From The History of the State of Georgia, by I. W. Avery On January 16, 1865, Union general William T. Sherman issued his Special Field Order No. 15, which confiscated as Federal property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, South Carolina, to the St. John's River in Florida, including Georgia's Sea Islands and the mainland thirty miles in from the coast. The order redistributed the roughly 400,000 acres of land to newly freed black families in forty-acre segments.... Although Sherman's Special Field Order No. 15 had no tangible benefit for blacks after President Johnson's revocation, the present-day movement supporting...