A theory as to why Special Field order #15 may have been cancelled.
SoreShoulder
Member Posts: 3,148 ✭✭✭
Suppose Union forces sold the slaves? Officially, of course, they would never do such a thing but what if opportunists among them seized their chance to get rich?
It is possible that the people here now are not descended from slaves and the actual slaves' intelligence had been bred down. Maybe it was not too difficult to take advantage of them. Maybe because of this fact, many turned a blind eye to their exportation. Maybe it was thought they'd be burdensome to care for.
The Union controlled large portions of the coast such as Port Royal, S.C., for large parts of the war. Perhaps if slaves escaped and fled there to participate in the redistribution of land, unscrupulous profiteers among the Northern soldiers smuggled them out to South America or the Caribbean.
Perhaps opportunists among Sherman's men had a deal to meet some South American slave smugglers when they reached the coast, followed by the slaves they liberated?
Perhaps, after the war, when freedmen were given coastal land between Florida and South Carolina, they were smuggled out and replaced by Africans who paid to take their place? They say traces of African languages live on in some of the coastal islands in these areas. Can it be because they were repopulated by Africans who paid Union Army profiteers to smuggle them into the United States?
Probably no African who had a family, a farm or a trade, and a stable community probably would have wanted to come but maybe, like seafaring Vikings, sometimes there were too many heirs for the land, and European colonizers were definitely encroaching on African lands at the time. In fact, maybe some of the Underground Railroad originated in Africa? They must have known the US was wealthy and their descendants are wealthier than they would have been in Africa, for the most part.
Maybe when President Johnson cancelled Sherman's order #15 to give freedmen 40 acres (but not a mule) he was realizing they hadn't exercised enough oversight over Union forces, and the people now occupying former slaveholders' lands were not the former slaves and were not owed anything by the United States?
Comments
wow that is certainly a huge WHAT IF? can we shorten it to just a WHIFF?
Are you word playing because you are virtue signalling?
I can feel it. A lot of them all don't identify with freedmen but with people who took advantage of freedmen and got in here during or after the war. It makes them proud.
things like this do not keep me up late at night
SoreShoulder you could make a living writing alternative history fiction. Perhaps this is just your reaction to the left rewriting history to serve their cause. History is something to learn from and shouldn't be changed to justify ones opinions. Bob
It just feels strongly like they identify with people who sold us the slaves rather than the slaves themselves, and their ancestors were in Africa seething with jealousy when they realized the slaves were about to be set free in a comparatively wealthy nation with millions of acres of unused land. So they found a way to swap themselves in. Perhaps by buying off unscrupulous Union army profiteers who were guarding the coastal communities during or after the Civil war.
Johnson was a Democrat who strongly disagreed with the freeing of the slaves, and worked to minimize the equal treatment of freedmen when the Presidency was forced upon him. Probably no need to look any deeper than this.
Brad Steele
There is at least a small chance that despite what you said, he may have thought the voters gave him and Lincoln a mandate and he was not morally free to do just as he pleased.
Whoah. Um I seriously doubt it. More than likely it was a money issue for Johnson. The freed slaves didn't have any and the loyalists did.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
Couldn't help but notice your use of the words.....Perhaps, Probably, Maybe, Possibly 🤔. Thinking like that can be dangerous, hope you don't get around to thinking about reparations 😀
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Anyone else hearing "Twilight Zone" theme music?