William O. Pate II
Slavery didn’t end in the United States on January 1, 1863, with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As the National Archives notes, the proclamation
applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.[1]
In fact, it wasn’t until the summer of 1865 — two and a half years after the proclamation — that slaves in Texas were informed of their freedom.
On June 19, 1865, Union Major-General Gordon Granger read General Order No. 3 to the people of Galveston. It stated:
The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.
Juneteenth, celebrating this announcement of abolition over two years after the proclamation, is the name given to Emancipation Day by African Americans in Texas.[2] Similar celebrations are also called Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Juneteenth Independence Day, and Black Independence Day.[3]
The practice of slavery didn’t end in the United States didn’t end on Juneteenth either, though.
As the Congressional Research Service remarks in its factsheet for elected officials,
Even after the general order, some slave masters withheld the information from their enslaved people, holding them enslaved through one more harvest season.[4]
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed January 31, 1865, but wasn’t ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states until December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18, 1865:
13th Amendment/Amendment XIII
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[5]
This ended slavery in the Union border states of Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky.
Yet still officially sanctioned slavery survived in the United States.
For a few months more, Native American tribes on “Indian territory” were allowed to continue to hold slaves, as explained by J. Gordon Hylton:
By Indian Territory, I refer to that part of the unorganized portion of the American public domain that was set apart for the Native American tribes. More speci