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When the notion of establishing them on abandoned or confiscated lands came up for discussion, almost all of these clergy urged that military forces be used to settle them in areas in which all whites would be prohibited from entering, as a way to protect the settlements from white encroachments. Militarily, this could be most efficiently accomplished by designating the Sea Islands and the low lands along the rivers as the places to settle.
What happened to the "40 acres and a mule" that former slaves were white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed. Forty acres and a mule refers to a promise made in the United States for agrarian reform for Upon refusing to accept the contracts offered, the people in several instances were thrust out into the highways, where, being without shelter, many.
Some of the most radical members of Congress were delighted by this. Ultimately, then, Special Field Order No. Down to our own time, the confused and conflicted intentions and authorities that informed the issuance of Field Order No. The Lower South , Volume 3 of Freedom: Cambridge University Press, Julie Saville, The Work of Reconstruction: Oubre, Forty Acres and a Mule: Louisiana State University Press, Text of Special Field Order No. The Autocrat of Rebellion, Emancipation, and Reconstruction.
Saalfield Publishing Company, , p. Jacqueline Jones, Saving Savannah: A famous punk band seems totally at odds with what punk is all about. So keen is Rough Trade to cultivate bands, they dutifully hand over the money up front. He wears a brand spanking new leather jacket and has a haircut that would have cost more than what your dad makes in a month. A year ago he would have looked like Bowie.
Forty acres and a mule
Later that week, at the studio, you spend the entire time absolutely shit faced. Between you and the other three band members, you consume an ounce of speed, a half-pound of Jamaican heads, twelve-year-old scotch by the mug-full and more pilsener than you can count. Then a friend comes in with some acid from Amsterdam and you all drop a handful of tabs. This is when things start to get really weird.
Up until now, your producer has been relatively understanding given the circumstances. He wants you to record a song that he heard you play live at the Scala last week, but once the acid kicks in, you refuse to play anything but Hendrix covers. Then the drummer, eyes like beasts, starts masturbating during a guitar solo. This seems like the funniest and cleverest thing anyone has ever done, and the rest of the band joins in.
When you pour some type of alcohol on it and set it alight, the session comes to an abrupt, smoky end. Eventually, you take her back to your tiny flat, and you talk all night. Near the coast, they owned an average of 27 acres; inland, an average of 48 acres. Cox quotes "an entirely new bill" from the Congressional Globe , 3 March , p. Especially during the six-week period between Circular 13 and Circular 15, '40 acres and a mule' along with other supplies necessary for farming represented a common promise of Freedmen's Bureau agents.
Rock and roll has a long tradition of instrument breaking. This day, however, may be the first and only instance of studio breaking. There is a track mixer here that must be worth roughly the equivalent of the national debt. When you pour some type of alcohol on it and set it alight, the session comes to an abrupt, smoky end. Now, many years later, you still live in London. You work as a dispatch rider, tearing around the city streets and alleyways, delivering documents.
It never fails to amaze you. You think about it for a few days, then politely decline, and wish him luck. When you see the book for sale you want to buy it. You look at the price tag and change your mind.
You decide you need a new rear tyre for your bike more. The winters are getting harder on the bike. You think about doing something else but dispatch riding is all you know. You do part-time voluntary work at the anarchist bookshop in Shoreditch, sometimes playing guitar at the piss-ups. You love seeing kids twenty years your junior embracing alternative lifestyles. Now and again they ask you questions with what you think may be something close to reverence, or respect maybe. You try and answer as best you can. A pregnant girl fifteen years younger than you with dreadlocks and no shoes develops a crush.
At first you try and ignore her, but she persists with an enthusiasm that you admire. Eventually, you take her back to your tiny flat, and you talk all night. Amongst other things, you tell her about your time with the band. When the morning sun insinuates itself through your cheap blinds, and you realise that you have to be at work soon, you feel like this has been time well spent. When you return that evening she is still there, napping on your couch.
The butterflies that had been in your stomach all the way home dissolve now. Something is changing, and it feels right. You touch her dreadlocks while she naps with her tiny baby. It is 12 September You take a walk down The Bowery today instead of your usual cab to work.
