Two years and six months after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued by President Abraham Lincoln, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Orders No. 3, announcing the freedom of more than 250,000 Black Americans who were still enslaved in Texas. This day became known as Juneteenth.
The proclamation was enacted on Jan. 1, 1863, decades after many Northern states had abolished slavery, but it was still legal in some Union states and the border states that supported the Union.
The proclamation applied to the states that had seceded from the Union and were still “in rebellion,” which included the vast majority, though not all enslaved people, according to the National Archives.
Issued as a wartime measure, the proclamation sought to weaken the Confederacy while making emancipation a central aim of the Union cause, according to the archives.
It also authorized Black men to serve in the Union Army and Navy and encouraged African Americans to support the Union. By the end of the war, more than 200,000 Black soldiers and sailors had joined the fight.
Because the proclamation depended on the advance of Union forces, freedom came gradually as federal troops moved deeper into Confederate territory. Texas, which had largely escaped the devastation of the war and remained beyond Union control, became one of the last major regions where emancipation was enforced.
Following Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender in April 1865 and the collapse of much of the Confederacy, Granger was dispatched to Texas, which was nearly “untouched” by the war and avoided Union occupation, to issue five General Orders, according to the National Museum website.
On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston with General Order No. 3, which stated the following:
“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 anniversary of that announcement became known as Juneteenth, a day commemorating both the delayed arrival of freedom and the end of slavery in the United States.
Less than six months later, slavery was officially abolished nationwide with the ratification of the 13th Amendment.
