“Instead of seeing Field Order 15 as a blueprint for the transformation of Southern society, he viewed it mainly as a way of relieving the immediate pressure caused by the large number of impoverished Blacks following his army.”27 And yet, Foner writes, the “prospect beckoned of a transformation of Southern society more radical even than the end of slavery.”28 One of the ministers at that meeting, Ulysses L. Houston, organized one thousand Black residents and claimed land in Skidaway Island, Georgia, where they founded a self-governing Black community. Some forty thousand freedpeople staked
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