ABSTRACT
While idealists were killing each other in the Civil War, practical men, from the highest to the lowest, were devoting themselves to money-making. The Homestead Act, vetoed as subversive by President Buchanan in 1860, was passed in a more drastic form in 1862. By this measure, any American, or any foreigner expressing his intention of becoming naturalized, could obtain 160 acres of public land for nothing. In order to increase the amount of attractive public land available, the Federal Administration, in the middle of the Civil War, started a war against the Indians, to deprive them of the lands west of the Mississippi which had been assigned to them by Jackson. There was a great exodus to the new homesteads, not only from eastern farms, but also from cities and factories. To compensate for the loss of American labour, an Act was passed enabling employers to import indentured labour from Europe. Meanwhile the war was financed partly by loans, partly by a protective tariff, which rose from an average of 19 per cent to an average of 47 per cent during the war years.1
