The Short-Lived Promise of ’40 Acres and a Mule’ (The History Channel)
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As the Civil War was ending, recently freed Black people were promised land to start independent lives—but Lincoln's assassination led to that plan's demise.
By Nadra Nittle, The History Channel, November 9, 2022
“What do you want for your own people?”
That’s the question Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton suggested Union General William T. Sherman pose to 20 Black pastors in Savannah, Georgia, as the Civil War neared its end and enslaved African Americans neared freedom.
The Black leaders gathered for the January 12, 1865, meeting with the military officials in a mansion called the Green-Meldrim House. They explained that they didn’t want to live among white people, as they feared it would take years for racial prejudice to dissipate in the South. Instead, they wished to live amongst themselves on their own land. That would entail redistributing the land of Southern plantation owners.
“The way we can best take care of ourselves is to have land and turn it and till it by our own labor,” said the Rev. Garrison Frazier, a 67-year-old Baptist minister and spokesman for the group, which included individuals who had been enslaved and lived as free men alike. “We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own,” Frazier told the Union military officials.