Why did the East disagree with the Homestead Act?

Answer 1

The Homestead Act led to larger emigration from the east to the west. This led to the possibility of more states in the West and therefore a loss of representative power in the East.

Answer 2

here is your answer


It is far more interesting when people talk to each other.
I'll start with the issues Mike O'Malley raises. When I say that afterthe Civil War the West is largely an extension of the North, I mean thatthe issue of slavery is settled and the kinds of conflicts that wracked theterritorial system in the 1850s are over. The free labor society with its praise of small freeholders and its embrace of the Homestead Act was
largely Northern. It is no accident that the Homestead Act and railroadgrants go through Congress quickly after secession. Similarly, the active recruitment of immigrants, both native-born and foreign, that so quickly
developed the West was far more typical of the North than the South. The capital that developed the West was from the East and Europe. I think that pre-industrial codes of honor in the West can be exaggerated. Western violence was more likely to be class violence and centered on
industrial labor conflicts. The kind of white supremacy apparent in theWest was endemic to American society and not peculiar to the South. I don't see much South in the West outside of Texas, Oklahoma, and perhaps sections of Arizona until the migrations of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.
I also found John McNeil's comments interesting. John repeats what has been an important Western line of thought about the relation of the West to the East, but it is one that I disagree with. The West was a creation of the East in the sense that most Western farmers, ranchers, and all miners
and timbermen etc. were tied to Eastern markets and depended on railroads to get their goods to market. They resented the dependence on Eastern capital, but it was quite real. They turned to federal aid to gain independence from eastern business and came in time to resent their dependence on the federal government.There is, I am afraid, little evidence to think that Indians would have been better off without the federal government intervening between them and American settlers. Those places where local settlers or travelersdominated relations with Indian peoples - - Nevada, northern California,
southern Oregon - - had the most brutal Indian relations in the West.

Answer 3

it diluted thier wealth, and stood to rob the east of much of thier cheap labor