Who Created the idea?
The fresh abolitionists Charles Sumner and you may Thaddeus Stevens or any other Revolutionary Republicans got positively advocating homes redistribution “to break the back of South slaveholders’ fuel,” once the Myers observed. However, Sherman’s package just took figure following the conference which he and Stanton held that have those individuals black ministers, at 8:00 p.m., Jan. twelve, into the second-floor regarding Charles Green’s mansion on Savannah’s Macon Road.
Within its broadest strokes, “forty miles and an effective mule” was their suggestion
Stanton, alert to the nice historical importance of the latest appointment, exhibited Henry Ward Beecher (Harriet Beecher Stowe’s popular brother) an effective verbatim transcript of your own conversation, and that Beecher read so you can his congregation at the The fresh new York’s Plymouth Chapel and you will which the Ny Everyday Tribune written in complete when you look at the its Feb. thirteen, 1865, model. Stanton advised Beecher that “for the first time regarding history of it country, brand new agents of your bodies choose to go to these worst debased people to question them whatever they wanted for Se det her themselves.” Stanton got suggested in order to Sherman which they gather “the newest leaders of your regional Negro people” and ask her or him one thing no body otherwise got apparently thought to ask: “Precisely what do you want for your own someone” after the combat? And you will what they need surprises us even today.
Who have been such 20 innovative leaders exactly who exhibited such as foresight? These people were all the ministers, mainly Baptist and Methodist. Very curious of all to me is that eleven of the 20 was produced totally free from inside the servant says, from which 10 had stayed just like the free males in the Confederacy in the course of the brand new Municipal Combat. (Others one to, one entitled James Lynch, was given birth to free in Maryland, a servant condition, along with merely transferred to this new South couple of years before.) Others 9 ministers was actually slaves regarding Southern who turned “contraband,” and therefore free, because of Emancipation Proclamation, whenever Partnership pushes liberated her or him.
Its picked chief and spokesman are a Baptist minister named Garrison Frazier, aged 67, who were born into the Granville, N.C., and you will is actually a slave until 1857, “when he bought independence having himself and spouse for $one thousand during the gold and silver,” as New york Every single day Tribune advertised. Rev. Frazier was actually “about ministry having thirty-five years,” and it also are the guy whom exercise the responsibility off reacting brand new a dozen questions that Sherman and Stanton set with the group. The newest stakes for the future of one’s Negro individuals were high.
And you will Frazier and his brothers didn’t disappoint. What performed it give Sherman and you can Stanton that Negro extremely need? Belongings! “How exactly we is most readily useful take care of ourselves,” Rev. Frazier first started his treatment for the crucial 3rd question, “will be to have property, and turn they and you may till it by our very own labor … and then we is also in the near future take care of ourselves and also something to free … We would like to be placed to the land until our company is able buying it and make they our personal.” And when expected next the spot where the freed slaves “like to real time – whether scattered one of the whites or in colonies by themselves,” as opposed to destroyed an overcome, Sis Frazier (given that transcript calls him) replied one to “I would personally will real time by ourselves, to have there is certainly a prejudice facing united states in the Southern area you to will need many years to conquer … ” Whenever polled actually within the dining table, all except one – James Lynch, 26, the man who’d went southern area regarding Baltimore – asserted that they decided having Frazier. Five months afterwards, Sherman issued Unique Field Purchase No. fifteen, immediately following Chairman Lincoln recognized they.