1865 AND FORTY ACRES

1865's FORTY ACRES AND MULE A small fact can bring clarity when it is fitted into a larger, incomplete factual background. The fact that Edwin Stanton, Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War, was later fired by his successor, Andrew Johnson, sounds minor and meaningless; until it is recalled that in February 1865, Edwin Stanton and General William Tecumseh Sherman, after a meeting with black preachers issued an agreement on President Lincoln's behalf, issued Field Order #15, that accorded to the blacks in the broader environs of Savannah, Georgia, "40 Acres and a mule," subject to ratification by Congress. http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/ask-a-historian/24170 With the war ended, and Stanton fired the blacks never got fee simple title to their promised land. Neither did they get the mule, but the Confederate traitors, who had fought desperately to destroy this country got this property restored to them along with voting in 1865! This is where the much ballyhooed "40 acres and a mule" came from in history. It was an actual legal agreement that was later rescinded by the villainous treachery and arguably treasonous conduct by a corrupt post-Lincoln assassination President, Johnson of Tennessee.