The end of the Civil War saw an end to slavery, allowing enslaved African-Americans to become freedmen, and with that came many rights they had heretofore been denied. Some of these rights were a promise to freedmen who fought for the North to get “forty acres and a mule,” a phrase referring to the allotment of land and property for any black American who enlisted for service in the Union army. After this point, Reconstruction occurred, a time of strife and great adjustment for a healing nation. Despite the freeing of all African-Americans from slavery, they still had significant struggles getting the land they were promised as a result of fighting for the North, due to a combination of continued racial discrimination, a lack of significant land resources to be allotted, and Lincoln’s assassination.
When the Civil War ended, there were tens of thousands of freed blacks to contend with, who had followed General William T. Sherman in his fight as he marched to the sea of Savannah, and also those who were simply refugees from inland plantations. Once he was on the coast, he met with a coalition of twenty black leaders who were in attendance, in order to discuss their welfare. When asked what he wanted to do with them, Sherman famously responded with the instruction to give them “forty acres and a mule,” also known as Special Field Order 15 (Alexander, 2004).
While this was a nice sentiment, it was a difficult one to implement. Essentially, what was decided was to give freed blacks some of the abandoned plantations that existed on the barrier islands of Georgia and South Carolina, of which 40,000 blacks took (Alexander, 2004). This indeed worked for awhile, allowing St. Catherine’s Island to have its own separatist democracy, freedmen creating a land for themselves that included food crops and schools.
The Freedmen’s Bureau was created to assist freedmen during Reconstruction, helping them get food and housing, as well as education, throughout this period. While at first they tried giving freedmen apartments and housing in Washington, D.C., overcrowding quickly took hold, and it was clear that the majority of freedmen could not survive there (Harrison, 2006).
It was also the job of the Freedmen’s Bureau to facilitate contracts with landowners and disseminate much of the land that was to be allotted to the freed slaves as per Special Field Order 15. The First Freedmen’s Bureau Act stated that it “shall have authority to set apart for use of loyal refugees and freedmen such tracts of land within the insurrectionary states as shall have been abandoned or to which the United States shall have acquired title by confiscation or sale, or otherwise; and to every male citizen, whether refugee or freedman, as aforesaid there shall be assigned not more than 40 acres of such land” (Freeman, 2003).
The prospect of owning land was exciting for African-Americans; they were “encouraged by the prospect of owning a homestead and being relieved of the all devouring demands of the rent landlords” (Harrison, 2006). A prosperous community began to form as a result, and the settlers proved to be honorable in their actions and prompt in their payments for their plots. For awhile, everything seemed to be running smoothly for the freedmen who wanted to own their own land.
James C. Beecher was a subassistant commissioner for the Freedmen’s Bureau, and he attempted to fight for land rights and land distribution for freedmen. Throughout this whole process, disputes over land titles were common; blacks would often fight among themselves in order to get the lands that they wanted. During the Civil War, many farmlands were burned and razed, leaving them untenable. This made for much fewer options to be had in terms of plantations and farmland (Singleton, 2000).
Beecher was left to command a great majority of Sherman’s “Reservation,” as the areas that Special Field Order 15 applied to were called, and many freedmen’s expectations of land were much higher than the actual amount of land available (Singleton, 2000). It was his belief at first that the US government “had committed itself to land for freedmen,” but this opinion changed by the following year. He instead felt that “he did not believe that a forty-acre lot was a necessary adjunct to freedom” (Singleton, 2000). This could have been an opinion necessitated by the seeming futility of getting that forty acres to absolutely every freedman.
Unfortunately, St. Catherine’s and other freedmen land allocation died with Lincoln. After his assassination in 1865, Andrew Johnson shut down St. Catherine’s and effectively repealed Special Field Order 15, returning those confiscated lands to their previous owners. There was no other option for the blacks who had tended to that land once the landowners returned for what was given back to them, and so many of them stayed on those plantations, working for the owners in the same fields they themselves possessed not long beforehand – this led to the system of sharecropping, where the freedman could plant his own crops provided he planted some for the owner (Alexander, 2004).
