Forty acres and a mule refers to a key part of Special Field Orders, No. 15 (series 1865), a wartime order proclaimed by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than . Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. They provided for the confiscation of of land along the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida and the dividing of it into parcels of not more than ,O.R. Series 1, Volume 47, Part 2, 60–62 on which were to be settled approximately 18,000 formerly enslaved families and other black people then living in the area.
Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land. However, Abraham Lincoln's successor as president, Andrew Johnson, tried to reverse the intent of Sherman's wartime Order No. 15 and similar provisions included in the second Freedmen's Bureau bills.
Some land redistribution occurred under military jurisdiction during the war and for a brief period thereafter. However, federal and state policy during the Reconstruction era emphasized wage labor, not land ownership, for black people. Almost all land allocated during the war was restored to its pre-war white owners. Several black communities did maintain control of their land, and some families obtained new land by homesteading. Black land ownership increased markedly in Mississippi, particularly during the 19th century. The state had much undeveloped bottomland (low-lying alluvial land near a river) behind riverfront areas that had been cultivated before the war. Most black people acquired land through private transactions, with ownership peaking at or ~23,000 square miles in 1910, before an extended financial recession caused problems that resulted in the loss of property for many.
Background
African Americans faced severe discrimination and were maintained as a distinct "racial" group by laws requiring racial segregation and prohibiting miscegenation. Free African Americans were often perceived as a job-stealing threat to society because they were usually willing to work for lower wages than white people. Moreover, they were seen as a dangerous influence on those who remained enslaved. Because of this, freed slaves were unwelcome in most areas of the United States.
In the South, vagrancy laws had allowed the states to force free African Americans into labor and sometimes to sell them into slavery. Nevertheless, free African Americans across the country performed a variety of occupations, including a small number who owned and operated successful farms. Others settled in Upper Canada (now Southern Ontario), an endpoint of the Underground Railroad, and in Nova Scotia.
In contrast to the northern United States where free African Americans were able to acquire substantial real estate, the institution of slavery in the southern United States deprived multiple generations of African Americans of the opportunity to own land. Legally, slaves could not own anything. But in practice, observed historian Dylan C. Penningroth, some enslaved people were permitted to "have possessions they could think of as property." These possessions might be confiscated by their enslavers at any time, with no recourse. As legal slavery came to an end, white people did not agree on how freed slaves ought to be treated. Some maintained that the lands the freed slaves had farmed without compensation should be confiscated from their former owners and given to them. Others, fearing the "race"-mixing that allowing them to remain in the U.S. would inevitably bring about, wanted them sent "somewhere else". Plans for a colony of freed slaves began in 1801 when James Monroe asked President Thomas Jefferson to help create a penal colony for rebellious blacks.
The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in 1816 to address the issue of free African Americans through settlement (not resettlement) abroad. Although there was discussion of settling them in some undeveloped land in the new western territories or helping them emigrate to Canada or Mexico, the ACS decided to send them to Africa. They chose the closest available land, thereby minimizing transportation costs. However, colonization was slow and expensive and of little interest to most African Americans who had no ties with or interest in Africa. Some former slaves expressed that they were no more African than white Americans were British. Between 1822 and the American Civil War, the American Colonization Society had migrated approximately 15,000 free African Americans to Liberia."July 26, 1847 Liberian independence proclaimed", This Day In History, History website. However, this number represented only a small fraction of the 7.5 million enslaved people who were about to be free. With mass emancipation looming, there was no consensus about what to do with the soon-to-be-free black slaves. This issue had long been known to white authorities as "The Negro Problem".
Issuing a land grant to an entire class of people was not unusual in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was so much land that it was often given freely to anyone willing to farm it. For example, Thomas Jefferson included in his draft of a revolutionary constitution for Virginia in 1776 a proposed grant of 50 acres to any free man who did not already own that amount. Subsequently, the Preemption Act of 1841, followed by several Homestead Acts that were passed between 1862 and 1916, variously granted between 160 and 640 acres (a quarter section to a full section) of land. However, free African Americans were not generally eligible for homesteading because they were not citizens. This changed with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 which granted citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States". This was further solidified by the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 which granted all citizens, regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude", the right to vote.
