Unkept promise slowed recovery

Reversal of order to give freedmen `40 acres and a mule' made transition from slavery harder

Web posted February 29, 2000

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By Jenel Few
Morris News Service

ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. -- Four generations of Daises have lived and worked on land that their ancestors purchased on St. Helena Island in South Carolina after they were emancipated from slavery.

Time line 1733: Arrival The first Georgia colonists arrive in Savannah to lay out a debtors colony; among them are African servants and slaves. 1749: Official enslavement Although the trustees who organized the settlement restricted slavery to prevent greed and laziness among the settlers, many smuggled in slaves and pushed for greater land ownership. By 1749, the ban was repealed and the number of slaves would soon near, and at times outnumber, the number of settlers. 1865: Slavery abolished After the Union Army's defeat of the Confederacy, the state reluctantly agreed to emancipate slaves as part of an agreement to restore them to the Union. 1867: Reconstructing lives Bitter Georgians refused to ratify the 14th Amendment giving blacks full citizenship in 1867, and the state was placed under military rule. As a result, the state had its officials forced on it by outside military appointment. In the election of 1868, a new constitution was adopted, and 32 blacks were elected to the state legislature. Land ownership programs had been established to ease the transition from slavery to freedom, and many blacks looked forward to a progressive future. 1868: Deconstruction of Reconstruction Racist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan were organized to combat black political and economic progress. In September 1868, the white legislative majority expelled the blacks from office. Eventually, the brief period of black advancement was erased, and violence and legislation were used to segregate the races, subjugate blacks and maintain economic and political power among white affluent classes. 1932-1940: Great migration Southern blacks began moving to Northern cities in search of social and economic opportunities and relief from racial oppression and agricultural life in the South. 1985-present: Homecoming The rise in cultural awareness prompted many blacks to return to their Lowcountry Southern roots to explore their Gullah and Geechee culture. Source: Chronology of African-American History, by Alton Hornsby Jr. and the Encyclopedia of Georgia by Somerset Publishers Inc.

``I consider myself very blessed because of it,'' said Ron Daise, who has made his living by performing and writing about the sea island culture that his family and others like it have preserved and passed down. ``I am at peace,'' he said.

Daise's paternal great-grandfather, Cuffy Daise, was born on the island. His maternal great-grandparents moved to the island from Virginia as slaves. They owned a store and farmed cotton, peas, corn and okra.

``Some families have been able to build homes on the land,'' said his 86-year-old mother, Kathleen Daise. ``The land is still in the family, and some of the younger ones are taking care of it.''

But an unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule has made the kind of legacy that the Daises enjoy a rarity.

GEN. WILLIAM T. SHERMAN and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton met with 20 of Savannah's black clergy Jan. 12, 1865, to discuss how to help blacks make the transition from slavery to freedom. The result was a plan to start freedmen off with 40 acres of confiscated and abandoned coastal property and a military mule.

The plan could have started Southern blacks on the path to economic and political freedom. But fierce opposition and a quick reversal of the order set back progress by a century.

According to The Memoirs of William T. Sherman, the black men were asked if they preferred to live among the whites or in colonies by themselves.

Garrison Frasier, spokesman for the group, replied, ``I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over.'' Nineteen of the 20 men agreed.

Sherman and Stanton mulled over the response, and four days later Sherman issued Special Field Orders, No. 15, promising all blacks 40 acres of Lowcountry property and a military mule.

He immediately assigned Gen. Rufus Saxton, director of the South Carolina Freedmen's Bureau, to implement the order. Saxton began settling black people on land that was confiscated or abandoned during the Civil War. Eventually, he would settle more than 40,000 blacks on 40-acre tracts.

BUT MANY CONFEDERATE landowners, still reeling from their defeat in war, refused to give up their land. Not long after the order was issued, President Johnson reversed the order, giving special pardons to Confederate rebels and returning their land to them.

The unfulfilled promise of land left most of the newly freed blacks with nothing to start their new lives. After being stolen from Africa and sold, stripped of their language, family and education, they suddenly were released from the bondage of slavery into a hostile environment without any of the tools necessary to build a future.

Even the lucky few who were able to buy and hold onto a plot of land often lacked the capital and equipment needed to farm the land or build a home. Crop failure was common, and many freedmen left the sea islands and drifted back to Savannah, according to The Negro In Savannah, 1865-1900, by Robert E. Perdue.

Many also were driven off the land after President Johnson reversed Field Order No. 15. Thus, the phrase ``40 acres and a mule'' has, among blacks, become synonymous with an empty promise.

THE FAILURE TO PROVIDE freedmen with 40 acres and a mule had an enormous impact on blacks and the South as a whole, according to Howard Robinson, Armstrong Atlantic State University professor of history.

``African Americans fell into the share-cropping system, and out of that system grew debt peonage,'' he said. ``It was a way for white planters and merchants, who were also legislators, to keep total control.''

