Editing Forty acres and a mule (section)

==War==
To empower the Union Army to legally seize property in its war with the South, Congress passed the [[Confiscation Act of 1861]]. This law allowed the military to seize rebel property, including land and slaves. In fact, it reflected the rapidly growing reality of black refugee camps that sprang up around the Union Army. These glaring manifestations of the "Negro Problem" provoked hostility from much of the Union rank-and-file—and necessitated administration by officers.<ref>{{harvnb|Engs|1979|p=26}}. "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."</ref>

===Grand Contraband Camp===
After secession, the Union maintained its control over [[Fort Monroe]] in [[Hampton, Virginia|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 [[white flight|fled]] to Richmond.)<ref>{{harvnb|Bonekemper|1970|p=169}}</ref> General [[Benjamin Butler (politician)|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 (American Civil War)|contraband]] of war and allowed them to remain with the Union Army.<ref>{{harvnb|Jackson|1925|p=133}}. "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.'"</ref> 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.<ref name=Bonekemper170>{{harvnb|Bonekemper|1970|p=170}}</ref>

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.<ref name=Bonekemper170 /> 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.<ref name=Bonekemper171b>{{harvnb|Bonekemper|1970|p=171}}. "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."</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Jackson|1925|p=135}}</ref> Captain C. B. Wilder was appointed to organize a response.<ref name=Bonekemper171b /> The perceived humanitarian crisis may have hastened Lincoln's plans for colonizing [[Île-à-Vache]].<ref>{{harvnb|Boyd|1959|p=49}} "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."</ref>

A plan developed in September 1862 would have relocated refugees en masse to Massachusetts and other northern states.<ref>{{harvnb|Voegeli|2003|p=767}}</ref> This plan—initiated by [[John Adams Dix|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]].<ref>{{harvnb|Voegeli|2003|p=769}}</ref> Fear of competition by black workers, as well as generalized racial prejudice, made the prospect of black refugees unpalatable for Massachusetts politicians.<ref>{{harvnb|Voegeli|2003|pp=776–777}}</ref>

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.<ref name=Bonekemper171>{{harvnb|Bonekemper|1970|pp=171–172}}</ref> Others were assigned jobs as servants in the North.<ref>{{harvnb|Engs|1979|pp=38–39}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{harvnb|Engs|1979|pp=3–4, 25}}. "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."</ref>

