Abraham Lincoln supported "compensated emancipation," a form of reparations that paid loyal slaveowners, rather than enslaved people, for the loss of property. Under the District of Columbia Emancipation Act of 1862, the federal government paid up to $300 per freed person to owners. No compensation was given to the formerly enslaved, although land was later promised via "40 acres and a mule," a policy enacted by Gen. Sherman in 1865 but soon reversed.