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The whining of the bums and the hum of traffic are music to you now. You get nervous when you visit your parents in Cleveland. Your office is on the 92nd floor of One World Trade and affords a spectacular view of downtown. You are doing little more than admiring that view when June rings you for lunch and you take the long elevator ride down to street level.
At a little deli on Broadway you order your soup and tell June about your dream last night. What the hell does that mean? June claims that working at the World Trade Centre is not good for you in some kind of spiritual, karmic way. That to cram that many people into such a small space is a kind of madness that goes largely unrecognised except by the enlightened few, like herself. One Union officer was caught preparing to secretly transport a group of blacks to Cuba, in order to sell them as slaves. Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase had in December deployed Colonel William H.
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Reynolds to collect and sell whatever cotton could be confiscated from the Sea Island plantations. 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. 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 [38] 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": As Pierce later described the encounter:.
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:. 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. Pierce accepted this reluctant mandate, but feared that "some unhappy compromise" might compromise his plan to engineer black citizenship.
The collective was established and became known as the Port Royal Experiment: The Experiment attracted support from Northerners like economist Edward Atkinson , who hoped to prove his theory that free labor would be more productive than slave labor. Civic groups like the American Missionary Association provided enthusiastic assistance. The residents of Port Royal generally resented the military and civilian occupiers, who exhibited racist superiority in varying degrees of overtness.
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. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton appointed General Rufus Saxton as military governor of Port Royal in April , 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. The Confiscation Act of allowed the Treasury Department to sell many captured lands on the grounds of delinquent taxes.
All told, the government now claimed 76, acres of Sea Island land. 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.
The tax commissioners conducted the auction regardless, selling ten thousand acres of land. Other individuals over the age of 21 would be allowed to claim 20 acres. 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.
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. Accompanying the Army were an estimated ten thousand black refugees, former slaves. This group was already suffering from starvation and disease. Saxton reported on December 22 "Every cabin and house on these islands is filled to overflowing—I have some 15, 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: The blacks of Savannah had seized the opportunity of emancipation to strengthen their community's institutions, and they had strong political feelings. Garrison Frazier, the year-old former pastor of Third African Baptist. 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.
Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. Sherman's orders specifically allocated "the islands from 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. Saxton, who, with Stanton, helped to craft the document, was promoted to Major General and charged with oversight of the new settlement. 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.
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.
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 four hundred and fifty. Skidaway Island was colonized by a group of over people, including Reverend Ulysses L.
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The Sea Islands project reflected a policy of "40 acres and a mule" as the basis for post-slavery economics. Especially in , the precedent it set was highly visible to newly free blacks seeking land of their own. 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 They agreed if any others came to join them, they should have equal privileges. So blooms the Mayflower on the South Atlantic Coast. 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 system was soon also adopted by General Lorenzo Thomas in Mississippi.
Sometimes land came under the control of Treasury officials. Jurisdictional disputes erupted between the Treasury Department and the military. One of the largest black landownership projects took place at Davis Bend, Mississippi , the 11,acre site of plantations owned by Joseph Davis and his famous younger brother Jefferson , president of the Confederacy. Influenced by some aspects of Robert Owen 's socialism , Joseph Davis had established the experimental acre Hurricane Plantation in at Davis Bend.
The Battle of Shiloh began a period of turmoil — , at Davis Bend, although its black residents continued farming. The plantation was occupied by two companies of black Union troops in December Under the command of Colonel Samuel Thomas, these soldiers began to fortify the area. Grant had expressed a desire to make of the Davis plantations "a negro paradise.
Davis Bend was caught in the middle of the turf war between the military and the Treasury Department. In February , the Treasury re-confiscated acres of Davis Bend, restoring them to white owners who had sworn loyalty oaths. 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. In a petition signed by 56 farmers including Montgomery and published in the New Orleans Tribune: 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.
From —, Congress debated what policies it might adopt to address the social issues that would confront the South after the war. The Freedmen's Aid Society pushed for a "Bureau of Emancipation" to assist in the economic transition away from slavery. It used Port Royal as evidence that blacks could live and work on their own. Congress continued to debate the economic and social status of the free population, with land reform identified as critical to realizing black freedom. This stronger version of the bill passed both houses on March 3, The Bureau had authority to provide supplies for refugees—and an unfunded mandate to redistribute land, in parcels of up to 40 acres: At the end of said term, or at any time during said term, the occupants of any parcels so assigned may purchase the land and receive such title thereto as the United States can convey, upon paying therefor the value of the land, as ascertained and fixed for the purpose of determining the annual rent aforesaid.
