The Homestead Act was an act that granted Americans 160-acre plots of public land for a small price. This was considered one of the most important legislation in the Civil War Era because it led to the West expansion.
The problem was that the Act had a flaw that allowed speculators to take advantage of the Act, most of those that purchased the land were speculators, cattlemen, miners, lumbermen and railroads, which was not the purpose of the Act.