Arthur Keller

Beavertown

Have you ever heard the story of the phrase “40 acres and a mule?” Although I enjoy history, I couldn’t recall this story. This was the first attempt to provide a form of reparations to newly freed slaves after the Civil War. Astonishingly radical, it called for the federal government to confiscate 400,000 acres of private property from Confederate landowners and methodically redistribute it to former black slaves. How did this all come about?

General William T. Sherman and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton met with 20 leaders of the black community, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, at his headquarters in Savannah, Ga. on Jan. 12, 1865, following his famous March to the Sea. They asked them 12 questions regarding what they wanted for their people following the war. Their answer? Land, so they could best take care of themselves, land to work until they could purchase it for their own, land not scattered among the whites but their own community for the prejudice against them in the South would take years to get over. The result: Special Field Order No. 15, approved by President Lincoln.

Three parts of the order:

1. “The islands from Charleston, south, the rice fields along the rivers for 30 miles back from the sea to the St. Johns River in Florida…” 400,000 acres total.

2. The new communities would be governed entirely by black people, no white person would be allowed to reside there, exclusive management of affairs left to free blacks.

3. Each family to receive not more than 40 tillable acres with military protection until they can provide their own.

By June, 40,000 free slaves settled on 400,000 acres and elected a governor. Sherman ordered the army to lend each family a mule thus the phrase “40 acres and a mule.”

So, what happened to this visionary plan? Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor following his assassination, and a Southern sympathizer (a former Tennessee governor and War Democrat), overturned the order in the fall of 1865 and returned the land to the original owners “who waged war against the Union.”

Imagine how profoundly different the history of race relations in America would have been if this plan were not squashed by Lincoln’s Democrat successor.