The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [203]
Four days later, Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, setting aside the Sea Islands and a large swath of land along the coasts of South Carolina and Georgia for the exclusive settlement of black families on forty-acre plots. He also offered them broken-down mules the army could no longer use. Here lay the origins of the phrase “Forty Acres and a Mule” that would reverberate throughout the South during Reconstruction. Sherman was no Radical; his aim was not to inaugurate a social revolution but to relieve his army of the burden of caring for black refugees and, in the process, punish Confederate planters. But black families hastened to take advantage of his order. By June some 40,000 freedpeople had been settled on “Sherman land.”75
Warning that the black settlers would become “landed paupers” whose presence would prevent “the energy and industry of the North” from utilizing this valuable land, General John C. Robinson urged Lincoln to overturn it. Although Sherman’s policy went well beyond anything Lincoln had previously envisioned or supported, he took no action one way or the other, whether from deference to the decisions of military commanders in the field or a desire to see how the experiment worked out is impossible to say. Lincoln did, however, continue to monitor free-labor experiments in the South. In February 1865 he met once again with John Eaton and directed him to continue his supervision of the freedpeople in the Mississippi Valley “on the same principle as in the past, making such improvements as experience may suggest.” On March 1, after receiving a report from Thomas Conway, who had tried to make the labor system established by General Banks more equitable, Lincoln praised Conway’s success “in the work of their moral and physical elevation,” noting that wartime experiments were leading to “an earlier and happier consummation than the most sanguine friends of the freedmen could reasonably expect.”76
Sherman’s order left unclear whether his land grants were permanent or temporary. But the idea that the federal government would provide the former slaves with access to land was reinforced when, at the beginning of March, Congress finally approved and Lincoln signed the bill to establish a Bureau of Emancipation, now called the Freedmen’s Bureau. The measure charged the bureau with distributing clothing, food, and fuel to destitute former slaves and overseeing “all subjects” relating to their condition in the South. To avoid the impression of giving preferential treatment to blacks, Congress at the last moment expanded its responsibilities to include white southern refugees as well.
Continuing fears about the former slaves becoming dependent on federal assistance led the lawmakers to limit the bureau’s existence to one year (later extended to 1870). Nonetheless, the bureau represented an enormous expansion of federal authority. During its life it would set up its own courts, establish schools, regulate labor contracts, try to protect former slaves from violence, and in myriad other ways oversee matters traditionally considered local and state concerns. And as suggested by its full title—Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands—it was also authorized to divide abandoned and confiscated land into plots for rental to freedmen and loyal white refugees and eventual sale with “such title as the United States can convey,” language that reflected the legal ambiguity surrounding southern land that had come into the government’s possession. Hardly a commitment to widespread land distribution, the Freedmen’s Bureau Act did envision the federal government settling some former slaves on farms of their own. A number of bureau officials soon proceeded to do so. But in the summer of 1865, in one of his early acts as president, Andrew Johnson would order all land in government