Happy Juneteenth!

Happy Juneteenth! This is one of my favorite holidays, and now I’m going to tell you a little of the history behind it, because that’s what I do. I’m a history nerd.

I love this holiday for all the reasons, including its name. I mean, we could have had a federal holiday to celebrate the end of slavery called “Emancipation Proclamation Day” or “Thirteenth Amendment Day.” But no, smart people decided to celebrate Juneteenth. That has a better sound to it, doesn’t it?

So. Back right before the Civil War started and Lincoln was elected president, his main goal was preserving the Union. He didn’t like slavery, he thought it was morally repugnant, and like most of the Republican party (they were the more liberal party in those days), he didn’t want to see it spread to new states and territories. But he wasn’t going to abolish it in the states where it already existed because he respected the Constitution. And the Constitution allowed it in those states.

But the Southern states – soon to be known as the Confederacy—feared that given the contradictions the government was displaying concerning slavery in these new territories the country had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase (see the Missouri Compromise, which basically established the Mason-Dixon line regarding slavery in new territories, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which basically negated this), they would be next when it came to the federal government deciding the fate of slavery. So…they seceded to preserve their “Peculiar Institution.”

At first, anyway, Lincoln saw the war as an attack on the Constitution and wanted only to get these states back in the Union. He was a fervent Constitutionalist. And since the Constitution legalized slavery, he wasn’t going to mess with that where it already existed.

But by late 1862, the Union army was struggling. Quick victory seemed a long-lost dream. Morale in the Union was low. Lincoln and the north needed something to turn this into more of a moral fight. Lincoln was persuaded to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, in which he declared that enslaved people were now free in the south. With a few exceptions: Slavery in the border states that were still part of the Union wasn’t abolished. Same with a few areas in Virginia and Louisiana that were under Union control. This was aimed directly at the ten rebellious southern states still fighting hard. It was meant to take the wind out of their sails, unite the north with righteous fervor, and give the Union army something more tangible and moral to fight for.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863. Some people ding him for not doing enough to free the slaves with this. But he was instrumental in passing the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery everywhere in the country (anticipating that the Confederate states would soon be defeated and brought back into the fold), and that happened in 1865.

Something else happened in 1865. On June 19^th, to be exact.

Obviously there was no internet in 1865. In many places, no telegraph wires. News traveled slowly then. And it took two and a half years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to finally reach the part of the state furthest west to which the proclamation applied. And that was Galveston, Texas, now under Union command. It was on this day, June 19^th, 1865, that the proclamation was issued to the public, and the final slaves affected by it were freed.

Of course, by then the Thirteenth Amendment had already passed and was in the process of being ratified, but they didn’t know that.

All the enslaved people within earshot of someone who could read the Emancipation Proclamation, however, finally knew they were free.

Of course, freedom is a relative term. We know the Jim Crow laws that were passed during Reconstruction, the laws that limited the rights of formerly enslaved people and their descendants. Laws that prohibited them from owning property, attending schools, voting. Laws that, unfortunately, still have echoes in many states today, and are encouraged by the current administration.

I love Juneteenth, though, for its inherent hope and optimism and opportunity. I can only wish that more people were less afraid of granting that to ALL citizens and prospective citizens of this country.

Happy Juneteenth!!!!