Sherman issued Field Order No. 15 granting freed families forty acres of self-governed land

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. … “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, 16

Categorization

• XREF: Relevant to the reparations debate as the concrete historical precedent of government land redistribution at freedmen’s own request. — connects to: Field Order No. 15 granted freed people exclusive self-governance over their land — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 17
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Field Order No. 15 granted freed people exclusive self-governance over their land — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 17

Broader Connections

• Field Order No. 15 granted freed people exclusive self-governance over their land #corroborates (0.93) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 17