Green-Meldrim House served as Sherman’s headquarters in 1864

Charles Green, a British cotton merchant, commissioned the New York architect John S. Norris to build this home in the 1850s. The project cost $93,000 and resulted in one of the most prominent examples of Gothic Revival domestic architecture in the country. In December 1864, General William Tecumseh Sherman reached Savannah at the conclusion of his march from Atlanta. Charles Green offered his residence to the General, who occupied the house as his headquarters from 22 December 1864 until 1 February 1865. During this period, Sherman’s chaplain conducted Christmas services at the neighboring St John’s Episcopal Church.

On 12 January 1865, at eight in the evening, Sherman and the United States Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, met with twenty Black ministers and church officers inside these rooms. The group selected Garrison Frazier to act as their representative. Frazier, a 67-year-old minister who had purchased his own freedom and that of his wife for $1,000 eight years prior, provided a definition of slavery to the officials: receiving the work of another man by irresistible power without his consent. When asked how freed people could best sustain themselves, Frazier stated that they needed land to till by their own labor until they could afford to purchase it.

Four days after this meeting, on 16 January 1865, Sherman issued Special Field Orders No. 15. This directive set aside coastal land stretching from Charleston to the St Johns River in Florida for the settlement of freed families, providing roughly 40-acre tracts to each. The total area encompassed approximately 400,000 acres. However, the subsequent Freedmen’s Bureau Act of March 1865 did not include provisions for land ownership. Following the death of President Abraham Lincoln, President Andrew Johnson revoked the order, and the property was returned to its former owners.

Judge Peter W. Meldrim, a former President of the American Bar Association, purchased the house in 1892. In 1943, St John’s Episcopal Church acquired the property from the Meldrim heirs using funds raised by public subscription. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1976 and currently serves as the church parish house.