Why did the southerners reject William Tecumseh Shermans plan to give land to former slaves?

Answer 1

The land Sherman wanted to give to the slaves already belonged to somebody. The one place Sherman was able to put this idea into action was in the coastal region of Georgia, where he seized land belonging to people who had fled before his army, large plantations which had been worked by slaves, and dividing this land among the throngs of runaway slaves who were following his army. Sherman wanted to get rid of this huge following, which was an impediment to the movements of his army, and this seemed to him a way to get these former slaves to stay behind and quit following his army and expecting to eat from the army's supply of food. But Sherman acted without legal authority, and so, after the war the owners, when they reappeared, had no trouble ejecting these squatters from the land.