traditional, and now, at the close of the
grandest of all our wars, it was quite natural for the country's
defenders to claim its supposed benefits. Congress was flooded
with their petitions, and it required uncommon political courage
to oppose their wishes. It was very plausibly urged that the
Nation, with its heavy load of debt, could not pay a bounty in
money, and that it should be done by drawing liberally upon the
thousand million acres of the public domain. Some of the advocates
of this policy openly favored the repeal of the Homestead law for
this purpose, just as Thurlow Weed, earlier in the war, had demanded
its repeal so that our public lands could be mortgaged to European
capitalists in security for the money we needed to carry on the
struggle. The situation became critical. Everybody was eager to
reward the soldier, and especially the politicians; and there seemed
to be no other way to do it than by bounties in land, for which
all our previous wars furnished precedents. The House Committee
on Public Lands considered the question with great care and anxiety,
and in the hope of check-mating that project made a report in
response to one of the many petitions for land bounty which had
been referred to it, embodying some very significant facts. It
showed that more than two millions and a quarter of soldiers would
be entitled to a bounty in land, and that it would require more
than one third of the public domain remaining undisposed of, and
cover nearly all of it that was really fit for agriculture; that
the warrants would undoubtedly be made assignable, as in the case
of previous bounties, and that land speculation would thus find
its new birth and have free course in its dreadful ravages; and
that it would prove the practical overthrow of the policy of our
pre-emption and homestead laws and turn back the current of American
civilization and progress. The report further insisted that the
Nation could not honorably plead poverty in bar of the great debt
it owed its defenders, and it was accompanied by a bill providing
a bounty in money at the rate of eight and one third dollars per
month for the time of their service, which was drawn after conferring
with intelligent men among them who fully appreciated the facts
and arguments of the committee. This report and its accompanying
bill had an almost magical effect. They not only perfectly satisfied
the soldiers everywhere, but revolutionized the opinion of b