Tennessee Congressman Andrew Johnson took up the cause of free land for working people in the 1840's. Southerners opposed Johnson's land giveaway as benefitting working-class whites who were unlikely to vote slavery into the new states. The bill establishing the Homestead Act was signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 after the southern states had left the union.

The Homestead Act declared that any citizen or intended citizen could claim 160 acres- one quarter square mile- of surveyed government land. Claimants must "improve" the plot with a dwelling and grow crops. After 5 years, if the original filer was still on the land, it was his property, free and clear. Among the first takers was a Union scout from Iowa named Daniel Freeman and his wife Agnes. Daniel Freeman persuaded the Brownville, Nebraska land agent to let him sign up shortly after midnight on January 1, 1863, the day the act took effect, so Freeman could return to his regiment.

Since 1936, the Freeman's T-shaped claim has commemorated one of the first documented Nebraska homesteads, as well as the waves of American landseekers and European immigrants who ventured west in the late 19th century to take up the demanding life of the prairie farmer. Homestead National Monument includes the original Freeman land, an historic log cabin typical of those in eastern Nebraska, the original Freeman school, and trails that wind through the restored tallgrass prairie.
-information from Homestead Official Map and Guide