1863
THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, shortly after Lincoln’s inauguration as America’s 16th president, he maintained that the war was about restoring the Union and not about slavery. He avoided issuing an anti-slavery proclamation immediately, despite the urgings of abolitionists and radical Republicans, as well as his personal belief that slavery was morally repugnant. Instead, Lincoln chose to move cautiously until he could gain wide support from the public for such a measure.
By the summer of 1862, enslaved people themselves had pushed the issue, heading by the thousands to the Union lines as Lincoln’s troops marched through the South. Their actions debunked one of the strongest myths underlying Southern devotion to the “peculiar institution”—that many enslaved people were truly content in bondage—and convinced Lincoln that emancipation had become a political and military necessity.
In July 1862, Lincoln informed his cabinet that he would issue an emancipation proclamation but that it would exempt the so-called border states, which had slaveholders but remained loyal to the Union. His cabinet persuaded him not to make the announcement until after a Union victory. Lincoln’s opportunity came following the Union win at the Battle of Antietam in September 1862. On September 22, the president announced that enslaved people in areas still in rebellion within 100 days would be free. This preliminary proclamation set a date for the freedom of more than 3 million enslaved people in the United States and recast the Civil War as a fight against slavery.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, which declared “that all persons held as enslaved people” within the rebel states “are, and henceforward shall be free.” The proclamation also called for the recruitment and establishment of Black military units among the Union forces. An estimated 180,000 African Americans went on to serve in the army, while another 18,000 served in the navy.
But not all enslaved people were immediately aware of their declared freedom. Confederate General Robert E. Lee had surrendered at Appomattox Court House two months earlier in Virginia, but slavery remained relatively unaffected in Texas—until June 19, 1865, when enslaved people in Texas learned they had been freed. On that date, U.S. General Gordon Granger stood on Texas soil and read General Orders No. 3: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all enslaved people are free.”
Juneteenth, short for June 19th, marks the day when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas in 1865 to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed. The troops’ arrival came a full two-and-a-half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth honors the end of slavery in the United States and is considered the longest-running African-American holiday. On June 17, 2021, it officially became a federal holiday.
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