Posted on 09/11/2014 6:50:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On a rainy night in early 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arrived in Savannah, Ga. — which the Union had captured weeks earlier — with a question: What should become of newly free black people? It was a question that many in power had been asking for some time. What was different this time was to whom the question was posed: the newly free black people themselves.
It was a visit born of a massacre about a month before, and it launched a debate that continues to this day.
The issue of where these people should go had dogged Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, too, as he marched through Georgia in the fall of 1864. Sherman had expected to pick up able-bodied black men to assist his troops (but not to join them; Sherman would not allow that). An unintended consequence of his scorched-earth policy was that all manner of freed slaves — including women, children and the elderly — abandoned the plantations and fell in behind him.
More than 10,000 black refugees followed Sherman’s March to the Sea. That many mouths to feed would have proved challenging for a well-stocked force, but for an army that survived by foraging, it was nearly impossible. James Connolly, a 21-year-old major in the Illinois Volunteer Infantry (and future congressman), wrote that the refugee camps were so numerous that they often ringed the camps of the corps. The “contrabands,” as they were called, regularly wandered into Union camps to beg for food. And as Sherman’s force approached the sandy and less fertile Georgia coast, it became even more difficult to accommodate them....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
If the Confederate troops were that close behind, it would have been idiotic for the Yankee general to NOT order the removal of the pontoon bridge.
I wonder what Party affiliation Davis was - five to one he was a Democrat.
The article, as all such articles do, implies that Sherman and other Army officials were providing “reparations” to compensate ex-slaves for their oppression.
In actual fact, all the army provided was “possessory titles,” not absolute titles for permanent ownership.
IOW, they were intended as a temporary measure to settle the blacks in situations where they could support themselves rather than being parasites on the army. It was never intended to be a permanent measure, unless of course Congress so decided. The Army had no authority to make permanent disposition of title to land, espcially after the war ended.
Sherman was making the best of the rough situation.
During WWII, Eisenhower & Co. didn't want to liberate Paris at the time for the same reason, a drain on resources.
40 Acres and a Mule was disallowed by Lincoln in the first place. Sherman was waay out of line.
This had nothing to do with reparations, except what revisionists have created whole cloth. The issue wasn’t
reparations for the former slaves... the issue was to get an economy going that could support 40 acres and a mule participants. And there wasn’t an economy to support it- which is why the slaves sought whatever work they could get.
Anyone who says Stanton was concerned about slaves is delusional. Stanton cared about the control of the labor force, particularly on the Westward railroad expansion. Stanton is not well liked, to the point that there are claims from both sides that he arranged the death of Lincoln- utilizing his real work— running agents against the South and turning agents to work for him. The man was a disgrace and one greedy bastard.
Only in some alternate universe, pal.
In fact, Lincoln supported numerous efforts to resettle or employ freed slaves, including this one:
French traveled to Washington in December 1863 to lobby for legal confirmation of the plan.[61]
At French's urging, Chase and Lincoln authorized Sea Island families (and solitary wives of soldiers in the Union Army) to claim 40-acre plots.
Other individuals over the age of 21 would be allowed to claim 20 acres.
These plots would be purchased at $1.25 per acre, with 40% paid upfront and 60% paid later.
With a requirement of six months' prior residency, the order functionally restricted settlement to Blacks, missionaries, and others who were already involved in the Experiment."
John S Mosby: "This had nothing to do with reparations... the issue was to get an economy going that could support 40 acres and a mule participants."
The issues was how to provide former slaves with a means to earn their livelihoods, period.
Calls for "reparations" (i.e., $100 trillion dollars) did not begin until the second half of the 20th century.
John S Mosby: "Anyone who says Stanton was concerned about slaves is delusional.
Stanton cared about the control of the labor force, particularly on the Westward railroad expansion.
Stanton is not well liked, to the point that there are claims from both sides that he arranged the death of Lincoln- utilizing his real work— running agents against the South and turning agents to work for him.
