Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Order by the Commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi, January 15, 1865

INTRODUCTION General Sherman issued the following order to General Rufus Saxton to divide land confiscated from rebellious landowners in Southern States into forty-acre tracts and distribute them to slaves freed under President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The government was to loan out mules to help work the land. The order and land titles were rescinded by President Andrew Johnson after the assassination of President Lincoln, despite the fact that some 40,000 free men had been provided with homes under the Order's provisions. Many of those who had received land were later forcibly removed. General Sherman's Order and its implementation remain in discussion as one basis of claims for slave reparations.

THE FIELD, SAVANNAH, GA., January 16th, 1865.

SPECIAL FIELD ORDERS, No. 15.

I. The islands from Charleston, south, the...