Galusha A. Grow

Pennsylvania Speaker of the House known as the father of the Homestead Act.

Overview

Grow first won his House seat in 1850 and spent the following decade pressing for free homesteads on the public lands, a cause bitterly resisted by Southern members who feared new free states. In 1858 he was at the center of a mass brawl on the House floor that began with an exchange of insults with South Carolina's Laurence Keitt. Elected Speaker when the Thirty-seventh Congress met in 1861, he saw the Homestead Act become law in 1862. He lost his own seat that year, becoming the last sitting Speaker defeated for reelection until 1994, and returned to the House for several terms in the 1890s.