The man was a disgrace and one greedy bastard."
Only in your utterly confused & disoriented alternate universe, pal.
Here's what Lincoln said about Stanton:
After the war, Stanton was honored in 1869 with a US Supreme Court appointment, in 1871 appeared on a US stamp and in 1891 on US Treasury Notes.
Your claim that Stanton had something to do with Lincoln's assassination is total rubbish, invented out of thin air by an Austrian immigrant named Otto Eisenschiml in 1937.
Sherman's arrangements were rescinded by Johnson after Lincoln's death. They were also never intended to be permanent settlements of title to land for potentially hundreds of thousands or millions of acres. Much less to serve as a precedent to be applied across the entire south.
Military officers, in the American system, simply do not have such power. Confiscate land or other property and assign it permanently to whomever they please. Nor should they.
If land was to be permanently confiscated, with proven title transferred to new owners, it would require an act of Congress. And there is considerable room for debate whether Congress would have constitutional authority to do so.
For Congress to exercise such power, the constitutional provisions about due process, act of attainder, corruption of blood, and probably several other provisions would have to be ruled inapplicable. Which could only be the case if the seceding states had actually left the Union and were now conquered provinces whose inhabitants and their property could be dealt with as the conquerors chose. The problem is that the war had been fought on the theory that it was the suppression of an insurrection, not a war against a foreign enemy.
Sherman had a problem. He had tens of thousands of ex-slaves on his hands in his department, abandoned by their masters, or fled from them. This created an immense drain on his resources, which he needed to fight a war, not to babysit freedmen.
There were also hundreds of thousands of acres of land abandoned by the legal owners which his forces were occupying. The ex-slaves were experienced farmers, for the most part.
So as a temporary expedient, he settled the ex-slaves on the abandoned land so they could support themselves until permanent arrangements were made by the appropriate civil authorities. This was obviously also in the interests of the freedmen, allowing them to be productive rather than live on castoffs of the army.
However, for purposes of discussion, let's run some numbers. 4M ex-slaves, 1M families, 40 acres per family.
That's 40M acres, 62,500 square miles.
Conveniently, just slightly larger than the state of Georgia.
Hard to say. Unlike other generals who gained their positions through politics, Jefferson C. Davis was a career soldier who spent his life in the Army. He never ran for office.
The other Jeff Davis was, of course, a Democrat.
When did Lincoln disallow it?
Sherman’s limited and temporary settlement of freedmen on the GA coast was overridden late in ‘65 by Johnson. Not by Lincoln.
Which didn’t make much difference anyway, as a military or even executive branch decision had no power to permanently change title to land.
To be sure, the Emancipation Proclamation “confiscated” billions of dollars of capital goods, but that was on the theory that these goods were a military asset to the CSA. Pretty tough to maintain, after the war ended at least, that land title was a military asset subject to confiscation.
The Second Confiscation Act of 1862 addressed these issues. Confiscation of assets such as land was applied to individuals, not entire classes, and was limited to those directly participating in the rebellion, which to be fair was just about all white people of the South. I believe it could include confiscation of land, but required due process and judicial proceedings.
However, Lincoln (that monster of constitutional depravity) was concerned about the idea of the Act being an act of attainder and corruption of blood, both unconstitutional.
So before he would sign the bill he insisted that both Houses pass a resolution affirming that the provisions of the Act could not apply beyond the life of the offender. Even Congress could not give clear title to the lands Sherman temporarily settled freedmen on. Assuming it was legally confiscated under the terms of the Act, title would still revert to the heirs of the original owner on his death.
Thank you, tell that to the new repub JoeBroK who apparently has great need to believe the fantasy of Princeton academics who are of the Wilsonian school. And coming up with an Austrian (Austrian?) conspiracy amateur.
