Act was passed. By it a
farm of 80 or 160 acres was to be given to any head of a family, or any
person twenty-one years old, who was a citizen of the United States or,
being foreign born, had declared an intention to become a citizen,
provided he or she lived on the farm and cultivated it for five years.
Under this great and generous law 103,000 entries for 12,000,000 acres
were made between 1863 and 1870. This showed that the people wanted land
and was one reason why it should not be given to corporations.

%499. The Election of 1868.%--The questions discussed above (pp.
437-439) became the political issues of 1868.

The Republicans nominated Grant and Schuyler Colfax and declared for the
payment of all bonds in coin; for a reduction of the national debt and
the rate of interest; and for the encouragement of immigration.

The Democrats nominated Horatio Seymour and Francis P. Blair, and
demanded amnesty; rapid payment of the debt; "one currency for the
government, and the people, the laborer, and the office holder"; the
taxation of government bonds; and no land grants for public
improvements.

The popular vote was 5,700,000. In the electoral college Grant had 214
votes, and Seymour 80.

%500. Troubles in the South; the Ku Klux Klan.%--Grant and Colfax
began their term of office on March 4, 1869, and soon found that the
reconstruction policy of Congress had not been so successful as they
could wish, and that the work of protecting the freedman in the exercise
of his new rights was not yet completed. Three states (Virginia,
Mississippi, and Texas) had not yet complied with the conditions
imposed by Congress, and were still refused seats in the House and
Senate. No sooner had the others complied with the Reconstruction Act of
1867, and given the negro the right to vote, than a swarm of Northern
politicians, generally of the worst sort, went down and, as they said,
"ran things." They began by persuading the negroes that their old
masters were about to put them back into slavery, that it was only by
electing Union men to office that they could remain free; and having by
this means obtained control of the negro vote, they were made governors
and members of Congress, and were sent to the state legislature, where,
seated beside negroes who could neither read nor write, but who voted as
ordered, these "carpetbaggers," [1] as they were called, ruled the states
in the interest of themselves rather than in that of the people