===Sea Islands===

The Union Army occupied the [[Sea Islands]] after the November 1861 [[Battle of Port Royal]], leaving the area's many cotton plantations to the black farmers who worked on them. The early liberation of the Sea Island blacks, and the relatively unusual absence of the former white masters, raised the issue of how the South might be organized after the fall of slavery. Lincoln, commented State Department official [[Adam Gurowski]], "is frightened with the success in South Carolina, as in his opinion this success will complicate the question of slavery."<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=18–19}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=[[Adam Gurowski]]|url=https://openlibrary.org/books/OL7135658M/Diary_...|title=Diary: from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862|location=Boston|publisher=Lee and Shepard|year=1862|ol=7135658M|page=[https://archive.org/stream/diary01degu#page/120/mode/2up 121]}}</ref> In the early days of federal occupation, troops were badly mistreating the island's residents, and had raided plantation supplies of food and clothing. One Union officer was caught preparing to secretly transport a group of blacks to Cuba, in order to sell them as slaves.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=20}}. "The rapid change in their status was not working to the advantage of many Sea Island Negroes, and their obvious hardship since the Federal invasion was embarrassing to the government. The army had made free use of plantation food stores, leaving many slave communities with little to eat. [...] Having no place to turn, they flocked to the neighborhood of the army camps. There, they were as often treated badly as offered employment and help. The New York ''Tribune's'' correspondent reported that one enterprising and unscrupulous officer was caught in the act of assembling a cargo of Negroes for transportation and sale in Cuba [...]".</ref> Abuses by Union troops continued even after a stable regime had been established.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=240}}. "Violent examples of race hatred could be found wherever Northern troops came into contact with numbers of freedmen. Even at Port Royal, where Saxton's benevolent protectorate should have deterred overt demonstrations, there were appalling clashes. As late as February 1863 unruly parties from several regiments, including the 9th New Jersey, the 100th New York, known as 'Les Enfants Perdus', and the 24th Massachusetts, went berserk and terrorized St. Helena Island. They killed and stole livestock, took money from the Negroes, and culminated their outrages in burning all the Negro cabins on the Daniel Jenkins plantations. They beat Negro men and attempted to rape the women, and when the superintendents intervened the soldiers threatened to shoot them."</ref>
[[File:Gullah s carolina 1790.jpg|thumb|Gullah slaves had farmed the Sea Islands for several generations.]]
Treasury Secretary [[Salmon P. Chase]] had in December deployed Colonel William H. Reynolds to collect and sell whatever cotton could be confiscated from the Sea Island plantations.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=19}}</ref> Soon after, Chase deployed Edward Pierce (after his brief period at Grand Contraband Camp) to assess the situation in [[Port Royal Island|Port Royal]].<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|p=421}}</ref> Pierce found a plantation under strict Army control, paying wages too low to enable economic independence; he also criticized the Army's policy of shipping cotton North to be ginned.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=24–25}}</ref> Pierce reported that the black workers were experts in cotton farming but required white managers "to enforce a paternal discipline". He recommended the establishment of a supervised black farming collective to prepare the workers for the responsibilities of citizenship—and to serve as a model for post-slavery labor relations in the South.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=29}}</ref><ref name=PierceLetter>{{cite book|author=[[Edward L. Pierce]]|title=The Negroes at Port Royal: Report of E. L. Pierce, Government Agent, to the Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury|location=Boston|publisher=R. F. Walcutt|year=1862|others=Letter dated 3 February 1862.|quote=The laborers themselves, no longer slaves of their former masters, or of the Government, but as yet in large numbers unprepared for the full privileges of citizens, are to be treated with sole reference to such preparation.}}</ref>

The Treasury Department sought to raise money and in many cases was already leasing occupied territories to Northern capitalists for private management. For Port Royal<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=32}}. "The government would undoubtedly take steps to put the cotton lands under cultivation, but Pierce was well aware that there was a plan alternative to his own that had very serious backing. While he was asking the government to gamble on the success of a novel agricultural experiment, Colonel Reynolds proposed leasing the plantations and the laborers to a private organization. Reynolds' plan had the merit of simplicity and much better prospects of immediate revenue to the government."</ref> Colonel Thomas had already prepared an arrangement of this type; but Pierce insisted that Port Royal offered the chance to "settle a great social question": namely, whether "when properly organized, and with proper motives set before them, [blacks] will as freemen be as industrious as any race of men are likely to be in this climate."<ref name=PierceLetter /><ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=32–33}}</ref> Chase sent Pierce to see President Lincoln. As Pierce later described the encounter:

{{quotation|Mr. Lincoln, who was then chafing under a prospective bereavement, listened for a few moments, and then said, somewhat impatiently, that he did not think he ought to be troubled with such details, that there seemed to be an itching to get negroes into our lines; to which I replied that these negroes were within them by the invitation of no one, being domiciled there before we began occupation. The President then wrote and handed to me the following card :

<blockquote>I shall be obliged if the Secretary of the Treasury will in his discretion give Mr. Pierce such instructions in regard to Port Royal contrabands as may seem judicious. {{smallcaps|A. LINCOLN.}}</blockquote>}}

Pierce accepted this reluctant mandate, but feared that "some unhappy compromise" might compromise his plan to engineer black citizenship.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=34}}. "The young lawyer undoubtedly had hoped to hear some reassuring word from Lincoln about the future status of the Negroes at Port Royal. This was a point that had disturbed many prospective supporters of the educational work, for they feared that after being treated as freemen and trained to support themselves the Negroes might become the victims of 'some unhappy compromise.'"</ref>

====Port Royal Experiment====

The collective was established and became known as the [[Port Royal Experiment]]: a possible model for black economic activity after slavery. The Experiment attracted support from Northerners like economist [[Edward Atkinson (activist)|Edward Atkinson]], who hoped to prove his theory that free labor would be more productive than slave labor.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=37–38}}</ref> More traditional abolitionists like [[Maria Weston Chapman]] also praised Pierce's plan. Civic groups like the [[American Missionary Association]] provided enthusiastic assistance.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=40}}</ref> These sympathetic Northerners quickly recruited a boatload (53 chosen from a pool of applicants several times larger) of Ivy League and divinity school graduates who set off for Port Royal on March 3, 1862.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=43–44}}</ref>