All of this treatment by the federal government toward blacks during Reconstruction was further evidence, in their opinion, of a growing distrust and lack of care taken toward them. They felt ill treated by being evicted from the land they felt was owed to them by centuries of generational slavery. Despite this, there were several attempts to get the land back and to reinstitute Order 15. Many of the reasons were stated very clearly, including fear of violent reprisals from freedmen, an appeal to social and cultural fairness and equality, and even the claim that they would provide competition for employment for white farmhands and workers (Freeman, 2003).
At the same time, it may have led to Thaddeus Stevens’ confiscation plan, a strategy to give reparations to freedmen that proposed confiscation of all large plantations from former slaveholders and redistributing them in the 40 acre lots that were promised. If there were any lots left over, they would be sold and the money would be given to loyalists to compensate them for loss of property during wartime. Also, that money could be put toward the national debt and give more money to retired Union soldiers (Freeman, 2003). However, Johnson rejected this proposal too.
All of these attempts to strong-arm still-racist whites into giving newly freed blacks land, let alone rights, were evidence of a continued sense of racial segregation and discrimination even among Northerners. These beliefs were firmly entrenched in nearly all whites who remained in power, leading to a firmly set system that prevented even freedmen from gaining the rights and freedoms they so desired. Blacks would not even get these rights until nearly a century after the Reconstruction, showcasing just how much it failed African-Americans as a movement (Alexander, 2004).
Further evidence of Johnson’s lack of interest in the welfare of freedmen came when he vetoed a bill to give the Freedmen’s Bureau more powers (Singleton, 2000). Luckily, Congress overrode his veto and granted the bill anyway, though it did not have anything in it regarding land rights (Freeman, 2003). In short, Lincoln, the president who was more compassionate as to the needs of the African-American people, as well as their desire for freedom and a requirement to have basic needs met once they were free, was replaced by Johnson, a slightly more white-friendly and white-concerned president who seemed to care little of the welfare of freedmen.
This trend continued until the 1866 riots in Louisiana, which led to a midterm election which reevaluated the policies of President Johnson and created the Fourteenth Amendment, granting blacks the status of American citizens (Alexander, 2004). At the same time, white supremacy and racism was still significantly present in American life, with organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan wreaking havoc on those who defended blacks or who were black themselves.
In conclusion, there were myriad factors that led to the loss of land rights by freedmen during the Reconstruction Period. First, there was a substantial amount of infighting among African-Americans and in Congress as to how much land was available, and who owned what. The country, struggling in the wake of a devastating civil war, was also attempting to pick up the pieces of its own rebellion at the same time, and as such the proper resources and time could not be allotted to this singular concern.
Secondly, and most importantly, the actions of President Johnson led to the systematic repeal of Sherman’s promise of ‘forty acres and a mule,’ putting an end to any real, convenient hope of land rights for freedmen. The loss of Abraham Lincoln as an emancipator and bringer of social change for African-Americans took away their dreams of land ownership, creating one more obstacle for black Americans to overcome, even after they had been given their freedom.
While the Reconstruction had provided an opportunity for change, it severely disappointed freedmen in its decided lack of progress. Even after they had endured all of the hardships of slavery and hard plantation work under slave owners, they were only freed to endure even more disenfranchisement under the guise of being free American citizens.
Works Cited
Alexander, Danielle. (2004). "Forty Acres and a Mule: The Ruined Hope of Reconstruction." The National Endowment for the Humanities, 25(1).
Freeman, Gerene. "40 Acres and a Mule | Freedmen, Land, Were." Emerging Minds. http://emergingminds.org/40-Acres-and-a-Mule.html (accessed May 21, 2011).
Harrison, R. (2006). Welfare and Employment Policies of the Freedmen's Bureau in the District of Columbia. Journal of Southern History, 72(1), 75-110. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Singleton, Robert R. 1999. "James C. Beecher and the Freedmen's Bureau." Mississippi Quarterly 53, no. 1: 5. Academic Search Alumni Edition, EBSCOhost (accessed May 21, 2011).
