propaganda as Clinton Roosevelt's pamphlet, Mode of Protecting Domestic Industry, with its attack on the banking system and its proposal for an elastic currency; although they did not organize separately until 1835-36, the hard-money men had been active in the Democratic Party for years.

192

CONCLUSION

adequate educational facilities denied his children opportunity for advancement. E v e r y special privilege in the hands of groups or individuals was used to exploit and oppress the worker. 23 Similarly, it was the worker who would suffer most from any monopoly of the public lands. If cut off from the soil because of the high price or its absorption by the speculator who could buy and hold large tracts, the Eastern worker would be doomed to the fate of his English contemporary, whose plight was beginning to arouse the concern even of his own countrymen. T h e worker could not escape the dominance of the employer, who might cut wages with impunity as an increasing urban population competing for work made resistance through organization futile. But so long as the public lands remained accessible, the American worker had a refuge, and therefore exploitation was limited. 24 A t any cost, said Evans, that refuge must be preserved. T h e public domain should not 23 At this time, there was no national currency, and very little state regulation of the issue of notes by state banks. As a result of the number and varying soundness of these institutions, a "bank note detector" was part of the equipment of most businessmen. The notes of banks that were too distant for a ready check of their condition and of banks that were known to have failed did not pass at their face value and hence were known as "uncurrent" notes. It was common for employers to buy such notes of money brokers, at a discount, and pay them out as wages at their nominal value. Since sellers would take such notes only at a discount, if at all, nominal wages were decreased (Leggett, Political Writings, pp. 43, 246). The practice continued into the fifties (S. L. Clemens, Autobiography, II, 1 8 7 ) . The Democratic technique of appealing to the antimonopoly sentiments of workers caused the Whigs to term their opponents dangerous levelers (American Annual Register, VIII, 1 3 ; H. C. Flagg, Speech before the Whig Convention in Ne