How did the Homestead Act and the Morrill Act open up the West?

The Homestead Acts were a series of laws passed by the United States government between 1860 and 1930. They opened up over 10%, or 270 million acres, of the total land in the United States to applicants free of charge. Each homestead law had its own requirements for applicants, but the most famous one, the Homestead Act of 1862, said that any adult citizen who had no history of violence against the government was allowed to apply for a piece of land, called a homestead, which was usually 160 acres in size. The land was given to applicants free of charge; all they had to pay was a small application fee. Most of this land was west of the Mississippi River, so the laws led to a massive increase in the number of Americans living in the western part of America. People who received a homestead were required to farm the land, build a home on the land, and live on the land for at least five years.
The idea behind the series of homestead laws was to encourage individuals to farm their own land without the use of slave labor in order to increase productivity in America and to expand the number of American citizens living in areas that previously were not occupied by American settlers.
There are two Morrill Land-Grant Acts: one passed in 1862 and another in 1890. The Morrill Act of 1862 was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln two months after the Homestead Act of 1862. This act was not passed primarily to encourage expansion into the West (they provided land grants for colleges in every state, east or west), but it nonetheless helped support many of the new farmers on their newly acquired western land. Here's why: Under the Morrill Acts, the United States government provided land to each state on which to build colleges. These colleges were expected to teach agricultural skills. The agricultural focus of the colleges taught farming and other mechanical skills to many of the new homesteaders living west of the Mississippi River.
These two acts, especially the ones passed in 1862, together provided farmland and agricultural training to farmers willing to live on tracts of land west of the Mississippi.