Sherman's Special Field Orders, No. 15
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Special Field Orders, No. 15 were military orders issued during the American Civil War, on January 16, 1865, by Major General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the Military Division of the Mississippi of the United States Army. They provided for the confiscation of 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) of land in the Atlantic coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, on which were to be settled approximately 40,000 freed slaves and other black refugees then living in the area.
The orders were issued following Sherman's March to the Sea. They were intended to address the immediate problem of dealing with the tens of thousands of black refugees who had joined Sherman's march in search of protection and sustenance. General Sherman issued his orders after meeting in Savannah, Georgia with twenty leaders of the black community and with U.S. Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton.
The orders had little concrete effect, as they were revoked in the fall of that same year by President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Abraham Lincoln after his assassination.
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