After three years, they would have the option to buy this land at full price. The Bureau in charge, which became known as the Freedmen's Bureau, was placed under the continuing supervision of the military because Congress anticipated the need to defend black settlements from White Southerners. When Andrew Johnson became president after Lincoln's assassination , he took aggressive steps to restore the Union. On May 29, , Johnson issued an amnesty proclamation to ordinary Southern citizens who swore loyalty oaths, promising not only political immunity but also return of confiscated property.
Howard , chief of the Freedmen's Bureau, requested an interpretation from Attorney General James Speed regarding how this proclamation would affect the Freedmen's Bureau mandate. Speed replied on June 22, that the Bureau Commissioner: Howard acted quickly based on the authorization from Speed, ordering an inventory of lands available for redistribution and resisting white Southerners' attempts to reclaim property. On July 28, , Howard issued "Circular no.
Its final section clarified: After issuing Circular 13, however, Howard, seemingly unaware of how significant and controversial his instructions might prove, left Washington for a vacation in Maine. Fullerton suggested to at least one subordinate that Circular 13 "will not be observed for the present". When Howard returned to Washington, Johnson ordered him to write a new Circular that would respect his policy of land restoration.
Johnson rejected Howard's draft and wrote his own version, which he issued on September 12 as Circular 15—including Howard's name. Especially during the six-week period between Circular 13 and Circular 15, '40 acres and a mule' along with other supplies necessary for farming represented a common promise of Freedmen's Bureau agents. Fisk , Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for Kentucky and Tennessee, had announced at a black political assembly: A Bureau administrator in Virginia proposed leasing to each family a acre plot of land, a pair of mules, harnesses, a cart, tools, seeds, and food supplies.
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The family would pay for these supplies after growing crops and selling them. Bureau agents encountered legal problems in allocating land to freedpeople as a result of the "Black Codes" passed by Southern legislatures in late and Some of the new laws prevented black people from owning or leasing land. The Freedmen's Bureau generally treated the black Codes as invalid, based on federal legislation. However, the Bureau was not always able to enforce its interpretation after the Union Army had substantially demobilized.
During and after the war, politicians, generals and others envisioned a variety of colonization plans that would have provided real estate to black families. Although the American Colonization Society had been colonizing more people in Liberia and receiving more donations almost one million dollars in the s , it did not have the means to respond to mass emancipation. Lincoln had long supported colonization as a plausible solution to the problem of slavery, and pursued colonization plans throughout his presidency.
Volunteers were promised 40 acres of land and a job in the mines; Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy , whom Lincoln had appointed to oversee the plan, had also purchased mules, yokes, tools, wagons, seeds, and other supplies to support a potential colony. Pomeroy accepted of the 13, people who applied for the job. Like Liberia, an independent black nation, Haiti was also considered a good place to colonize freedpeople from the U.
A number of colonists died in the first year.
Lincoln continued to pursue colonization plans, particularly in the British West Indies , but none came to fruition. The American Colonization Society settled a few hundred people in Liberia during the war, and several thousand more in the five years following. He appointed Edward Ord to supervise the project and protect the freedmen from Forrest. As it became clear that the pool of land available for blacks was rapidly shrinking, the Union discussed various proposals for how blacks might resettle and eventually own their own land.
In Virginia, the mass of landless blacks represented a growing crisis—soon to be exacerbated by the return of 10, black soldiers from Texas. Brown proposed that the federal government reserve , acres in Florida for colonization by the soldiers and 50, other free blacks from Virginia. Howard took Brown's proposal to Congress. In December , Congress began to debate the "Second Freedmen's Bureau bill", which would have opened three million acres of unoccupied public land in Florida, Mississippi, and Arkansas for homesteading.
Congress passed the bill in February but could not override Johnson's veto. Howard continued to push for Congress to appropriate land for allocation to freedmen. With support from Thaddeus Stevens and William Fessenden , Congress began to debate a new bill for black settlement of public lands in the South.