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The idea that to obtain true freedom African-Americans needed their own land was expressed several times throughout the war. But this radical effort to give them lands aroused the opposition of conservatives and brought to light the great ambiguities within the Republican ideology.

Reconstruction, for all intents and purposes, begins in 1863, when the Union finally came to control large sections of Louisiana and Tennessee. The Lincoln administration then entered an oftentimes bitter rivalry with Congress over who should control the Reconstruction process. As a moderate, Lincoln wanted to bring the rebellious states back into the Union as soon as possible, but Radical Republicans believed that Reconstruction would be worthless unless massive social and economic changes accompanied it. They sought to break the power of the White elites and help Black Americans to be truly independent. Wendell Phillips, for instance, said that "The war can be ended only by annihilating that Oligarchy which formed and rules the South and makes the war—by annihilating a state of society." But the idea of making special efforts on behalf of the freedmen clashed hard with the prevailing idea of Free Labor.

As an ideology, Free Labor was the guiding principle of the Republican Party and their vision of what the North, and ultimately the United States, should be. But the ideology held that people should be given the chance to prove themselves, with everyone being given equal opportunity in what Lincoln called "the race of life." Thus, it's evident that the ideology ignored the existence of systematic inequalities that would require a greater social and economic intervention on the part of the Federal Government. Some recognized that it was "nonsense to talk about the inferiority of the negro race, whilst at the same time they are kept in a state of degradation", but as a whole many Republicans believed that the lack of success of African-Americans was a result of their own moral defects, accusing them of being "indolent, improvident, servile, and licentious." As a result, the idea of giving them free land struck many Republicans not as a step for equality, but as unjust aid that they, perhaps, would not be able to use.

The Black community itself declared that they needed just legal and political equality to achieve economic and social equality by themselves. None other than Frederick Douglass said that when it came to the Negro and his future position the government should “do nothing…. Give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!” He further argued that special privileges would only breed bitterness and resentment, and do nothing to prepare African-Americans for freedom after the government inevitably stopped its involvement, saying that broad intervention would only “serve to keep up the very prejudices, which it is so desirable to banish." Insisting that "dependence is degradation," Black leaders sought only equal opportunity: "Remove all obstacles, and give the black man an equal chance, . . . and then should he not succeed, he will not ask you or anyone else to mourn over his failure."

Nonetheless, as long as political and social power remained in the hands of the same social elites, and systematic inequalities that hindered the economic advancement of Black communities remained, Blacks did not really have an equal chance. The new Southern governments that were created with the blessing and permission of the Johnson Administration showed this through their creation of "Black codes", laws that restricted the newfound freedom and rights of African-Americans. For example, they declared all Blacks not in employment to be "vagrants", and then assigned "hard work" as the punishment for convicted "criminals." Years before this, prescient Radicals, such as the Hoosier Congressman George Julian, led the fight for the creation of a Freedmen's Bureau that could protect them and their rights, because otherwise the ex-slaves would fall into a system “a system of wage slavery … more galling than slavery itself.”

The Radicals supported a Confiscation Act that could take rebel land and distribute it among former slaves. But although the House and Senate both passed individual bills to that effect, no unified measure was reached. Legislation for the creation of the Freedmen's Bureau was also delayed due to confusion and fights over whether the Bureau should be under the War or Treasury Departments. Since the Treasury was headed by the Radicals' friend Salmon P. Chase, they wanted him to oversight the whole venture. After Chase was appointed to the Supreme Court and thanks also to Sherman's Special Field Orders N°15, the Bureau was finally created in 1865. In accordance with the Republican aversion of permanent guardianship of the Freedmen, the Bureau was supposed to exist for only one year, and it was given no budget. Some Radicals, like Charles Sumner, wanted it to be a permanent agency, equal to and independent of the other Departments, but this was to no avail.

The fact that Sherman took a part in this Radical measure is kind of ironic, for he was a rather conservative man who is described as "neither a humanitarian reformer nor a man with any particular concern for blacks." Sherman himself would later said that he only issued the order as a temporal war-time measure at the behest of Secretary of War Stanton. As Sherman's army marched through Georgia, some 20,000 slaves abandoned their plantations and joined this "fulfillment of the millennial prophecies.” When he reached Lincoln's Christmas Gift of Savannah, he was joined by Stanton, and they met with the Black leaders of the city. They made it clear that “to have land, and turn it and till it by our own labor,” would be the best form of preserving their liberty, and also that they "would prefer to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South that will take years to get over.” Four days later, Sherman issued his orders, which "designated the sea islands and the rich plantation areas bordering rivers for thirty miles inland from Charleston down to Jacksonville for settlement by freedmen." By June, some 40,000 freedmen had been settled.

It was shortly after this that Congress finally agreed on the final version of the bill creating the Bureau, approved it and send it to Lincoln, who signed it immediately. To avoid appearing to give an unfair favoritism towards Blacks, it also took charge of White Southern refugees. More importantly for the purposes of your question, the Bureau also had the authority to divide up confiscated lands - thus its name of "Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands." The Bureau now had the daunting task of dividing the four hundred thousand acres of land the government had confiscated, disposing that individuals could claim no more than 40 acres, which they could buy at the end of three years rental with "such title thereto as the United States can convey."

But, what title could it convey? Property was a right protected by the Constitution, which also prohibited bills of attainder, that is, statutes or laws that targeted a person or persons for punishment. To take away the property of the Southerners, even if they were rebels, could be interpreted as a bill of attainder. When the Second Confiscation Act was first approved, Lincoln had objected because it allowed the confiscation of both private and real property forever, without the use of courts, in the areas in rebellion. The act did limit confiscation in the Border States, disposing that only real property (i.e. slaves) could be confiscated through the legal system. Lincoln still objected, and though some Senators huffed that having the President dictate legislation was an affront to Legislative autonomy, the act was amended to allow the President to restore confiscated property through pardons and making it so that confiscation would not extend beyond a person's natural life.

Lincoln himself supported the Bureau as a way to protect the freedmen and prepare them for liberty, but he was not prepared to take the Radical step or redistributing lands. Nonetheless, despite Conservative pressure for overturning the Orders, he did not do so, and would continue to support the experiments in Free Labor conducted on other parts of the Union, noting that “an earlier and happier consummation than the most sanguine friends of the freedmen could reasonably expect" had taken place. He later signed the bill that created the Bureau, and allowed the settlement of "Shermanland" to continue under the oversight of the abolitionist Rufus Saxton, who told the Black community that they "were to be put in possession of lands, upon which they might locate their families and work out for themselves a living and respectability.”

We cannot know what Lincoln would have done had he been able to lead Reconstruction. He denounced the fighting over the future of the South as "pernicious abstractions" and focused on getting them back on the Union as fast as possible, in order to achieve peace and create governments of loyal citizens. He supported the aforementioned "experiments" and he wanted Louisiana to enfranchise Black veterans and literate Gens de couleur, but still allowed the restored Louisiana government to operate despite the fact that it didn't do so. In any case, Lincoln was assassinated, and Johnson was the one who took charge. The Lincoln administration had never enforced the provisions for confiscation of lands of the Second Confiscation Act, but the Bureau still had 850,000 acres of abandoned land, not enough for all freedmen, but still something that could be used to build a class of African-American free laborers.