Arkansas Donation Land Act of 1840

On December 23, 1840, Arkansas’s governor Archibald Yell signed into law a statute with the cumbersome title of “An Act to Donate to Actual Settlers the Right of the State to Certain Forfeited Lands.” Despite its technical title, this law was enthusiastically received, being one of the first in U.S. history under which white Americans could claim free land if they turned the parcels into farms. Arkansas was able to offer this homesteading option more than twenty years before the passage of the federal Homestead Act of 1862 because it owned a large part of a military land tract between the St. Francis and Arkansas rivers that had been meant to remunerate soldiers of the War of 1812. Much land within this tract had remained undeveloped and had therefore fallen into state ownership. At least into the Reconstruction era, the Donation Land Act of 1840 afforded white Arkansans a comparatively attractive route toward land ownership.

Background
In early Arkansas, like other western areas, white settlers pushed the U.S. government to give them land for free. They argued this would help poor white settlers start farms and speed up the territory’s growth. Advocates drew on John Locke’s ideas of property under natural law, according to which only the work of farmers—of European descent—created value and thereby justified ownership of land. Arkansas’s territorial delegates in Washington DC had been involved in promoting a land bill in the 1820s under which all western lands owned by the U.S. government that had failed to sell at auction were to be offered to settlers for free. After this bill failed, Arkansas politicians and citizens attempted to petition the U.S. Congress by staging a defense emergency on the border with Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma and Kansas). If settlers were given free land on the border to the Indian Territory, they argued, they could build militias that could keep the allegedly dangerous Native American nations in the West under control. The U.S. government could thus save expenses on supposedly impending wars and troop expenditures by giving away lands it owned for free. After statehood in 1836, Senator William S. Fulton campaigned aggressively for this proposal, which became known as the “Belt Bill” (in reference to the belt of land to be offered on the western borders of Arkansas and Missouri).

The fact that the state lawmakers set about passing their own law in late 1840 was due to the failure of the Belt Bill in the U.S. Congress. After military officers from the western forts had vehemently objected to the portrayal of the western Indian nations as threats, on June 13, 1838, an overwhelming Senate majority voted against the bill. The idea for a state bill likely originated with state auditor and later governor Elias N. Conway. He explained the logic of the state bill as follows: “As a measure to encourage the settlement and improvement of these wild and uncultivated lands, and at the same time to augment the revenue, and afford to the poor and industrious, who might think proper to settle upon them, homes, at a cheap rate, it is recommended that a law be passed donating to every individual who would settle upon and improve a quarter section of such land, the right of the State thereto, conditioned that the taxes afterwards accruing upon the land thus occupied should be regularly paid, or the land and improvements thereon should revert to the State and remain subject to private sale.” (Arkansas State Gazette, November 18, 1840).

Operation and Significance
According to the state law, white settlers could claim parcels of up to 160 acres from lands that had been forfeited to the state and remained unsold for seven years. Claimants were obliged to cultivate at least five acres and to establish residence on the land. Upon registering their title, settlers had twelve months to fulfill these conditions, after which they would be granted official title ownership—provided they maintained continuous payment of county and state taxes on the property. In 1843, a significant amendment extended the application of the law to lands forfeited for five years instead of seven. Additionally, claimants were granted an eighteen-month window to make necessary land improvements instead of the initial twelve months. The legislation underwent further change in 1850 with an amendment broadening eligibility. Both white adult males and female heads of households were now recognized as eligible claimants. Furthermore, the sizes of claims were expanded to 160 acres per white household member.

There are only a few statistics about the number of land parcels claimed under the donation law. The state auditor’s office, which managed the law from 1841 to 1871, after which a state land office took over, published a brochure in 1847 that listed a total of 480,000 acres or 3,000 parcels of 160 acres to be claimed, mainly within the former tract of military land between the St. Francis and Arkansas rivers in the state’s east. By October 1848, the state auditor reported that settlers had already claimed 2,325 parcels. Surviving correspondence in the state auditor’s files and enthusiastic press reports from many parts of the United States suggest that the law was popular and succeeded in drawing settlers to Arkansas. “Hundreds are coming from Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. It is not astonishing to see forty immigrants camped together on the road at night,” the Jackson Mississippian reported with some envy on February 7, 1849.

How much land the state seized for non-payment of taxes over the years that was later opened up for free settlement has yet to be reconstructed. In 1871 alone, the state land office received 1,700 applications for land donations under this law. This suggests that, at least into the Reconstruction era, the state donation law significantly influenced the state’s development. To what extent Reconstruction legislation also effectively succeeded in opening up this homesteading option to African Americans remains to be researched.

For additional information:
“An Act to Donate to Actual Settlers the Right of the State to Certain Forfeited Lands.” December 23, 1840, Acts of Arkansas, 1840, pp. 60–62.

“An Act Concerning Forfeited Lands.” January 5, 1843, Acts of Arkansas, 1843, pp. 45–46.

“Auditor’s Office.” Weekly Arkansas Gazette, November 18, 1840, p. 2.

Bolton, S. Charles. Arkansas, 1800–1860: Remote and Restless. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998.

———. Territorial Ambition: Land and Society in Arkansas 1800–1840. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1993.

Conway, Elias N. A List of Forfeited Lands, Subject to Be Donated to Actual Settlers Under an Act of the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas, Entitled “An Act to Donate to Actual Settlers the Right of the State to Certain Forfeited Lands,” Approved 23d December 1840, and Other Supplementary Acts. Little Rock: Reardon & Garritt, 1847.

L. C. Gulley Collection, folders 27–31. Arkansas State Archives, Little Rock, Arkansas.

U.S. Senate. Committee on Public Lands. Report to Accompany Senate Bill No. 194, 25th Cong., 2nd sess., 1838, S. Doc. 151.

West, Jim-Bill. “Arkansas’ Donation Land Program, 1840–1855: The Laws and Their Effect,” May 10, 1973, 2, SMC #491, University of Central Arkansas Archives, Conway, Arkansas.

Wilm, Julius. Settlers as Conquerors: Free Land Policy in Antebellum America. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2018.

Julius Wilm
Leipzig University, Germany