page_title: Forty acres and a mule
section_title: Politics
hierarchical_section_title: Forty acres and a mule / Outcomes / Politics
context_page_description: Forty acres and a mule is part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a wartime order proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865 during the American Civil War, to allot land to some freed families, in plots of land no larger than 40 acres. Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort. The field orders followed a series of conversations between Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Radical Republican abolitionists Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens following disruptions to the institution of slavery provoked by the American Civil War. Many freed people believed, after being told by various political figures, that they had a right to own the land they had been forced to work as slaves, and were eager to control their own property. Freed people widely expected to legally claim 40 acres of land and a mule after the end of the war. Some freedmen took advantage of the order and took initiatives to acquire land plots along a strip of South Carolina, Georgia and Florida coasts.
context_section_description: Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner continued to support land reform for freedpeople, but were opposed by a large bloc of politicians who did not want to violate property rights or redistribute capital.
  Many radical Northerners withdrew their support for land reform in the years following the war. One reason for the shift in political opinion was fear by the Republicans that land ownership might lead Blacks to align with Democrats for economic reasons. In general, politicians turned their focus to the legal status of freedpeople. In the analysis of W. E. B. Du Bois, black suffrage became more politically palatable precisely as an inexpensive alternative to well-funded agrarian reform.
caption: 15th Amendment, or the Darkey's millennium - 40 acres of land and a mule, from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views.
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