Land: The Forty Acres and a Mule broken promise
In January 1865, three months prior to the end of the Civil War, General William T. Sherman met with a group of freed slaves who were petitioning for land. They came up with a plan to set aside large parcels of confiscated and abandoned Confederate land along the Atlantic coastline from Charleston, South Carolina to St. Johns, Florida. They called the land Sherman’s reserve. Families were able to buy or be granted “forty acres and a mule,” indicating the amount of land and army mule they were to receive.
Although 40 acres was the allotment designated for each family, Congress allowed the Bureau to offer only 5 to 10-acre plots for sale. In June 1865, approximately 40,000 freedmen were settled on 400,000 acres of land in South Carolina and Georgia, referred to as “Sherman’s Land.” Southern whites were outraged. The idea of freedmen owning land was an explosive topic in the post-Civil War South. Southern white society resented the idea that former slaves should own land. They wanted to return the freedmen to their subordinate position in society, understanding that white control over land was key to regaining political, economic, and social control over blacks in the South.
Andrew Johnson, an advocate for the interests of the Southern states, became President following the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In the summer of 1865, President Johnson rescinded Sherman’s Field Order, issued a special pardon to Confederates, and instructed General O. O. Howard of the Freedmen’s Bureau to return the land to the previous owners. Many freedmen, like the inhabitants of Edisto Island, worked the “promised” land but did not yet legally own it. With this order, most freedmen were not only evicted, losing their investment in tools, crops, and time, they also lost the promise of independence and self-sufficiency that comes with land ownership.