jan 16, 1865 - 16 Jan 1865: Sherman's Field Order No, 15 "40 acres and a mule" Confiscated as Union property a strip of coastline stretching from Charleston, SC, to the St. John's River in FL, including GA'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. Ultimately though, only offered false hopes.

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The Order, which offered what were ultimately false hopes to former slaves throughout the South, provides the origin of the term "forty acres and a mule."

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