The residents of Port Royal generally resented the military and civilian occupiers, who exhibited racist superiority in varying degrees of overtness.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=64–66, 159–160}}</ref> Joy turned to sorrow when, on May 12 Union soldiers arrived to draft all able-bodied black men previously liberated on April 13, 1862, by General [[David Hunter]] who proclaimed slavery abolished in Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=144–146}}</ref> Hunter kept his regiment even after Lincoln reversed this tri-state emancipation proclamation; but disbanded almost all of it when unable to draw payroll from the War Department.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=189}}</ref> Black farmers preferred to grow vegetables and catch fish, whereas the missionaries (and other whites on the islands) encouraged [[King Cotton|monoculture of cotton]] as a [[cash crop]].<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=226}}</ref> In the thinking of the latter, civilization would be advanced by incorporating blacks into the consumer economy dominated by Northern manufacturing.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=226–228}}. "It is this exclusive preoccupation with cotton that has given most support to the idea that the planter-missionaries were pure economic imperialists [...]. Their vision of the freed people as agricultural peasants devoted to a single-crop economy and educated to a taste for consumer goods supplied by Northern factories fulfils the classic pattern of tributary economics the world over. It is important to remember that at this early time there seemed nothing conspiratorial about this."</ref>

Meanwhile, various conflicts arose among the missionaries, the Army, and the merchants whom Chase and Reynolds had invited to Port Royal in order to confiscate all that could be sold.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=66–67}}</ref> On balance, however, the white sponsors of the Experiment had perceived positive results; businessman [[John Murray Forbes]] in May 1862 called it "a decided success", announcing that Blacks would indeed work in exchange for wages.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=141}}</ref>

Secretary of War [[Edwin M. Stanton]] appointed General [[Rufus Saxton]] as military governor of Port Royal in April 1862, and by December Saxton was agitating for permanent black control over the land. He won support from Stanton, Chase, Sumner, and President Lincoln, but met continuing resistance from a tax commission that wanted to sell the land.<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|p=428}}</ref> Saxton also received approval to train a black militia, which formally became the [[1st South Carolina Volunteers (Union)|1st South Carolina Volunteers]] on January 1, 1863, when the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] legalized its existence.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=191–194}}</ref>

====Landownership in the Sea Islands====
As elsewhere, black workers felt strongly that they had a claim to the lands they worked.

The [[Confiscation Act of 1862]] allowed the Treasury Department to sell many captured lands on the grounds of delinquent taxes. All told, the government now claimed 76,775 acres of Sea Island land.<ref>{{harvnb|Oubre|1978|p=8}}</ref> Auditors arrived in Port Royal and began to assess the estates now occupied by blacks and missionaries.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=200–204}}</ref> The stakes were high: the Sea Island cotton harvest represented a lucrative commodity for Northern investors to control.<ref name=Williamson56>{{harvnb|Williamson|1965|p=56}}</ref>

Most of the whites involved in the project felt that black ownership of the land should be its final result. Saxton—along with journalists including ''Free South'' editor James G. Thompson, and missionaries including [[Methodist]] minister [[Mansfield French]]—lobbied hard for distribution of the land to black owners.<ref>{{harvnb|Williamson|1965|p=55}}</ref> In January 1863, Saxton unilaterally halted the Treasury Department's tax sale on the grounds of military necessity.<ref name=Williamson56 />

The tax commissioners conducted the auction regardless, selling ten thousand acres of land.<ref name="Oubre-p9">{{harvnb|Oubre|1978|p=9}}</ref> Eleven plantations went to a consortium ("The Boston Concern") headed by Edward Philbrick, who sold the land in 1865 to black farmers.<ref name=Williamson56 /><ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=212–213, 298}}.</ref> One black farming collective outbid the outside investors, paying an average of $7.00 per acre for the 470 plantation on which they already lived and worked.<ref name="Oubre-p9" /> Overall, the majority of the land was sold to Northern investors and remained under their control.<ref name=Williamson56 />

