President Andrew Johnson Writes to Gen. William T. Sherman, Challenging Him on His Famed “40 Acres and a Mule” Order, Which Gave Freed Slaves Land Previously Occupied by Slaveholders

The only letter from Johnson to Sherman we find ever having reached the market; Johnson rescinded the order, and in this letter asks Sherman for his justifications

When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the slaves were freed, but the question arose what to do with them after freedom. To the freedmen themselves, the coming of the Union Armies, and their ultimate victory, meant economic autonomy and independence from white control. They also sought to solidify their family ties and to create independent religious and secular institutions. Blacks’ hopes that the federal government would provide them with land and assist them to establish institutions were shared by many whites, who felt something must be done to get them a new start. The foremost tangible example of federal action to aid former slaves, and one what raised the freedmen’s hopes high, was Gen. William T. Sherman’s famous Field Order No. 15, issued in January 1865, popularly referred to as the “Forty Acres and a Mule” Order. This set aside a large swath of captured land along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida for the exclusive settlement of freed slaves, something that had never been done before. This was followed by the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of March 1865, which authorized the bureau to rent or sell land in its possession – much of it previously owned by slaveholders – to former slaves.

Sherman issued his famous Special Field Order No. 15 from his headquarters in Savannah. Specifically, it defined for freedmen settlement an area along the coast north and south of where he had encamped his army: “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. John River, Florida.” This would include a continuous 30-mile-wide swath of land extending along the coast south from Charleston, South Carolina, as far as Jacksonville, Florida, and including all the Sea Islands. It was an area where large rice plantations flourished. Growing rice was an extremely labor intensive occupation and the plantation owners owned many slaves. The slave population of the area therefore far exceeded the white population, which, of course, constituted the landholders. From the North’s point of view, it was not only the epicenter of the most egregious form of the unjust slave system, wherein a large number of black slaves labored entirely for the profit of white slave owners, but it was also the epicenter of the secession movement that precipitated the beginning of the war at Fort Sumter. The area came to be popularly known as the “Sherman Reservation.” The Order provided that “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.”

The freedmen would live on the former plantations, each family receiving up to 40 acres. “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…, the inspector of settlements and plantations will…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 800 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 Order concluded, “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 management, 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…”

President Lincoln approved this Order, giving us insight into what his Reconstruction policies would have looked like. But Tennessean President Andrew Johnson was unsympathetic to efforts to assist the freedmen, and was petitioned by the whites who had original title to land in “Sherman’s Reservation” to recognize their titles and give them back full possession. In the summer of 1865 Johnson did so, overturning Sherman’s Order and having land in federal hands returned to its former owners. The dream of justice or reparations for the former slaves was stillborn. Lacking land, most former slaves had little economic alternative other than resuming work on plantations owned by whites. Some worked for wages, others as sharecroppers, who divided the crop with the owner at the end of the year.

At the start of February 1866, preparing for the imminent congressional reauthorization of the Freedmen’s Bureau, which Johnson expected to veto, he sought cover to oppose any provision that failed to return all the Southern lands in the hands of freedmen to their original owners. He wrote Sherman a letter seeking to maneuver him into providing cover for his upcoming veto by getting Sherman to limit or disavow the Order. If Sherman defended the order, he would have Johnson’s enmity, which might interfere with Sherman’s upcoming promotion to lieutenant general; if he seemed to apologize for it, then Radical Republicans in Congress would be offended.

Letter signed, on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, February 1, 1866, to Sherman ordering him to justify himself. “General, Conflicting opinions having been expressed in reference to the intention and effect of your Field Order No. 15, granting to certain freedmen in South Carolina possession of certain lands therein mentioned, I respectfully request you to furnish me with a brief and correct statement of the provisions and purposes of said order at the time of its issue, and the circumstances which may have rendered it necessary.”

Sherman responded to Johnson on February 2, 1866, carefully steering through the terrain. His response was published in The New York Times the following day and was thus undoubtedly meant for public consumption. His game plan to was blamed Johnson foe Edwin M. Stanton, provide technical information, and avoid taking a position on the Order. “The Hon. E. M. Stanton, Secretary of War, came to Savannah soon after its occupation by the forces under my command, and conferred freely with me as to the best methods to provide for the vast number of negroes who had followed the army from the interior of Georgia, as also for those who had already congregated on the islands near Hilton Head, and were still coming into our lines. We agreed perfectly that the young and able-bodied men should be enlisted as soldiers, or employed by the Quartermaster in the necessary work of unloading ships, and for other army purposes. But this left on our hands the old and feeble, the women and children, who had necessarily to be fed by the United States. Mr. Stanton summoned a large number of the old negroes mostly preachers with whom he had long conference, of which he took down notes. After the conference he was satisfied the negroes could, with some little aid from the United States, by means of the abandoned plantations on the Sea Islands and along the navigable waters take care of themselves. He requested me to draw up a plan that would be uniform and practicable. I made the rough draft and we went over it very carefully. Mr. Stanton making many changes, and the present Orders No. 15 resulted and were made public…I know of course we could not convey title to land and merely provided “possessory” titles to be good so long as war and military power lasted.”

So Sherman emphasized that that Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton was mainly responsible, and that he had had no authority to give full title to the land covered in his field order, but only a temporary or “possessory” title to it. This he unapologetically did.

This is the only letter of Johnson to Sherman we have found ever reaching the market.