Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

by Michael Harriot

In 1865, Saxton’s officials lined up the formerly enslaved, many of whom had set up tents and temporary shacks at McLeod’s They handed each of the heads of the families a piece of paper, and explained that the deeds they just received meant they now owned the plantations they had spent their lives building for free. Some rejoiced, while others collapsed in tears. One of the men—America’s foremost expert in Sea Island cotton—broke into song. For the first time in his life, William “Hardtime” Dawson had a home of his own. But this joy did not last. On April 15, 1865, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, leaving Confederate sympathizer Andrew Johnson as president. Johnson was a Southerner, a slaveowner, and a Democrat who had been chosen for the vice presidency in the hopes of stopping the South from seceding. As a former senator of the Great State of Tennessee, Johnson repeatedly let his Democrat friends know where he stood on the issue of freedmen: “As for the Negro I am for setting him free but at the same time, I assert that this is a white man’s government,”14 he said in an 1864 speech, reiterating his earlier promises of “a free, intelligent white constituency, instead of a negro aristocracy”15 after the war. When Johnson ascended to the presidency, his first course of action was to stop that slaves-getting-land nonsense.