Economic and Social Impacts · US History

The Homestead Act of 1862 encouraged Western settlement during the war by:

  1. Selling large tracts of the best public land to the highest bidder at government auctions
  2. Offering 160 acres of free public land to anyone who would farm it for five years
  3. Granting land exclusively to former Confederate soldiers and their immediate families
  4. Reserving Western lands for the future expansion of the transcontinental railroad
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Correct answer: Offering 160 acres of free public land to anyone who would farm it for five years

The Republican-controlled Congress passed this to promote the vision of 'free soil, free labor.' It was intended to populate the West with small independent farmers rather than large slave-holding estates.

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