Although they were legally free men, blacks had to rely on the same people who had enslaved them for all of the things they needed to survive -- food, clothing, shelter, farmland and farming supplies. Each year they grew deeper and deeper in debt, binding them once again to a life of servitude.

``It was another form of slavery,'' Mr. Robinson said.

Had black people received their 40 acres and the supplies to get through the first season in 1865, had embittered and fearful whites not fought Reconstruction and stood in the way of black political gains, had blacks been empowered and encouraged to become self-sufficient, Mr. Robinson says, there would not have been a need for the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

``Just think of the energy that went into the Civil Rights Movement,'' Mr. Robinson said. ``Had those issues been resolved 100 years earlier, the gains the South is just now making may have been made far earlier.''

IN SAVANNAH, SLAVES who had once toiled for wealthy planters on South West Chatham plantations took advantage of Sherman's order and acquired the property for their own benefit.

The land was taken away from them when the order was reversed. But large numbers of them saved enough money to purchase 10-acre plots and, with the help of a sympathetic white attorney, William Burroughs, they acquired enough land to establish a community of their own.

``The Burroughs Community was incorporated in 1890. It was the first and the only incorporated, all-black town in Chatham County,'' said Karen Bell, a Savannah State University history professor.

Ms. Bell wrote her thesis on the community in 1991 and interviewed Peter Warner, who was 101 years old and the last descendant of the original Burroughs settlers still living in the community.

Burroughs, according to Ms. Bell's research, was self-reliant. The townspeople elected their own mayor and sheriff and sold their crops in Savannah.

However, utter independence was part of Burroughs' downfall. They didn't have enough money and resources to keep the community running.

``They struggled to survive from the beginning,'' Ms. Bell said. ``It was never a thriving community.''

Eventually, migration, generational change and taxation caused them to lose their land. The Wild Heron and Grove Point Plantation subdivisions now stand on what was once the Burroughs Community.

MORE TRAGIC THAN THE END of Burroughs Community was the destruction of the black settlement on St. Catherines Island.

St. Catherines Island is now a private nature preserve known for its exotic animals, scientific research and a 1580s-era Spanish Mission.

But in 1865 it was the capital of the freed slave territory. Tunis G. Campbell set up an all-black government on the island with executive, legislative and judiciary branches. Positioning himself as a deified royal, Campbell organized his huge following of black workers and gained bargaining power with white landowners.

In 1868 his followers elected him to the state Senate. However, he and a small group of other black senators served just four months before Georgia's white political power structure ousted them from the Legislature. Campbell fought back, setting up a black voting majority in McIntosh County that kept black officials in power for an unprecedented five years.

But Campbell's power to organize and empower blacks generated fear and anger among their former Confederate neighbors. Angry white mobs eventually burned down his home, had him arrested and placed in the state's convict-lease imprisonment system. St. Catherines Island was returned to state control when Johnson reversed Field Order No. 15, and the freedmen's settlement was broken up.

Campbell, the man who had done so much to settle former slaves, spent the rest of his life as a state prisoner being leased out to work on private plantations. He died in 1891.

HISTORIANS CAN ONLY speculate about what would have happened if the promise of land was fulfilled. But they agree that the life and legacy of many blacks would have been much different.

``Black people would have had some kind of economic base to operate from,'' said Modibo Kadalie, a Savannah State University professor of African and African-American history. ``A black middle class would have emerged much more quickly, and there may never have been a Jim Crow. The skilled-labor classes would have been stronger, and we'd have a bigger presence in the capitalist class.''

About 135 years later, there are blacks who have begun to demand their 40 acres.

The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America is a Washington-based group that lobbies for reparations for slavery and discrimination after slavery.

``We have suffered a great injury,'' said Kalongi Olusegun, N'COBRA treasurer.

Although generations of blacks have been born free since emancipation, he says the vestiges of enslavement have yet to be fully eradicated.

``It's more refined,'' Mr. Olusegun said. ``But it still continues.''

Mr. Olusegun admits that reparations would be complicated. But he said it needs to be done if the country hopes to heal wounds that run so deep.

``There's no way you can repair damage to a people who for 500 years have been so devastated,'' he said. ``But the injury must be evaluated, and all of the people affected must be involved in the discussion about viable solutions.''

A MICHIGAN CONGRESSMAN, Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., has introduced House Resolution 40 to acknowledge the injustice, brutality and inhumanity of slavery on this continent between 1619 and 1865. The bill would establish a commission to examine slavery and the impact of the racial and economic discrimination it caused, and ultimately make recommendations to Congress on appropriate remedies.

However, the proposal has been referred to House subcommittee and has not gone before the House for a vote.

Some Americans might oppose reparations because they can't understand how people who were never personally enslaved can be affected by slavery so long after it was abolished. But Mr. Robinson said it should be studied.

``There's this thing in our society with this concept of a self-made man. But most successful Americans have been handed down a legacy and opportunities,'' Mr. Robinson said. ``Black folks have not had the opportunity to hand those things down to their children.''