I read that the “40 acres and a mule” never actually happend-at least in significant quantities.
Can someone who knows (a lot more than me) please clarify?
No, the reparations were not given. The “40 acres and a mule” were referring to the land that General Sherman consfiscated (stolen) on his ‘March to the Sea’ and was labeled “Special Field Orders No. 15, which was approved by President Lincoln, and awarded agrarian land that was confiscated from former slave owners and awarded to Black Farmers. This was done more for appeasement and confiscation in the reconstruction to the south, and was considered an illegal Executive Order by many, if not outright theft. It never applied to the whole US and it was never voted on or adjudicated in the courts. In fact, if you want to see a similar situation, look at the theft of farmland from White Farmers in South Africa. It was nothing more than theft of Southern lands, as the ‘spoils of war’, and never decided in the courts. Of course, everyone has a different perspective on history, as some would say the ‘Southern lands’ were liberated from white ownership.
I know one thing. My mother's family was still in Sicily cooking polenta with garlic and olive oil, my father's family was in Czechoslovakia eating pigs feet and cabbage, and none of them ever met, let alone owned a slave.
Both of my grandfathers went into the coal mines in Western PA, in the late 1890s, one died in a mining accident, the other shot during prohibition and still never owned a slave, so don't look in my direction for 40 mules and an acre of land.
Oh, it happened and carpetbaggers from up North heated them out of it.