Rensselaer Gazette, Volume 3, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 March 1860 — The Homestead Bill. [ARTICLE]

The Homestead Bill.

The pro-slavery Senate is ready at any moment to appropriate §400,000,000 for the acquisition of Cuba for t ie interest and in behalf of the 300,000 nigger-drivers of the South. The white men ot the North—the poor landless white men—are asking an act ol justice at the Senate’s hands—he rigut of each to appropriate to hiipselt a quarter-sec-tion ol the public domain, to be his upon the condition that he redeems it from the wilderness of nature, reduces it to cultivation, and makes it a source of wealth to the nation. The reasons for complying with this demand, whether they be sought in man’s natural and ioaJienable right to a portion of God’s earth sufficient for his sustenanc , or the considerations which affect the rntterU prosperity and sociul advancement of the R public, are overwhelmingly powerful. But while that Senate is the support and perpetuation of human bondage, and thereby the degradation ol human labor, no reason will be of force en ugh to secure the passage ofAh - H mestead ill. Its fate is already sealed. It needs only the ioriiiality of a vote u> put it out of sight. Neither immediately nor remotely does .t promise to exalt Slavery. It is only an act of justice to landless white men. Ol course it has no chance. It is a trumped-up reproach hurled at the Republican party by their opponents —-’‘You are eternally talking ah-mt the nigger, legislating about 'he nigger, fluffing tor the nigger! Wily don't you turn your attention to the wants and demands of white melit” Were the taunt ever deserved, it is deserved no longer. Here is a white man’s measure — not the banking while man, the speculating white man, the !■ aiur'stcturing, or the ironmaking whit man, but the laboring, landless white man. And here is a hance lor the Democratic party to proto the sincerity of their professions f r tffti class. They will give three hundred millions of dollars for Cuba, for the nigger-breeding white man; now what will they give the landless, treelabor whiteman? Let Jiat Democratic Senate answer!— Press and Tribune.