In September 1863, Lincoln announced a plan to auction 60,000 acres of South Carolina land in lots of 320 acres—setting aside 16,000 acres of the land for "heads of families of the African race", who could obtain 20-acre lots sold at $1.25/acre ({{Inflation|US|1.25|1863|fmt=eq}}).<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=272}}</ref> Tax Commissioner [[William Brisbane (commissioner)|William Brisbane]] envisioned racial integration on the islands, with large plantation owners employing landless blacks.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=281}}</ref> But Saxton and French considered the 16,000-acre reserve to be inadequate, and instructed black families to stake claims and build houses on all 60,000 acres of the land.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|pp=274–275}}</ref> French traveled to Washington in December 1863 to lobby for legal confirmation of the plan.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=284}}</ref> At French's urging, Chase and Lincoln authorized Sea Island families (and solitary wives of soldiers in the Union Army) to claim 40-acre plots. Other individuals over the age of 21 would be allowed to claim 20 acres. These plots would be purchased at $1.25 per acre, with 40% paid upfront and 60% paid later. With a requirement of six months' prior residency, the order functionally restricted settlement to blacks, missionaries, and others who were already involved in the Experiment.<ref>{{harvnb|Williamson|1965|page=57}}</ref>

Claims to land under the new plan began to arrive immediately, but Commissioner Brisbane ignored them, hoping for another reversal of the decision in Washington.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=287}}</ref> Chase did indeed reverse his position in February, restoring the plan for a tax sale.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=290}}</ref> The sale took place in late February, with land selling for an average price of more than $11/acre ({{Inflation|US|11|1864|fmt=eq}}).<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=294}}</ref> The sale provoked outcry from freedpeople who had already claimed land according to Chase's December order.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=295}} "There were ample signs of impending trouble. A group of superintendents returning to St. Helena from the sale of February 26 were met near Land's End by a crowd of freed people, who surrounded them clamoring for information and 'complaining that their land—that they had pre-empted—had been sold away from them, and declaring that they wouldn't work for the purchaser.'"</ref>

===="Negroes of Savannah"====

Major General [[William Tecumseh Sherman]]'s "[[Sherman's March to the Sea|March to the Sea]]" brought a massive regiment of the Union Army to the Georgia coast in December 1864. Accompanying the Army were an estimated ten thousand black refugees, former slaves. This group was already suffering from starvation and disease.<ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|p=109}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Drago|1973|p=363}}</ref> Many former slaves had become disillusioned by the Union Army, having suffered pillaging, rape, and other abuses.<ref>{{harvnb|Drago|1973|pp=369–371}}</ref> They arrived in Savannah "after long marches and severe privations, ''weary, famished, sick, and almost naked''.<ref>{{harvnb|Drago|1973|p=372}}; quoting the Augusta ''Daily Constitutionalist'', 29 January 1865.</ref> On December 19, Sherman dispatched many of these slaves to [[Hilton Head Island, South Carolina|Hilton Head]], an island already serving as refugee camp. Saxton reported on December 22 "Every cabin and house on these islands is filled to overflowing—I have some 15,000." 700 more arrived on Christmas.<ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|p=110}}</ref>

On January 11, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arrived in Savannah with Quartermaster General [[Montgomery C. Meigs (1816–1892)|Montgomery C. Meigs]] and other officials. This group met with Generals Sherman and Saxton to discuss the refugee crisis. They decided, in turn, to consult leaders from the local Black community and ask them: "What do you want for your own people?" A meeting was duly arranged.<ref>{{harvnb|James|1954|p=127}}</ref>

