Video: 'Special Field Order # 15' (Jan. 16, 1865, at 3:41)

(Monday, January 16, 1865; during the American Civil War) — Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman issued Special Field Order No. 15, which decreed that 400,000 acres of land in South Carolina, Georgia and Florida would be confiscated, divided into 40-acre lots and given to former slaves.

The order, which was later revoked by President Andrew Johnson, is believed to have inspired the expression, “Forty acres and a mule.”