http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconst...03_tr_qry.html
Is currentlly doing a series on reconstruction. This topic is discussed.
On January 11th, President Lincoln sent his Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, to Savannah. Stanton instructed General Sherman to set up a meeting with some of the city's black ministers. He wanted to hear how the freedmen imagined their future in the South. That evening, twenty black men entered the grand parlor as guests of Stanton and Sherman. Sixteen were former slaves. They chose Reverend Garrison Frazier, who'd purchased his freedom nine years earlier, to be their spokesman. For the first time, Federal officials conferred with freed slaves about the future of African Americans in the South.
The exchange that occurs between Sherman, Stanton, and the Union generals, and Reverend Frazier, is one of the extraordinary moments of the Civil War and the ending of the Civil War, because they asked Frazier not just, "What should we do with all these refugees?" They asked him questions about what the war meant. They asked him questions about what the Emancipation Proclamation had meant. They asked him what the presence of black troops in the Union army meant. And, in many ways, you'll find no better definition of the meaning of the Civil War in the kinds of answers that Garrison Frazier gives that day in Savannah.
Four days later, anxious to get thousands of freed slaves off his hands, and Washington off his back, General Sherman issued Special Field Order 15. It was only a temporary order, but it became one of the most controversial of the Civil War. Plantations in the rice country had been abandoned by white planters during the war. Four hundred thousand of these acres would be given over to African Americans for settlement. The huge land tract included the Sea Islands and parts of the Georgia and South Carolina coast.
Forty acres of land will be given out to each family. Plus, Sherman says, the Army's got tons of mules, which we don't really need. They're broken down from our long march. If any one wants a mule they can have one of these mules. This is the origin of that famous phrase, "forty acres and a mule."
As Campbell arrived to the island and they put the gangplank down, the island was overgrown. It's been looted by Union naval forces. The sea grass is high. There are rattlesnakes. There are alligators. He can see the slave cabins. They're also in great disrepair. Immediately upon arriving and assessing the situation there, he writes to the American Missionary Association asking for seed, asking for plows, sweet potatoes to supplement the diet, marriage licenses for the people. And he calls a meeting of the people to explain to them: "This is our home." "Beginning next week, I will divide up the land into forty acres for each of you."
The planters are holding up deeds to the islands that are two hundred years old, or one hundred fifty years old. They said, "No, wait a minute. This is a nation of laws, and see, my great-granddaddy had this deed. And yours comes from a possessory title given to you in time of war for abandoned lands? How does that affect my promise of property rights under the Constitution of the United States?"
General Howard has to tell these former slaves that the land that they thought had been given to them by the federal government now is going to be given back to the former owners. And if they want to remain there, they're going to have to sign labor contracts to work as laborers on these plantations.
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
SPECIAL FIELD ORDERS, No. 15. 
Linear Mode
