"south side" theology, already referred to, called forth replies from various writers, and contributed largely to the general ferment which the friends of the Compromise measures were so anxious to tranquilize. Indeed, while the champions of slavery were exerting themselves as never before to stifle the anti-slavery spirit of the free States, the Abolitionists were delighted with the tokens of progress which everywhere saluted their vision and animated them with new courage and hope. It was early in the first session of this Congress that several members of the House introduced bills providing homesteads of one hundred and sixty acres each to actual landless settlers, without cost, on prescribed conditions of occupancy and improvement. The first of these bills in the order of time was that of Andrew Johnson, which was referred to the Committee on Agriculture, and subsequently reported favorably, and debated at different times. Similar propositions were offered in the Senate by Mr. Webster, and by Senator Walker, of Wisconsin. The fact is also worthy of note, that Horace Greeley, during his short term of service in the previous Congress, had offered a bill giving landless men the right to pre- empt one hundred and sixty acres for seven years, and, on condition of occupancy and improvement, the "right of unlimited occupancy" to forty acres of the same, without price, by a single man, or eighty acres by the married head of a family. But the legislative initiation of the Homestead law, substantially as we now have it, belongs to the House of Representatives of the Thirty-first Congress, and its policy was borrowed from the Free Soil platform of 1848 and the Land Reformers of New York. This measure completely reversed the early policy of the Government, when settlers on the public lands were dealt with as trespassers, while its triumph, years afterward, marked an epoch in our legislation, and has done more to make the American name honored and loved at home and abroad than any single enactment since the year 1789. Having earnestly espoused this policy years before, I sought the acquaintance of Mr. Johnson for the purpose of co-operating with him in urging it, and found him its sincere friend. Although loyal to his party, he seemed to have little sympathy with the extreme men among its leaders, and no unfriendliness to me on account of my decided anti-slavery opinions. When my homestead speech was ready for delivery, although the slave-holders hated its doctrines as heartily as they hated "abolitionism" itself, and it was through his friendly tactics that I finally obtained the floor, in opposition to the earnest wish and determined purpose of Speaker Cobb.