The radical repubs have returned in the current neo-marxist, liberation theology reparations crowd, desperately using the tools of the academic ivory towers and media to “make their case”. They don’t have one. And, for that matter for many, many people neither did the Norther oligarchs, who still machine to control us all. The great State. Left or Right it is still the State.
Mr Logan has corrected it, FRiend. It was Johnson, much to Stanton’s disgust.
. 
Methinks it’s a major stretch to draw a line between the Radical Republicans and today’s Reparationists. As are most efforts to draw comprehensive parallels between politics in different eras.
For instance, throughout almost the entire 19th century, the Democratic Party was the “small government” party, though that meant something different then. The Federalists, Whigs and Republicans (the successive opposition to the DP) were in general for greater government initiative, though again what they were in favor of bears little resemblance to what we have today. It meant things like building roads and bridges and clearing streams for navigation, things we take for granted government should do.
The RRs were not so much interested in providing reparations to the freedmen as they were in punishing the traitors who had dragged the nation through 4 years of bloody war.
As I said in in earlier post, they never came close to getting the votes to do so. Lincoln felt so strongly about the unconstitutionality of the Confiscation Act as passed that he was fully prepared to veto it, and had prepared a veto message. When he sent his request that they pass the resolution to make the confiscation limited to the life of the traitor, he included the veto message for them to review as incentive to pass the resolution.
Even had the Act been passed and enforced to confiscate land, there is quite a good chance the Supremes would have overturned it, and/or that a later Congress would have repealed it.
FRiend, you've been babbling nonsense from the first sentence of your first post here, nonsense questioned by DoodleDawg and corrected by both Sherman Logan and myself.
In all that blather, you've got one and only one point correct:
John S Mosby: "...Norther oligarchs, who still machine to control us all. The great State. Left or Right it is still the State."
By definition of the word "Right" in American politics, a "right wing" state is smaller, more constitutionally restricted and therefore preferable to "left wing" big-government.
Lincoln did not have the power to propose the employment of slaves, anymore than he had the power to emancipate them (which of course, he only did in the Northern states, remember?).
The actions of Sherman were to deal with what were a nuisance as a result of his destruction of private property- the new style of total war, which the South has never forgotten- at least not the real South (you know, people whose families were actually there).
History is written by the “victors”, and leaves out a great deal- in this case the radical republicans. The adroit manipulative comments of A. Lincoln, the railroad lawyer, about Stanton, the opportunistic Pinkerton’s railroad man are of no consequence. That Stanton then secured a payoff of a seat on the Supreme Court, having lined his pockets from the largesse of carpetbagging, using this to support Grant for President and voila’ the SC. What can be said about an Ohio anti-slavery Democrat who worked behind Lincoln’s back? Plenty- since he acted always in his own profit. Never forget the close work of Salmon Chase and Stanton. Seward stood in the way with his close friendship with Lincoln. The so-called “team of rivals” (hesitate to discuss another amateur moronic “historian” with an agenda, Doris Kearns Goodwin) got Lincoln killed.
In the real world, you get an actor to recite the lines and perform insane deeds- an empty vessel to do the work. And in the real world you kill the actor, and the one person who knew all about Stanton and his agents, Mary Surratt. The term is “cut-out”.
As regards one person’s beliefs about history- it is rather a different thing to have family that was there. Whatever you wish to believe in “your” reality is fine. It just isn’t the truth. Welcome to the march of Progressives.
Lincoln surviving was greatly in the South’s best interest. Oh yes, it was Stanton who drove the impeachment truck against Johnson. It really did pay ole Stanton in so many ways.
Pennsylvania and Ohio have a LOT to answer for.
Another commander of the keyboard. It isn’t nonsense.
I have contracts to secure. You live with your fantasies and especially your misplaced understanding and anger. The South will be just fine.
Uhh, what?
One of the things I'm fairly sure Woodrow Wilson did not support was reparations for all black people. In what sense are those who do of "the Wilsonian school?"
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