The People Need to Know the Truth About Juneteenth

Juneteenth, is the celebration commemorating the end of slavery in Texas. The term "Juneteenth" comes from the date June 19, 1865, when enslaved Africans in Galveston, Texas, found out that they were free a full 2½ years after the Emancipation Proclamation became official.

 

In 1863 President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Nonetheless, the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation. Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery.

 

For 30 long months, the enslaved Africans, (they were not citizens and thus were not African American) in Texas continued to toil, unaware that technically they were free to stop and pursue their destinies. Their official status as free people meant nothing until the Union troops arrived with the news of emancipation. Since then, June 19 is known to Black Americans as "Juneteenth." and is celebrated as Emancipation Day.

 

Africans were freed as the Union Army advanced into the south however, that wasn't until the war was nearing its end. This is why the last Black people in Texas to receive word of the Emancipation were in Galveston, TX. The traitor Robert E. Lee's surrender of the rebel army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox, VA. on April 9, 1865, did not end the war.  Other rebel units continued to fight. The last significant rebel active force to surrender were those allied with the Cherokee Nation, led by the traitor Stand Watie on June 23. The last traitors surrendered on November 6, 1865, when the rebel warship Shenandoah surrendered at Liverpool, England.

 

On April 2, 1866, President Johnson issued a proclamation stating that the insurrection was over in all of the former Confederate states but one: Texas, which had not yet succeeded in establishing a new state government.

 

After President Johnson accepted Texas’ new constitution—which provided limited civil rights for blacks but refused to ratify the 13th Amendment, on the grounds that the abolition of slavery was already federal law—statewide elections were held in June. On August 9, the conservative Unionist James Webb Throckmorton was inaugurated as governor. (He would be removed from office the following year, due to his resistance to Reconstruction.)

 

On August 20, 1866, in acknowledgement of Texas’ new state government, Johnson was able to finally proclaim that “said insurrection is at an end and that peace, order, tranquility, and civil authority now exist in and throughout the whole United States of America.” However, Texas had still not been readmitted to the Union at that time.

Juneteenth is the oldest known celebration commemorating the ending of slavery.  Dating back to 1865, it was on June 19^th that the Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, landed at Galveston, Texas and proclaimed the news of the Emancipation. This was two and a half years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation - which had become official January 1, 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had little impact in Texas due to the minimal number of Union troops to enforce the new Executive Order. The arrival of General Granger’s regiment, the forces were finally strong enough to influence and overcome the resistance.

General Orders Number 3, 4, & 5

One of General Granger’s first orders issued was to INFORM the people of Texas, General Order Number 3 which began most significantly with:

IMPORTANT ORDERS BY GEN. GRANGER.

THE SLAVES ALL FREE.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF TEXAS, GALVESTON, Texas, June 19, 1865.

"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 rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and free laborer.

 

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.

By order of Major-Gen. GRANGER.

F.W. EMERY, Major and A.A.G.

CIVIL AND MILITARY OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS REQUIRED TO REPORT FOR PAROLE.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF TEXAS, GALVESTON, Texas, June 19, 1865.

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 4. -- All acts of the Governor and Legislature of Texas, since the Ordinance of Secession, are hereby declared illegitimate.

All civil and military officers and agents of the so-called Confederate States Government, or of the State of Texas, and all persons formerly connected with the Confederate States Army, in Texas, will at once report for parole at one of the following places, or such others an may be designated hereafter, to the proper United States officers to be appointed: Houston, Galveston, Bonham, San Antonio, Marshall and Brownsville.

Although their long absence from their homes, and the peculiar circumstances of their State, may palliate their desertion from their organizations, this order will be strictly and promptly complied with.

The above-mentioned, and all other persons having in their possession public property of any description whatever, as arms, horses, munitions, &c., formerly belonging to the so-called Confederate States, or State of Texas, will immediately deliver to the proper United States officer at the nearest of above-mentioned places.

When they cannot carry it, and have not the means of transporting it, they will make to the same officer a full report of its character, quantity, location, security, &c.

All persons not complying promptly with this order will be arrested as prisoners of war and sent North for imprisonment, and their property forfeited.

All lawless persons committing acts of violence, such as banditti, guerrillas, jayhawkers, horse thieves, &c., &c., are hereby declared outlaws and enemies of the human race, and will be dealt with accordingly.

By command of Maj.-Gen. GRANGER.

F.W. EMERY, Major, and A.A.G.

COTTON TO BE SHIPPED TO NEW-ORLEANS OR NEW- YORK.

HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF TEXAS, GALVESTON, TEXAS, June 19, 1865.

GENERAL ORDERS, No. 5. -- Until the arrival of the proper Treasury agents in this district all cotton may be turned into the Quartermaster's Department for shipment to New-Orleans or New-York, there to be sold to the United States Purchasing Agents. In case of such consignments, bills of lading will be given, and the owner will be permitted to accompany his property for the purpose of effecting its sale to the purchasing agents. No cotton, or other products of insurrectionary States, can be shipped on other conditions.

By order of Major-Gen. GRANGER

"The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes, and work for wa" es. 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."

Above is the part of Gen. Granger's General Order 3 that most people overlook what it is actually saying. It "advises" the former slaves to stay put on the plantation, remain docile and to ask their former owners to pay them wages for the work they would now do. In reality, that keeps them in DeFacto slavery. They were not free to leave. "...they will not be allowed to collect at military posts, and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." 

 

After the war, the southern economy was in ruins. The only way to get the country back on solid economic footing was to get the plantations and farms back to being productive. That would be impossible of all the Africans fled the south or refused to work for their former owners.

 

Next came "share cropping", Jim Crow Laws and Black Code Laws that kept Black people throughout the south in a new form of bondage until the 1970s,