{{wikisource|Negroes of Savannah}}

At 8:00 PM on January 12, 1865, Sherman met with a group of twenty people, many of whom had been slaves for most of their lives. The blacks of Savannah had seized the opportunity of emancipation to strengthen their community's institutions, and they had strong political feelings.<ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|pp=99–102}}</ref> They selected one spokesperson: [[Garrison Frazier]], the 67-year-old former pastor of Third African Baptist. In the late 1850s, he had for $1,000 bought freedom for himself and his wife.<ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|p=106}}</ref> Frazier had consulted with the refugees as well as the other representatives. He told Sherman: "The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor." Frazier suggested that young men would serve the government in fighting the Rebels, and that therefore "the women and children and old men" would have to work this land. Almost all of those present agreed to request land grants for autonomous black communities, on the grounds that racial hatred would prevent economic advancement for blacks in mixed areas.<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|p=429}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|date=13 February 1865|newspaper=New York Daily Tribune|title=Negroes of Savannah|url=http://www.nps.gov/fopu/forteachers/upload/Resources.pdf#page=16|publisher=(Copy of the Daily Tribune article held by the US National Archives and transcribed by the National Park Service. According to Adjutant General [[Edward D. Townsend]], the formal exchange represents a verbatim account of the meeting.)|quote=I do hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and faithful report of the questions and answers made by the colored ministers and church members of Savannah in my presence and hearing, at the chambers of Major-Gen. Sherman, on the evening of Thursday, Jan 12, 1865. The questions of Gen. Sherman and the Secretary of War were reduced to writing and read to the persons present. The answers were made by the Rev. Garrison Frazier, who was selected by the other ministers and church members to answer for them. The answers were written down in his exact words, and read over to the others, who one by one expressed his concurrence or dissent as above set forth.}}</ref>

====Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15====
{{wikisource|Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15}}

[[Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15]], issued on January 16, 1865, instructed officers to settle these refugees on the Sea Islands and inland: 400,000 total acres divided into 40-acre plots.<ref name=Gates>{{cite web|first=Henry Louis Jr.|last=Gates|author-link=Henry Louis Gates, Jr. |url=http://www.theroot.com/the-truth-behind-40-acres-and-a-mule-1790894780|title=The Truth Behind '40 Acres and a Mule'|website=The Root|date=7 January 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/sfo15.htm|title=Order by the Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi|access-date=26 April 2010|archive-date=20 December 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081220070031/http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/sfo15.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> Though [[mule]]s (beasts of burden used for plowing) were not mentioned,<ref name=Gates /> some of its beneficiaries did receive them from the army.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/reconstruction/40acres/ps_so15.html|title=Reconstruction ... Forty Acres and a Mule|website=American Experience}}</ref> Such plots were colloquially known as "Blackacres".

Sherman's orders specifically allocated "the islands from [[Charleston, South Carolina|Charleston]], south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the [[St. Johns River]], [[Florida]]." The order specifically prohibits whites from settling in this area. Saxton, who, with Stanton, helped to craft the document, was promoted to major general and charged with oversight of the new settlement.<ref>{{cite web|last=Buescher|first=John|url=http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24170|title=Forty Acres and a Mule|website=Teachinghistory.org|access-date=July 13, 2011}}</ref> On February 3, Saxton addressed a large freedpeople's meeting at Second African Baptist, announcing the order and outlining preparations for new settlement.<ref>{{cite book|author=James|title=Sherman at Savannah|year=1954|page=135}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|pp=111–112}}</ref> By June 1865, about 40,000 freedpeople were settled on {{convert|435000|acre|ha|sigfig=2}} in the Sea Islands.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=330}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|pp=112–113}}</ref>

The Special Field Orders were issued by Sherman, not the federal government with regards to all former slaves, and he issued similar ones "throughout the campaign to assure the harmony of action in the area of operations."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA252324.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120118190642/http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA252324&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf|url-status=live|archive-date=18 January 2012|title='Harmony of Action" '&nbsp;– Sherman as an army group commander}}</ref> It was claimed by some that these settlements were never intended to last. However, this was never the understanding of the settlers—nor of General Saxton, who said he asked Sherman to cancel the order unless it was meant to be permanent.<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|p=429}}. "But the freedmen quite naturally anticipated permanent possession; and Saxton later testified that he had begged not to be charged with carrying out Sherman's order if the freedmen's expectations were once again to be broken, and that he had received assurances from Secretary Stanton that the Negroes would retain possession of the land."</ref>

