Field Order No. 15 granted freed people exclusive self-governance over their land

Evidence

“By the laws of war, and the orders of the President of the United States, the negro is free and must be dealt with as such,” Sherman’s order proclaimed. Each family would be granted forty acres of “tillable ground” where “they might locate their families and work out for themselves a living and respectability.” The field order also provided that “no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves, subject only to the United States military authority and the acts of Congress.” The ministers’ wish for land and self-determination was seemingly fulfilled. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 17

Categorization

• XREF: The remedy promised was self-determination under black management — restoration of agency, not alms — a precedent for what reparations should aim to restore.