Douglas belonged to his section, too, in his attitude toward the disposition of the public domain.  He was one of the first to advocate free grants of the public lands to homesteaders.  His bill to grant one hundred and sixty acres to actual settlers who should cultivate them for four years, was the first of many similar projects in the early fifties.[596] Southern statesmen thought this the best “bid” yet made for votes:  it was further evidence of Northern demagogism.  The South, indeed, had little direct interest in the peopling of the Western prairies by independent yeomen, native or foreign.  Just here Douglas parted company with his Southern associates.  He believed that the future of the great West depended upon this wise and beneficial use of the national domain.  Neither could he agree with Eastern statesmen who deplored the gratuitous distribution of lands, which by sale would yield large revenues.  His often-repeated reply was the quintessence of Western statesmanship.  The pioneer who went into the wilderness, to wrestle with all manner of hardships, was a true wealth-producer.  As he cleared his land and tilled the soil, he not only himself became a tax-payer, but he increased the value of adjoining lands and added to the sum total of the national resources.[597]

Douglas gave his ungrudging support to grants of land in aid of railroads and canals.  He would not regard such grants, however, as mere donations, but rather as wise provisions for increasing the value of government lands.  “The government of the United States is a great land owner; she has vast bodies of land which she has had in market for thirty or forty years; and experience proves that she cannot sell them....  The difficulty in the way of the sale does not arise from the fact that the lands are not fertile and susceptible to cultivation, but that they are distant from market, and in many cases destitute of timber."[598] Therefore he gave his voice and vote for nearly all land grant bills, designed to aid the construction of railroads and canals that would bring these public lands into the market; but he insisted that everything should be done by individual enterprise if possible.  He shared the hostility of the West toward large grants of land to private corporations.[599] What could not be done by individual enterprise, should be done by the States; and only that should be undertaken by the Federal government which could be done in no other way.

As the representative of a constituency which was profoundly interested in the navigation of the great interior waterways of the continent, Douglas was a vigorous advocate of internal improvements, so far as his Democratic conscience would allow him to construe the Constitution in favor of such undertakings by the Federal government.  Like his constituents, he was not always logical in his deductions from constitutional provisions.  The Constitution, he believed, would not permit an appropriation of government money for the construction of the ship canal around the Falls of the St. Mary’s; but as landowner, the Federal government might donate lands for that purpose.[600] He was also constrained to vote for appropriations for the improvement of river channels and of harbors on the lakes and on the ocean, because these were works of a distinctly national character; but he deplored the mode by which these appropriations were made.[601]