40 Acres Reversed — Freedpeople Lose Confiscated Land

Gen. Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 (January 1865) had distributed 400,000 acres of Sea Island and coastal land to approximately 40,000 freed families — about 40 acres each. President Johnson's September 1865 orders reversed this, directing the Freedmen's Bureau to restore land to pardoned Confederates. Bureau agents evicted Black families who had planted and harvested the land for one full season.