The atrocity, bondage, and crime of slavery was enforced upon Africans by this country and it's allies centuries ago. It lasted for hundreds of years. We can still feel the affect of the institution of slavery upon African Americans in the United States. There is tension between the dominate ruling class in the United States and the descendants of Africans held in bondage (African Americans). We were a people brought to this land illegally and against our will. The methods used were against every moral and legal precept known to civilized man. Inequalities remain institutionalized and stratified in American society today due to slavery and racism.
40 acres and a mule was a slogan that originated as a result of U.S. Army General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order, No. 15 (January 16, 1865) providing that every ex-slave family receive 40 acres of farm land. Former slaves were later let army mules to facilitate the plowing of their newly acquired land. These lands divided were along the coast and rivers south of Charleston. Although some efforts had been made during and after the Civil War to seize the land of Confederate planters and distribute it to former slaves, the slogan "40 acres and a mule" remained pretty much an empty promise.
Headquarters Military Division of the Mississippi,
In the Field, Savannah, Georgia, January 16, 1865
1. The islands from Charleston south, the abandoned rice-field along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. John's River, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.
2. At Beaufort, Hilton Head, Savannah, Fernandina, St. Augustine, and Jacksonville, the blacks may remain in their chosen or accustomed vocations; but on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, 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. By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro is free, and must be dealt with as such. He cannot be subjected to conscription, or forced military service, save by the written orders of the highest military authority of the department, under such regulations as the President or Congress may prescribe. Domestic servants, blacksmiths, carpenters, and other mechanics, will be free to select their own work and residence, but the young and able-bodied negroes must be encouraged to enlist as soldiers in the service of the United States, to contribute their share toward maintaining their own freedom, and securing
their rights as citizens of the United States.
Negroes so enlisted will be organized into companies, battalions, and regiments, under the orders of the United States military authorities, and will be paid, fed, and clothed, according to law. The bounties paid on enlistment may, with the consent of the recruit, go to assist his family and settlement in procuring agricultural implements, seed, tools, boots, clothing, and other articles necessary for their livelihood.
3. Whenever three respectable negroes, heads of families, shall desire to settle on land, and shall have selected for that purpose an island or a locality clearly defined within the limits above designated, the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations will himself, or by such subordinate officer as he may appoint, give them a license to settle such island or district and afford them such assistance as he can to enable them to establish a peaceable agricultural settlement. The three parties named will subdivide the land, under the supervision of the inspector, among themselves, and such others as may choose to settle near them, so that each family shall have a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground, and, when it borders on some water-channel, with not more than eight hundred feet water-front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title. The quartermaster may, on the requisition of the Inspector of Settlements and Plantations, place at the disposal of the inspector one or more of the captured steamers to ply between the settlements and one or more of the commercial points heretofore named, in order to afford the settlers the opportunity to supply their necessary wants, and to sell the products of their land and labor.
4. Whenever a negro has enlisted in the military service of the United States, he may locate his family in any one of the settlements at pleasure, and acquire a homestead, and all other rights and privileges of a settler, as though present in person. In like manner, negroes may settle their families and engage on board the gunboats, or in fishing, or in the navigation of the inland waters, without losing any claim to land or other advantages derived from this system. But no one, unless an actual settler as above defined, or unless absent on Government service, will be entitled to claim any right to land or property in any settlement by virtue of these orders.
5. In order to carry out this system of settlement, a general officer will be detailed as Inspector of Settlements and plantations whose duty it shall be to visit the settlements, to regulate their police and general arrangement, and who will furnish personally to each head of a family, subject to the approval of the President of the United States, a possessory title in writing, giving as near as possible the description of boundaries; and who shall adjust all claims or conflicts that may arise under the same, subject to the like approval, treating such titles altogether as possessory. The same general officer will also be charged with the enlistment and organization of the negro recruits, and protecting their interests while absent from their settlements; and will be governed by the rules and regulations prescribed by the War Department for such purposes.
6. Brigadier-General R. Saxton is hereby appointed Inspector of Settlements and Plantations, and will at once enter on the performance of his duties. No change is intended or desired in the settlement now on Beaufort Island, nor will any rights to property heretofore acquired be affected thereby.
By order of Major-General W. T. Sherman,
L. M . Dayton, Assistant Adjutant-General.
SOURCE: Reprinted in William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman, vol. 2 (New York, 1875), pages 730-732.
On January 16, 1865, Union general
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| William T. Sherman |
Sherman's order came on the heels of his successful March to the Sea from Atlanta to Savannah and just prior to his march northward into South Carolina. Radical Republicans in Congress, like Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, for some time had pushed for land redistribution in order to break the back of Southern slaveholders' power. Feeling pressure from within his own party, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln sent his secretary of war, Edwin M. Stanton, to Savannah in order to facilitate a conversation with Sherman over what to do with Southern planters' lands.
