Reports from across the American South indicated that many freedmen had left plantations, anticipating a general distribution of land. General Rufus Saxton, head of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, observed, “The impression is universal among the freedmen that they are to have the abandoned and confiscated lands, in homesteads of their own.” This widespread belief was rooted in promises and rumors following the end of the Civil War, particularly General Sherman’s Field Order No. 15, which had raised hopes of “forty acres and a mule.” Ultimately, most land was returned to former Confederates, dashing the aspirations of land ownership for many newly freed Black Americans.
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