In practice, the areas of land settled were quite variable. James Chaplin Beecher observed that the "so called 40 acre tract[s] vary in size from eight acres to (450) four hundred and fifty."<ref>{{harvnb|Saville|1994|pp=19–20}}</ref> Some areas were settled by groups: [[Skidaway Island, Georgia|Skidaway Island]] was colonized by a group of over 1000 people, including Reverend [[Ulysses L. Houston]].<ref>{{harvnb|Byrne|1995|p=113}}</ref>

====Significance====
The Sea Islands project reflected a policy of "40 acres and a mule" as the basis for post-slavery economics. Especially in 1865, the precedent it set was highly visible to newly free blacks seeking land of their own.<ref>{{harvnb|Williamson|1965|pp=54–55}}

<blockquote>'Forty acres and a mule', that delightful bit of myopic mythology so often ascribed to the newly freed in the Reconstruction period, at least in South Carolina during the spring and summer of 1865, represented far more than the chimerical rantings of the ignorant darkies, irresponsible soldiers", and radical politicians. On the contrary, it symbolized precisely the policy which the government had already given and was giving mass application in the Sea Islands. Hardly had the troops landed, in November, 1861, before liberal Northerners arrived to begin a series of ambitious experiment in the reconstruction of Southern society. One of these experiments included the redistribution of large landed estates to the Negroes. By the Spring of 1865, this program was well underway, and after August any well-informed intelligent observer in South Carolina would have concluded, as did the Negroes, that some considerable degree of permanent land division was highly probable.</blockquote></ref>

Freedpeople from across the region flocked to the area in search of land.<ref name=Oubre47>{{harvnb|Oubre|1978|pp=47–48}} "By summer of 1865, word of Sherman's Special Field Order, No. 15 had spread throughout the states covered by the order as well as to neighboring states. So great was the desire for land that blacks poured into the reservation in search of their forty-acre plots."</ref><ref name=Webster94 /> The result was refugee camps afflicted by disease and short on supplies.<ref name=Oubre47 /><ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=332}}</ref>

Especially after Sherman's Orders, the coastal settlements generated enthusiasm for a new society that would supplant the slave system. Reported one journalist in April 1865: "It was the Plymouth colony repeating itself. They agreed if any others came to join them, they should have equal privileges. So blooms the Mayflower on the South Atlantic Coast."<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1964|p=331}}</ref>

===Wage labor system===
Beginning in occupied Louisiana under General [[Nathaniel P. Banks]], the military developed a wage-labor system for cultivating large areas of land. This system—which took effect with Lincoln and Stanton's blessing soon after the [[Emancipation Proclamation]] legitimized contracts with the freedpeople—offered ironclad one-year contracts to freedpeople. The contract promised $10/month as well as provisions and medical care. The system was soon also adopted by General [[Lorenzo Thomas]] in Mississippi.<ref name=Belz46>{{harvnb|Belz|2000|pp=45–46}}</ref>

Sometimes land came under the control of Treasury officials. Jurisdictional disputes erupted between the Treasury Department and the military.<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|p=425}} "Disposition of lands and indirectly of Negro labor through Treasury agents to northern lessees brought forth even greater condemnation than direct military supervision. [...] The investigations of James E. Yeatman for the Western Sanitary Commission late in 1863 revealed shocking exploitation and abuse of freedmen working the leased plantations. Attempts during 1864 to remedy those abuses resulted in confusion and conflict of authority between army officers and Treasury agents."</ref> Criticism of Treasury Department profiteering by General [[John Eaton (general)|John Eaton]] and journalists who witnessed the new form of plantation labor influenced public opinion in the North and pressured Congress to support direct control of land by freedmen.<ref>{{harvnb|Cox|1958|pp=425–426}} "There can be no doubt that these varied wartime experiences, together with the criticism and publicity they evoked, affected the Freedmen's Bureau legislation. They make clear what the framers of its final version were attempting to avoid, namely, government plantation operation, exploitation of Negro labor by northern speculators, abuse and rigorous control of freedmen by southern planters whether in violation of military directives or in collusion with military personnel, even the minute paternalistic regulations drawn to safeguard the freedmen that might lead to a permanent 'pupilage'."</ref> The Treasury Department, particularly as Secretary Chase prepared to seek the [[1864 Republican National Convention|Republican nomination in 1864]], accused the military of treating the freedpeople inhumanely.<ref name=Belz46 /> Lincoln decided in favor of military rather than Treasury jurisdiction, and the wage labor system became more deeply established.<ref>{{harvnb|Belz|2000|p=47}}</ref> Abolitionist critics of the policy called it no better than [[serf]]dom.<ref>{{harvnb|Belz|2000|pp=52–53}}</ref>

