The very fact that a nation caught up in such a trauma
as our Civil War should trouble to legislate on the greater access
of its citizens to land, education, and legal remedies is itself sin-
gular. Congressmen, creating the 1862 Morrill and Homestead
Acts (on education and land), and the 1863 Habeas Corpus Act
(on legal remedies), frequently acknowledged the antecedents of
these legislations to be in the Declaration of Independence, the
Northwest Ordinance, the Bill of Rights, and the first Judiciary
Act. ¹

First, a brief look at these remarkable Civil War statutes, be-
ginning with the May 1862 Homestead Act. It afforded loyal
adult citizens access to a quarter section of public lands at a mini-
mum $1.25 per acre, with protection for preemptive squatters.
Congress gave only a weak priority in homesteading to Union
military veterans, one reflecting the aforementioned article of
republican faith not to separate soldiers from the mass of cit-
izens. This assumption helps to explain also two globally unique
phenomena destined to be carried on in the declared and un-
declared wars of the twentieth century. The first phenomenon is
the fact that from Sumter to Appomattox, Union states carried
on calendared elections including those for humblest sheriffs
and justices of the peace to congressmen and presidents. The
second is that in the majority of these states, including the most
populous, soldiers voted. In Lincoln's memorable phrase, blue-
coats were "thinking bayonets" -- voting citizens, in short.

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