On January 12 Sherman and Stanton met with twenty black leaders of the Savannah community, mostly Baptist and Methodist ministers, to discuss the question of emancipation. Lincoln approved Field Order No. 15 before Sherman issued it just four days after meeting with the black leaders. From Sherman's perspective the most important priority in issuing the directive was military expediency. It served as a means of providing for the thousands of black refugees who had been following his army since its invasion of Georgia. He could not afford to support or protect these refugees while on campaign.
The order explicitly called for the settlement of black families on confiscated land, encouraged freedmen to join the Union army to help sustain their newly won liberty, and designated a general officer to act as inspector of settlements. Inspector General Rufus Saxton would police the land and work to ensure legal title of the property for the black settlers. In a later order, Sherman also authorized the army to loan mules to the newly settled farmers.
Sherman's
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| Freedmen's Bureau |
The immediate effect of Sherman's order provided for the settlement of roughly 40,000 blacks (both refugees and local slaves who had been under Union army administration in the Sea Islands since 1861). This lifted the burden of supporting the freed people from Sherman's army as it turned north into South Carolina. But the order was a short-lived promise for blacks. Despite the objections of General Oliver O. Howard, the Freedmen's Bureau chief, U.S. president Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman's directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, and returned the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it.
Although Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 had no tangible benefit for blacks after President Johnson's revocation, the present-day movement supporting slave reparations has pointed to it as the U.S. government's promise to make restitution to African Americans for enslavement. The order is also the likely origin of the phrase "forty acres and a mule," which spread throughout the South in the weeks and months following Sherman's march.
(The New Georgia Encyclopedia, Barton Myers, University of Georgia, Published 1999)
The Southern Homestead Act of 1866 did make 80-acre plots in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, and Mississippi available free of cost to heads of households,black and white. Several thousand black men were able to take advantage of this program. Under the urging of black activist Pap Singleton 20,000 to 40,000 so called Exodusters migrated to Kansas in 1879 seeking land made available under the 1862 Homestead Act. Thousands of other blacks moved west to establish farms and settlements. But most who sought to own their own farms were thwarted, not only by a lack of government help, but also by hostile whites who refused to sell them land even if they were able to meet the purchase price.
Exodusters
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Exodusters was a name given to African American migrants who fled the American South for Kansas in the North during the years 1879-1880. After the end of Reconstruction racial oppression and rumors of the reinstitution of slavery led many former slaves to seek an alternative place to live. Many settled on Kansas because of its fame as the land of "John Brown." The state had a progressive and more tolerant reputation than most other states at the time. It was also well known among African Americans due to the efforts of separatist leaders like Benjamin "Pap" Singleton. The Kansas Exodus was an unorganized mass migration that started in 1879. Local relief agencies such as the Kansas Freedman's Relief Association did try to provide aid, but it was never enough to meet the needs of the impoverished migrants. The Exodusters continued coming to Kansas through the summer of 1880, but after that year the movement died out.
Giving land to the newly free African people and their families would have been a start in reparations for a people robbed of their humanity. It would have been a proper moral and social atonement for sins and crimes committed against a whole group of people. The Africans who were held in bondage were a very productive and creative people. The country would benefit from the multitude of artisans and craftsmen that existed in the population. However the racist policy, views, and blatant discrimination of the government and the society at large would not allow this to happen. Greed and competition from the ownership of the means of production rested in the hands of a few in the white ruling class both in the north and in the south. The Africans would be regulated into a cheap if not free labor source for the benefit the land owners, capitalists, and government.
There were programs and statutes that were created to deliver the mass group of Africans who were now free. There were some people of the dominant class that had a genuine interest and concern in the uplifting of the African people into what they considered to be a proper place in the American society. President Abraham Lincoln thought that the whites in America and Negroes could never get along or live together in harmony. He held the belief and understanding that the ex-slaves were not equal as the whites in regard to citizenship. He as many of his kind thought that the ex-slaves should go back to Africa. The Africans were free however,they were not to be afforded the same liberties and benefits as the Americans of the dominant class.
The Freedmen Bureau was a federal agency set up near the end of the Civil War to assist 4 million freed slaves. This agency was to assist in making the transition from bondage to freedom. The title of the agency was the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands. This program was said to have been one of the most idealistic and far reaching programs ever attempted by the federal government, the bureau was established in March 1865 under the administration of General Oliver Howard. It was conceived as a temporary agency that was to last one year. It would provide protection for former slaves, help them find jobs and homes, care for the orphans and the aged. This agency was to distribute relief to blacks and whites alike and devise fair labor contracts. It was to set up a court system for cases involving African Americans and establish schools and hospitals.
African Americans knew they would not receive a fair hearing in the Southern State Courts. Thousands of African Americans turned to bureau tribunals for justice. Many of the cases were those of contract disputes with whites. By 1867 many bureau courts had been disbanded in the belief that state courts would exercise equal justice regardless of race. How could African American receive fair and impartial justice from the society and people that held them in bondage, slavery, and total inhumane conditions?
