Introduction
For many of the slaves that were affectively rendered free after the declaration of emancipation by president Abraham Lincoln, land represented a key factor and symbol to the attainment of full freedom and rights. It will be noted that almost all of the slaves in the United States were working in plantations at the time of the declaration; and that despite the hardships they were enduring during this time, they had a profound connection with the aspects of farming and land. Indeed, the freedmen saw themselves as being more capable of carrying out successful commercial farming activities since for all practical purposes; they did all the work in the farms (Biondi, 2003 p.5-18).
Emancipation
The emancipation of black people from slavery was a progressive step in the history of the United States and of the world; however, these steps by itself were not sufficient to ensure that the black person in that period enjoyed social, economic, and political freedoms equal to that of the white man at the time. The invasion of the confederate lands by union forces ensured the freedom of hundreds of thousands of slaves; however, due to the policies put in place by the slave states to ensure illiteracy within the slave workforce, the newly freed group was illiterate, poor, and without any source of subsistence. The freedmen did not own any land, and thus could not participate in any economic activity since the mainstay of the southern economy was agriculture.
In addition to this, southern agriculture was facing an imminent collapse due to the sudden loss of the cheap (practically free) labor which had powered the agricultural activities. Indeed, while the union military leaders in the south sought to free the black person from slavery, they did not wish to change the social hierarchy which saw the black occupy the lowest rung of the society and compelled to produce cheap labor for the economy. As such, the labor codes introduced by the federal military, now known as “compulsory free labor” did not serve to satisfy the yearning for social, political, and economic freedom for the African-Americans.
On the other hand, the white planters were still trying to grapple with the social and economic effects of the newly established order; these farmers were now expected to pay for wages for labor which they previously got free, and to pay for the social amenities of their workforce including health and housing costs. Apart from this, there was the racial belief that the black people were inherently lazy and savaged; and could not be put to productive work but under the threat of pain (whipping) and death (Wesley, 1957 p.113—127).
With the labor market in shambles and the freedmen seeking to engage in some form of economic activity, the issue of land allocation became very important. The freedmen were not only not willing to work under difficult and abusive conditions reminiscent of slavery in the white plantations, but they were also looking to attain some form of economic freedom that would allow them to push for other agendas and believed that allocation of land would ensure that.
Land
The beginning of 1985 saw the achievement of these goals; when General William Sherman, with the approval of the War Department allocated part of the land confiscated from rebel confederate landowners for the settlement of freed slaves and their families through a Special Field Order No. 15 on January 16 which started in part that,
“the islands of Charleston south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering St. Johns River, Florida are reserved and set apart for the settlement of Negroes now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.” (Ermet, 2002)
In March of 1865, congress sought to formalize this arrangement by creating the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned lands which went ahead to settle some 40,000 people on 400,000 acres of “Sherman land” and an addition 10,000 on 500,000 of other land left behind by fleeing confederates; and authorized the agency to divide the plantations into 40 acres which would be rented to freedmen who would eventually own them.
President Abraham Lincoln died on April 15, 1865; and the vice president Andrew Jackson immediately ascended to power. This marked the end of the hope by freed African slaves to be legitimate landowners in the United States. A strong supporter of the southern states and white supremacists, he was open to pressure by pardoned former southern landowners who wanted their land back. Additionally, the confederates and the president feared that the black farmers would accumulate enough wealth and power to make them a formidable political and social force to imbalance the status quo in the south.
This eventually saw the defeat in congress on the 5th of February, 1866 of the portion in legislation that gave the Freedmen’s Bureau the power to assign land to the ex-slaves; and the return of all confiscated land to its previous owners at the expense of the freedmen who had already been settled there.
Conclusion
Redistribution thus failed due to three reasons; first and foremost, the death of Lincoln dealt a devastating blow to the course; secondly, the need to salvage the southern economy through the availability of cheap labor in the farms did not favor the acquisition of land by the freedmen who would have attained their economic freedom and denied the system of this resource. Finally, the fear by sections of congress of a new social order in the south in form of wealthy and educated black may have very well tipped the balance against redistribution and reallocation of land.
Work Cited
Biondi, Martha. “The Rise of the Reparations Movement”. Radical History Review. 87. (2003). 5-18.
Emert, Phyllis Raybin. “No Easy Answers in Reparations Controversy. Respect: A Newsletter; About Law and Diversity. New Jersey State Bar Foundation (Fall.Vol.2, No. 1: 2002). Web.
Wesley, B. Edgar “Forty Acres and a Mule and a Speller”. History of Education Journal. 8. 4 (Summer, 1957). 113—127.