Freed Slaves and Land Ownership What Did

Freed Slaves and Land Ownership

What did freed slaves received after the Civil War and Emancipation? What were the realities for freed slaves when it came to wanting their own land to cultivate? These and other questions will be addressed in this paper.

The Literature on Freed Blacks and Land Ownership after the Civil War

After the war, freed slaves had to struggle to adjust to their new lives away from the shackles of slavery. They wanted to break into "…emerging industrial occupations" but that was difficult because laws were passed in the South to "restrict the mobility of newly freed slaves" (Work in America, p. 9). What actions did freed slaves take after the Civil War? The book, Work in America, explains that they "did not suffer meekly" but instead they attempted to organize themselves into a kind of union (9). An example of a union formed by freed slaves was the Workingman's Association in Pensacola, Florida. Another union, called the Colored National labor Union, petitioned the national government (several times from 1869 on) to "uphold basic worker rights and to change the land tenure in the South" (9). These petitions were "ignored" by the federal government the book asserts. Instead, the evil system of sharecropping was instituted in the South, in which planters basically "…rented out the land to freed slaves" and the planters and landowners "…took the rent from future earnings from the land" (Work in America, 9).

Eugene LaCorbiniere writes that after the slaves were freed they were promised forty acres and a mule. This would in effect be "reparations in the form of land ownership" due to the terrible treatment Africans received upon being brought to American in chains and force to perform work so the settlers could profit (LaCorbiniere, 2007). The Special Field Order No. 15 passed on January 16, 1865, authorized freed blacks to receive lands -- and land was to be given to the head of each black household, LaCorbiniere explains. Some 40,000 freed slaves were given about 500,000 acres of "discarded Confederate land" -- this was called the Freedman's Bureau -- but according to LaCorbiniere, the decision to give 40 acres to freed slaves was reversed by Congress in 1866. In fact President Andrew Johnson ordered "…all land under federal control to be returned to its previous owners" (History.com).

And hence, the freed slaves "…were given no land and no money" which put them in a very tenuous situation; they had freedom, but they were in a terrible "bargaining position" with no political power (Sherman, et al., 2008, 124). The freed slaves needed money to lease land, buy equipment, and to feed themselves until crops could be realized, Sherman explained. Stuck as sharecroppers, many freed blacks (because they had to give up half their crops to pay for the use of the land) became debtors; and if a sharecropper was caught trying to leave the state while still owing money to the landlord, "…he or she could be imprisoned" and could well wind up in a chain gang (men chained together doing menial labor).

Why was owning property so important? "Owning land was the key to economic independence and autonomy," according to an article in History.com. Of course owning land was also a psychological blessing for freed slaves; independence from the brutality of the whip and from the scars of bondage was a dream that many freed slaves sought but did not achieve. After working the land for a master for most of their lives, having their own land was a matter of pride, principle, and dignity for freed slaves. But sadly, the federal government -- despite the actions taken by freed blacks "…took little concrete action to help freed blacks in their quest to own their own land…" (History.com).