Historical Military Orders: General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15

Forty Acres and a Mule

Historical Military Orders: General William T. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15

1/16/1865

Historical Military Orders

BlackPast provides the text of the historical military orders that were issued by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865 as part of Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as federal property coastal land stretching from South Carolina to Florida. The order gave most of the roughly 400,000 acres to formerly enslaved African Americans in forty-acre sections, providing the origin for the phrase, “Forty Acres and a Mule,” which was based on the belief that newly emancipated Blacks throughout the old Confederacy would be given the confiscated lands of former plantation owners.

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BlackPast (Contributor: The National Archives)

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