===Davis Bend===
One of the largest black landownership projects took place at [[Davis Bend, Mississippi]], the 11,000-acre site of plantations owned by [[Joseph Emory Davis|Joseph Davis]] and his famous younger brother [[Jefferson Davis|Jefferson]], president of the Confederacy. Influenced by some aspects of [[Robert Owen]]'s [[socialism]], Joseph Davis had established the experimental 4000-acre [[Hurricane Plantation]] in 1827 at Davis Bend.<ref>{{harvnb|Hermann|1981|pp=3–9}} "The reformer was criticized not so much for his practical failures as for his open rejection of orthodox religion and the institution of marriage. Although Davis did not agree with these radical ideas, he continued to admire the Scottish utopian for his innovative theories. However, the new planter proposed to adopt only the elements of Owen's philosophy that would promote his goal of an efficient, prosperous plantation community."</ref> Davis allowed several hundred slaves to eat nutritious food, live in well-built cottages, receive medical care, and resolve their disputes in a weekly "Hall of Justice" court. His motto was: "The less people are governed, the more submissive they will be to control."<ref>{{harvnb|Hermann|1981|pp=11–16}}</ref> Davis relied heavily on the managerial skills of [[Ben Montgomery]], a well-educated slave who conducted much of the plantation's business.

The [[Battle of Shiloh]] began a period of turmoil (1862–1863), at Davis Bend, although its black residents continued farming. The plantation was occupied by two companies of black Union troops in December 1863. Under the command of Colonel Samuel Thomas, these soldiers began to fortify the area. General [[Ulysses S. Grant]] had expressed a desire to make of the Davis plantations "a negro paradise." Thomas began to lease the land to black tenants for the 1864 crop season.<ref>{{harvnb|Hermann|1981|pp=38–47}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Foner|title=Reconstruction|year=2011|page=59}}</ref> Black refugees who had gathered in Vicksburg moved ''en masse'' to Davis Bend under the auspices of the Freedman's Department (an agency created by the military prior to Congressional authorization of the "Freedmen's Bureau", discussed below).<ref name="Oubre-p17">{{harvnb|Oubre|1978|p=17}}</ref>

Davis Bend was caught in the middle of the turf war between the military and the Treasury Department. In February 1864, the Treasury re-confiscated 2000 acres of Davis Bend, restoring them to white owners who had sworn loyalty oaths.<ref>{{harvnb|Hermann|1981|p=39}}</ref> It also leased 1,200 acres to Northern investors.<ref name=Hermann50>{{harvnb|Hermann|1981|p=50}}</ref> Although Thomas resisted instructions to prevent the free blacks from farming, General Eaton ordered him to comply. Eaton also ordered Thomas to confiscate farming equipment held by blacks, on the grounds that—because Mississippi law banned slaves from owning property—they must have stolen such possessions.<ref name=Hermann50 /> The Treasury Department sought to charge the plantation workers a fee for using the cotton gin.<ref name="Oubre-p17" /> The residents of Davis Bend objected strenuously to these measures. In a petition signed by 56 farmers (including Montgomery) and published in the New Orleans ''Tribune'':<ref>29 July 1865; quoted in {{harvnb|Oubre|1978|p=27}}</ref>

<blockquote>At the commencement of our present year, this plantation was, in compliance with an order of our Post Commander, deprived of horses, mules, oxen and farming utensils of every description, very much of which had been captured and brought into Union lines by the undersigned; in consequence of which deprivations, we were, of course, reduced to the necessity of buying everything necessary for farming, and having thus far succeeded in performing by far the most expensive and laborious part of our work, we are prepared to accomplish the ginning, pressing, weighing, marking, consigning, etc., in a business-like order if allowed to do so.</blockquote>