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The early part of the 19th century saw a great westward surge of population. Thousands of squatters staked claims to unsettled lands, only to be driven off by the Army or avaricious speculators. The Pre-emption Acts of1830 and 1841 enabled squatters to buy title to up to 160 acres at $1.25 an acre, but this did not put an end to wholesale speculation and fraud in the disposal of public lands, nor did it benefit those who lacked the money to travel to and pay for the land. By the 1840 's, a widespread movement had emerged for free homesteads to settlers. George Henry Evans, a New York labor editor, was one of the leading free soil advocates. He urged an end to all selling of public lands and the free distribution of no more than 160 acres per family to actual settlers and farmers. He also wanted the government to pay for transportation to the land and equipment to farm it. The following excerpt is from The Working Man's Advocate, March 16, 1844.

The leading measure that we shall propose in this paper is the Equal Right of every man to the free use of a sufficient portion of the Earth to till for his subsistence. If man has a right to live, as all subsistence comes from the earth, he has a right, in a state of nature, to a portion of its spontaneous products; in a state of civilization, to a portion of the earth to till for his subsistence. This right is now, no matter why, in possession of a comparative few, many of whom possess not only a sufficiency, but a superfluity, of land: yet we propose not to divest them of that superfluity, against their consent. We simply propose that the inequality extend no further; that Government shall no longer traffic or permit traffic in that which is the property of no man or government; that the Land shall be left, as Nature dictates, free to the use of those who choose to bestow their labor upon it.

We propose that the Public Lands of the States and of the United States shall be free to actual settlers, and to actual settlers only; that townships of six miles square shall be laid out in Farms and Lots, of any vacant one of which a man, not possessed of other land, may take possession and keep same during his life or pleasure, and with the right to sell his improvements, at any time, to any one not possessed of other land....

We shall be told, perhaps, as we have been told occasionally by persons who had not reflected on the subject, that the public lands are so cheap now as to be accessible to all industrious persons who desire to settle on them. It is not so. Though the nominal price of the lands is one dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, the real price to the actual settler is nearer ten dollars an acre, unless he chooses to become a squatter and trust to Congress for the privilege of purchasing his land at the government price; for the speculator, under the present system, goes ahead of the settler, picks out the best and most eligibly suited tracts, pays for them with paper money (itself a monstrous cheat) or its profits, and when the actual settler conies, he must either pay the speculator's price or go further into the wilderness, where he must struggle for years under the disadvantage of conveying his surplus products over bad roads to a distant market.

But suppose that the settler could obtain lands near a market at the government price, they would still be as inaccessible to the bulk of our surplus laboring population as if they were in the hands of the speculators. Some few become settlers under the present system; a few more might become so if speculation in land were entirely prohibited; but it needs that the lands should be free, in order that the surplus laborers may be absorbed; for the expense of removal to the lands, and of the necessary stock and provisions to bring them into successful cultivation, is more than many could meet.