What was the role of the 13th amendment in Reconstruction? Warm up: Explain roles of the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments in Reconstruction. What was the role of the 13th amendment in Reconstruction? What was the role of the 14th amendment in Reconstruction? What was the role of the 15th amendment in Reconstruction? Amendment illustrations are due upon return!

Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 In January of 1865, General Sherman met with 20 leaders of Savannah’s black community (Baptist and Methodist ministers) where Sherman was headquartered after his March to the Sea. Sherman asked, “What do you want for your own people” following the war?

Rev. Frazier’s response: The way we can best take care of ourselves “is to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor … and we can soon maintain ourselves and have something to spare … We want to be placed on land until we are able to buy it and make it our own.” And when asked next where the freed slaves “would rather live — whether scattered among the whites or in colonies by themselves,” without missing a beat, Brother Frazier replied that “I would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over … ”

In response, Sherman wrote Field Order No. 15 It served as a means of providing for the thousands of refugees who had been following his army since its invasion of Georgia. (He could not afford to support or protect them.) Radical Republicans wanted to punish Southern slaveholders and pushed for land redistribution.

Section 1 “The islands from Charleston, south, the abandoned rice fields along the rivers for thirty miles back from the sea, and the country bordering the St. Johns river, Florida, are reserved and set apart for the settlement of the negroes [sic] now made free by the acts of war and the proclamation of the President of the United States.”

Area of focus in reddish.

Section 2 these new communities, moreover, would be governed entirely by black people themselves: ” … on the islands, and in the settlements hereafter to be established, no white person whatever, unless military officers and soldiers detailed for duty, will be permitted to reside; and the sole and exclusive management of affairs will be left to the freed people themselves … By the laws of war, and orders of the President of the United States, the negro [sic] is free and must be dealt with as such.”

Section 3 ” … each family shall have a plot of not more than (40) acres of tillable ground, and when it borders on some water channel, with not more than 800 feet water front, in the possession of which land the military authorities will afford them protection, until such time as they can protect themselves, or until Congress shall regulate their title.”

Abraham Lincoln signs Sherman’s special field order

(Under the three warm up questions) Write a paragraph explaining why/why not YOU approve/disapprove of the field order: redistributing land from large plantations along coast and giving to freedmen in 40 acre segments. Support your opinion. (Explain why you believe what you believe.)

President Johnson overturned the order in the fall of 1865 and returned all land to original owners.