War Congress passed the Confiscation Act of 1861, allowing the Union Army to legitimately confiscate property during its conflict with the South. This law authorized the troops to seize rebel property, including land and slaves. In fact, it reflected the rapidly expanding reality of black refugee camps that had sprung up around the Union Army. These obvious manifestations of the "Negro Problem" sparked antagonism among many Union rank-and-file members, necessitating officer-led leadership.. "The North, unprepared for war, was even more unprepared for the burden of caring for thousands of fleeing bondsmen. The only organization which could perform this monumental task was the Union army. But to most army men, freedmen were at best a nuisance. At worst, they were representatives of the despised race for whom Northern white men were being asked to kill or be killed."
Grand Contraband Camp After secession, the Union maintained its control over Fort Monroe in Hampton on the coast of Southern Virginia. Escaped slaves rushed to the area, hoping for protection from the Confederate Army. (Even more quickly, the town's white residents fled to Richmond.) General Benjamin Butler set a precedent for Union forces on May 24, 1861, when he refused to surrender escaped slaves to Confederates claiming ownership. Butler declared the slaves contraband of war and allowed them to remain with the Union Army.. "Nevertheless, shady though some of his tactics may have been in the opinion of some, Butler is to be rated as famous for the stand he took on that morning of the twenty-fourth of May when he declared that the escaped slave who stood before him should not be returned to his master but that he and all others who so came were to be regarded as contraband of war. From this time forward all escaped and abandoned slaves in the South were frequently known as 'contrabands.'" By July 1861, there were 300 "contraband" slaves working for rations at Fort Monroe. By the end of July there were 900, and General Butler appointed Edward L. Pierce as Commissioner of Negro Affairs.
Confederate raiders under General John B. Magruder burnt the nearby town of Hampton, Virginia on August 7, 1861, but the "contraband" blacks occupied its ruins. They established a shantytown known as the Grand Contraband Camp. Many worked for the Army at a rate of $10.00/month, but these wages were not sufficient for them to make major improvements in housing. Conditions in the Camp grew worse, and Northern humanitarian groups sought to intervene on behalf of its 64,000 residents.. "Nevertheless, the housing situation was so desperate that complaints emanated from the Reverend Lockwood, the A.M.A. and the just-organized National Freedmen's Relief Association and led to investigation by the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, appointment of Captain C. B. Wilder of Boston to protect the blacks' interests and the construction of large buildings in which the Negroes could live." Captain C. B. Wilder was appointed to organize a response. The perceived humanitarian crisis may have hastened Lincoln's plans for colonizing Île-à-Vache. "The distress of the six thousand Negroes at Fort Monroe, Virginia, may have influenced Lincoln to proceed despite the Senator's misgivings. A report by Quakers in December, 1862, described the refugees quartered in small rooms, sometimes containing ten to twelve persons each, with insufficient fuel and clothing to keep warm throughout the winter month."
A plan developed in September 1862 would have relocated refugees en masse to Massachusetts and other northern states. This plan—initiated by John A. Dix and supported by Captain Wilder and Secretary of War Stanton—drew negative reactions from Republicans who wanted to avoid connecting northward black migration with the newly announced Emancipation Proclamation. Fear of competition by black workers, as well as generalized racial prejudice, made the prospect of black refugees unpalatable for Massachusetts politicians.
With support from orders from General Rufus Saxton, General Butler and Captain Wilder pursued local resettlement operations, providing many of the blacks in Hampton with two acres of land and tools with which to work. Others were assigned jobs as servants in the North. Various smaller camps and colonies were formed, including the Freedmen's Colony of Roanoke Island. Hampton was well known as one of the War's first and biggest refugee camps, and served as a sort of model for other settlements.. "During the Civil War, the groups which would shape the post-bellum life of black Hampton came together for the first time. Over that same period, the issues that would inform black and white approaches to freedom, in Hampton and in the South as a whole, crystallized. [...] In these unstable circumstances, Northern whites and Southern blacks had their first large-scale encounter of the war."
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