12.1

1. 12.1 The End of Slavery

2. Reuniting Black Families • Slavery sold off many family members but, had not destroyed the black family • Many went to great lengths to reunite with their lost relatives sometimes searching for decades before being reunited • Advertisements appeared across the country searching for information concerning the whereabouts of lost family members

3. Land • As freed people left the plantations they desired economic security • In the 19th century this meant owning land • Many believed their ability to be self sufficient depended on this • They looked to the federal government as a means to achieve this goal

4. Special Field Order #15 • Shortly after General William Tecumseh Sherman arrived in Savannah, Georgia he announced that freedmen would receive land • He issued Special Field Order #15 which specified that a stretch of land abandoned by white owners on the Atlantic from Charleston S.C. to Jacksonville, Fla. was to be reserved for black families • The head of each family was to be given a title to 40 acres of land. He also gave them use of army mules. • This gave rise to the slogan “Forty acres and a mule”

5. Special Field Order #15 • Within six months, 40,000 freed people were working 400,000 acres • They often avoided planting the crops associated with slavery such rice and cotton • They worked together as families and kinfolk to raise their crops

6. The Port Royal Experiment • In 1861, Union military forces carved out an area of land in Beaufort and Port Royal S.C. that remained under federal control for the rest of the war • Hundreds of former slaves began to work the land under the supervision of the government in what was known as the Port Royal Experiment • The land was later auctioned off to free blacks and Northern businessmen who hired African Americans to raise cotton • When the former white owners returned to claim the land they had abandoned they found their former slaves had taken control and were turned away

7. The Freedmen’s Bureau • In 1865 Congress created the Freedmen’s Bureau, an agency designed to assist freed slaves in making the transition to freedom • It was headed by General Oliver Howard who was a devout Christian and committed to helping the freedmen • Their enormous job was to help freed slaves gain land, education, negotiate labor contracts with white planters, settle legal disputes between whites and blacks and provide food, medical care, and transportation for those left in poverty after the war • They never had more than 900 agents and were desperately needed all over the South

8. The Freedmen’s Bureau • The Bureau established camps for the homeless, fed the hungry, and cared for orphans the best it could • They provided medical care for over a half million freedmen and thousands of whites suffering from small pox, yellow fever, cholera and pnemonia

9. Sympathy for Southerners • The bureau began distributing land to freed slaves but the order was revoked by President Andrew Johnson • Johnson became president after Lincoln’s assassination and he was sympathetic to white Southerners • He pardoned thousands of Confederates and ordered that land given to freedmen by General Howard be returned to its former white owners

10. Southern Homestead Act • In 1866 more than three million acres of land was set aside for freedmen and white southerners who were loyal to the Union • This land was not suitable for farming and most people lacked the financial resources to cultivate it • Eventually, southern timber companies acquired much of this land. The Southern Homestead Act largely failed.

11. Sharecropping • In 1866 bureau officials tried to force freedmen into unfair agreements with white land owners • Eventually share cropping developed where black families worked land owned by whites for free in exchange for one-third of the crop at harvest time • Frequently black families were cheated out of their fair share of the harvest

12. Assignment • 1. What steps did African Americans take to reunite families divided over slavery? • 2. What was Special Field Order #15? Who issued this order? • 3. Describe the Port Royal Experiment. • 4. What was the job of the Freedmen’s Bureau? Why couldn’t this group solve the issues of the postwar south? • 5. Describe how Andrew Johnson betrayed the hopes of freedmen across the south? Would life have been different if Lincoln had lived?