Forty-Acres and a Mule 

Civil War Promises Made and Unkept

Michael Streich

First published in Suite101 April 2010

Special Field Orders, No. 15 was signed by General William T. Sherman January 16, 1865, creating forty-acre plots out of land south of Charleston, South Carolina for approximately 40,000 freedmen and their families. “Sherman’s Reservation” was most commonly identified with the phrase “forty acres and a mule,” although confiscated land was parceled out to freedmen throughout the South under the supervision of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Policy changes under President Andrew Johnson, however, returned most lands to former owners, evictions that were carried out by the army.

 

Origin of Forty Acres and a Mule

 

By late 1864 and into 1865, General Sherman’s army was shadowed by thousands of freed slaves, posing a logistical problem and forcing the issue of what was to become of the slaves after emancipation. After conferring with Secretary of War Stanton in Savannah, Sherman issued field orders establishing homesteads for the freedmen, instructing that they be loaned mules to assist in land tilling.

 

Sherman’s order, however, subjected the temporary arrangement to a time “until Congress shall regulate their title.” Further, Section V of the order details management of the settlement to an Inspector “who will furnish personally to each head of a family, subject to the approval of the President of the United States, a possessory title in writing…” Possessory titles carry no registration of a land claim and subject the settler to a period of years before actual ownership of the land can be acquired.

 

In contrast, a fee-simple title is characterized by absolute ownership of land. General Sherman, in his memoirs, denies the granting of fee-simple titles to the freedmen. Under Realty law, such titles are unqualified. The Freedmen living on confiscated land had no such title and according to Sherman, no such title was ever intended.

 

Andrew Johnson’s Policy of Pardon

 

Andrew Johnson’s pardoning of former Confederates included the restoration of confiscated land. According to historian Eric Foner, “a new policy drafted in the White House and issued in September [1865] …ordered the restoration to pardoned owners of all land except the small amount that had already been sold under a court decree.” Such court decrees carried with them superior ownership titles.

 

According to historian Page Smith, “By the end of 1866 only 1,565 out of more than 40,000 freedmen still occupied the land allotted to them in South Carolina.” Men like Brigadier General Saxon, who had been charged by Sherman with carrying out Field Order 15, were replaced by Johnson. Saxon had been a tireless worker on behalf of freedmen and their newly acquired rights and had been an active pre-war abolitionist.

 

The Role of the Radical Republicans

 

The goals of Congressional radicals were no more pure than those of the president they despised enough to impeach. Congressional leaders differentiated between social and political equality for blacks, as did many Northerners. Historian John David Smith of North Carolina State University writes that, “Congressional Republicans used the prospect of distributing land to punish ex-Confederates, as well as to garner the political support of black people and to establish the freedpeople as a landholding class, thereby guaranteeing their economic freedom.”

 

This was never achieved as confiscated land was returned to pre-war owners and Congress did little to stop the process. Freedom without land drove many blacks into sharecropping. With the advent of “Jim Crow” laws and the notion of “separate but equal,” forty acres and a mule became a cruel mockery even though it may never have been intended as a permanent solution as evidenced by the language used in Sherman’s Field Orders.

 

References:

 

Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (Harper & Row, 1988)

William T. Sherman, “Special Field Orders, No. 15,” text at history.umd.edu

John David Smith, “The Enduring Myth of ‘Forty Acres and a Mule,’” The Chronicle Review, Volume 49, Issue 24, February 21, 2003, p. B11

Page Smith, Trial By Fire: A People’s History of the Civil War and Reconstruction (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1982)

*Copyright of this article is owned by Michael Streich. Reprinting this article in any form must be granted in writing by the author