Signed by Abraham Lincoln on May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act allowed any adult citizen (or person filing intent to become one) to claim 160 acres of surveyed public land by living on, improving, and cultivating it for five years. It ultimately transferred roughly 270 million acres — about 10 percent of the country — into private hands. The Act democratized land ownership and helped populate the Great Plains, but it also enabled displacement of Native peoples from lands they had long inhabited. It stands alongside the Morrill Land-Grant Act (also 1862) and the Pacific Railway Act as the Civil War Congress's blueprint for the postwar national economy.