Sherman’s field order redistributed 400,000 acres directly in response to the ministers’ demands

Evidence

On January 16, 1865, four days following his meeting with the black clergymen, General Sherman, with the approval of President Abraham Lincoln, issued Special Field Order No. 15, reallocating 400,000 acres of confiscated property for land grants to freed black men and women. The territory outlined for redistribution included Georgia’s Sea Islands and a swath of coastline from Charleston, South Carolina, down to the St. John’s River in Florida. The field order was a direct response to what he heard from the black ministers. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 16

Categorization

• XREF: The causal chain — ministers’ testimony produced a concrete federal remedy — is the seed of the case that a reparations remedy is administratively feasible, having been executed once before.