 15 authorizing federal authorities to confiscate 'abandoned' plantation lands in the Sea Islands, whose owners had fled with the advance of his army, and redistribute them to former slaves.Redistributing 400,000 acres (1,600 km²) in coastal Georgia and South Carolina to 40,000 freed slaves in forty-acre plots, this order was intended to provide for the thousands of escaped slaves who had been following his army during his March to the Sea.Shortly after Sherman issued his order, Congressional leaders convinced President Lincoln to establish the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in March 1865.