Answer:
Step-by-step explanation:
The federal government DID offer compensation in money or land to former slaves.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the federal government established the U.S. Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, popularly known as the Freedman’s Bureau. The Bureau provided food, housing, medical aid, and other necessities to freed slaves, along with poor whites, in the post-war South. It also settled freed slaves on lands confiscated from Confederates.
In addition, before the war had even ended, General William T. Sherman began providing confiscated Confederate lands to freed slaves, as compensation for their having been forced to serve as slaves. This gave rise to the famous expression “Forty Acres and a Mule,” as it was Sherman’s goal that freed slaves should be given both land and the ability to successfully farm the land.