(U-WIRE) STILLWATER, Okla. - “Forty acres and a mule” — it is not necessarily the sort of poetic phrase marketing whizzes dream up. Yet it is a phrase with loaded significance in the textbooks of American history. “Forty acres and a mule” became the common phrase referring to what former slaves were promised by the American government directly following the Civil War.
Specifically, Special Field Order No. 15, issued by Gen. William T. Sherman in January 1865, promised slaves “a plot of not more than forty acres of tillable ground.” Yet President Andrew Johnson repealed the order only three months later and the government seized land it had already given to 40,000 blacks in Florida and South Carolina.
The above is only one example of the injustices that blacks have endured under the auspices of our government. The legacy of American slavery is a blight that no historical revisionist could minimize. Millions of Africans were forcibly brought to this country, beginning in the early 1600s. Auctioned off like mere farm animals and often enduring intolerable conditions, slaves were, simply, kept in captivity. Some academics estimate that as many as 25 million lives may have been lost during what could easily be termed an American holocaust.
In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln to formally end slavery (although some historians maintain the Proclamation had no true impact at the time as seceded states did not recognize it). By the end of the Civil War in 1865, more than four million men, women and children were freed without any compensation.
And that appears to be the crux of a modern controversy: reparations for slavery. One modern argument is simply that the mighty American economy would not be what it is today had slaves not toiled for many years, contributing to various means of production.
Perhaps most importantly, pro-reparations academics claim that a “breach of contract” occurred when the government promised 40 acres to eligible slaves and then withdrew its promise.
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