Special Field Orders, No. 15 was signed by General William T. Sherman January 16, 1865, creating forty-acre plots out of land south of Charleston, South Carolina for approximately 40,000 freedmen and their families. “Sherman’s Reservation” was most commonly identified with the phrase “forty acres and a mule,” although confiscated land was parceled out to freedmen throughout the South under the supervision of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Policy changes under President Andrew Johnson, however, returned most lands to former owners, evictions that were carried out by the army.

Origin of Forty Acres and a Mule

By late 1864 and into 1865, General Sherman’s army was shadowed by thousands of freed slaves, posing a logistical problem and forcing the issue of what was to become of the slaves after emancipation. After conferring with Secretary of War Stanton in Savannah, Sherman issued field orders establishing homesteads for the freedmen, instructing that they be loaned mules to assist in land tilling.

Sherman’s order, however, subjected the temporary arrangement to a time “until Congress shall regulate their title.” Further, Section V of the order details management of the settlement to an Inspector “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…” Possessory titles carry no registration of a land claim and subject the settler to a period of years before actual ownership of the land can be acquired.

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