Toronado3800
Gold Member
- Nov 15, 2009
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This one sends me in a few logic circles.
In recent months I have taken to consider the Homestead Act to be an ingenious method of using big government to colonize the American West.
A quick glance at combat casualties by war lists on Wikipedia make a combined Indian Wars category of the 19th Century to be more deadly than the Mexican American War, the Spanish American War or the War of 1812. United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia That's every sizable military conflict we were in that century besides the Civil War.
In terms of size of the project..
Years ago I was amazed the Union Pacific still employees soo many real estate agents selling off land it was granted as part of the transcontinental railroad project. Then watching some Pa Ingalls reruns I started to think about Homesteading and was further amazed at the size of the project.
Now I'm not criticizing it in this post, Manifest Destiny, the Genocide of Native Americans, those are other topics to be debated elsewhere. What I'm saying is the Homestead Act and similar Acts were great giant government project involving not just grants of a continent's worth of land but the 2nd largest use of our military of the century.
In other words it was one heck of a big government project and when talking about the good ol days we should think of the 1800's as the century of big government.
In recent months I have taken to consider the Homestead Act to be an ingenious method of using big government to colonize the American West.
A quick glance at combat casualties by war lists on Wikipedia make a combined Indian Wars category of the 19th Century to be more deadly than the Mexican American War, the Spanish American War or the War of 1812. United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia That's every sizable military conflict we were in that century besides the Civil War.
In terms of size of the project..
Years ago I was amazed the Union Pacific still employees soo many real estate agents selling off land it was granted as part of the transcontinental railroad project. Then watching some Pa Ingalls reruns I started to think about Homesteading and was further amazed at the size of the project.
Now I'm not criticizing it in this post, Manifest Destiny, the Genocide of Native Americans, those are other topics to be debated elsewhere. What I'm saying is the Homestead Act and similar Acts were great giant government project involving not just grants of a continent's worth of land but the 2nd largest use of our military of the century.
In other words it was one heck of a big government project and when talking about the good ol days we should think of the 1800's as the century of big government.