What if the US government actually granted 40 acres and a mule?

I think in the very short term, at least, it would be incredible just for the increased morale it would bring. To go from being a slave to being an, albeit minor, landowner is a great thing and would definitely increase the self-respect of the freedmen. The problem is that, eventually, there would be consolidation as more efficient farmers would buy up more and more land, and some homesteads would fail. This will led to an upper class vs lower class dynamic within the black community. Also, there would likely be violence from groups like the KKK, and the Federal courts would have to step in since state courts might ignore the issue. So basically, it wouldn't be a panacea by any means. Likely it would inflame tensions, while still having some good effects, such as increased entrepreneurship in the black community earlier on. Maybe some people would use the money they got from selling farms to start businesses or to save up. Who knows?

However, this was never going to happen, sadly. Not with the Civil War as it happened in our timeline.
 

Philip

Donor
The 40 acres and a mule plan was flawed. In particular, it didn't provide the new farmers with the equipment and experience to run a farm, nor does it provide the capital to sustain the farm until it's profitable (or even the first harvest).

I suspect that many will sell their farms.
 
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The former saves did know how to grow cotton. A highly profitable crop at that time. I think it would be much harder to disfranchise people with economic security, The key is timing. This happens in 1865 with the Southern planter class knowing it is defeated. It would be helpful to exile that group from the South for a generation. Also push the Propaganda line that the war was basically started to benefit that small class
 
40 acres and a mule is a start but for freedmen to really get off their feet and enjoy economic security it would require a deep commitment by the Federal government to protecting and enforcing their rights.

By my estimation Federal troops would have to occupy the South for at least 25 years for it to make a difference since that's the time it would take for a generation of freedmen to be born, educated and then given a trade or a farm to work. Otherwise we get the OTL result of white legislatures vigorously enforcing Jim Crow and doing all that they can to keep blacks second class citizens. Unfortunately there simply isn't the political will in the North to see Reconstruction through to a truly transformed and racial equitable society.
 
I
40 acres and a mule is a start but for freedmen to really get off their feet and enjoy economic security it would require a deep commitment by the Federal government to protecting and enforcing their rights.

By my estimation Federal troops would have to occupy the South for at least 25 years for it to make a difference since that's the time it would take for a generation of freedmen to be born, educated and then given a trade or a farm to work. Otherwise we get the OTL result of white legislatures vigorously enforcing Jim Crow and doing all that they can to keep blacks second class citizens. Unfortunately there simply isn't the political will in the North to see Reconstruction through to a truly transformed and racial equitable society.
you just have to a couple different pods a more radical Lincoln or republican more anger at slavery
 
you just have to a couple different pods a more radical Lincoln or republican more anger at slavery

Certainly not having the loathsome Johnson as president would help but even if Lincoln survives a second term that only gets us to 1868 where Grant is likely heir apparent as OTL. I don't think Lincoln would want to serve a third term both out of respect for the Washington precedent and the fact that he's just plain worn out from the most stressful presidency in history.

So we get Grant as president on schedule while Lincoln is probably off touring the world with Mary Todd and not getting involved with politics. I frankly see Reconstruction ending about the same time as OTL since by 1877 the country really wants to move on and get things back to normal. Democrats had notable success electorally once "waving the bloody shirt" lost its effectiveness as a Republican campaign tactic.
 
Here is C. Vann Woodward's argument against the feasibility of land redistribution, as summarized in an old soc.history.what-if post of mine:

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Briefly, Stevens wanted the confiscation of all "rebel" estates of over $10,000 or 200 acres. The redistribution would give 40 acres to each adult male freedman. What was left over would be sold to the highest bidder and the proceeds used for pensions for Union soldiers, partial retirement of the national debt, etc.

Would it have worked? One of the few extended essays in counterfactual history by a distinguished historian, C. Vann Woodward's "Reconstruction: A Counterfactual Playback" (in his book _The Future of the Past_) gives good reasons for skepticism, which I will summarize here:

First, the same Congress that was contemplating helping the freedmen also made a great show of helping farmers get free land in the west through the Homestead and other acts. We know the result of that--the homesteaders got screwed. Land-grant railroads alone got four times as much land as the homesteaders, and of the patents actually granted to homesteaders a great many were handed to pawns of speculators and monopolists. What land bona fide homesteaders *did* get was typically the worst.

Is there any reason to expect things to have been different in the South? Remember that nine-tenths of the 394 million acres of "rebel" land were slated for sale to the highest bidder. This was certainly an invitation to speculators and monopolists, who might have gotten all the best land, leaving the freedmen with the worst.

What's more, Congress actually did pass a Southern Homestead Act. There were 47,700,000 acres of public land in five of the Confederate states in 1861--more than the amount of land set aside for the freedmen under the hypothetical Stevens Act. The 1866 Southern Homestead Act passed by the Radicals theoretically made it possible for homesteaders to get *80* acres--and the Act favored freedmen by excluding ex-Confederates from homesteading privileges. Nevertheless, very few ex-slaves participated. Lack of credit and transportation are probably to blame for this. Perhaps the Stevens bill would not have involved as great transportation costs for the freedmen--they presumably could get the land they had already worked (although determining just who gets what land would be a considerable administrative problem, and the people doing the administering would be white). But there would still be the problem of credit. Land is not enough. Farmers would, after all, need some money to get by until the first harvest was in; they would need tools; and they would need some experience in managing a small farm (I don't think the experience gained by being part of a work-gang on a plantation is the same thing).

Perhaps the Freedmen's Bureau or some other agencies could have helped the freedmen to get these things but one questions whether northern taxpayers, who might be happy enough about confiscating "rebel" estates, would be willing to finance such help.

And as Woodward points out, some of the very officials who would administer the act to guarantee land for black people in the South were the ones who were supposed to do the same for American Indians in the West. General Howard, who had headed the Freedmen's Bureau, later negotiated a treaty with the Apaches. General Sherman moved from command of the Southern District to the Western District. The result of course was that white supremacy won out as completely in Arizona as in Alabama.

Finally, what Woodward really dwells on is the problem of white resistance--boycotts of the black farmers, outright terror, pressure to sell farms to white people at nominal prices. In short, the same pressures that "persuaded" blacks not to exercise rights like voting would have worked in the area of land ownership as well. Woodward has some sarcastic fun imagining the most Draconian or "Stalinist" measures conceivable aginst southern white supremacists and their northen Copperhead friends. He notes that perhaps Alaska, providentially purchased from the Russians, could be our Siberia, but doubts that even this would be enough to deal with millions of people. Anyway, his real point is that even the Radicals would never have accepted the bloodshed he thinks an attempt to force land redistribution would cause.
 
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