Since this just became an official federal holiday I thought I would make a post about it. As you may already know, this is the celebration of the June 19, 1865 announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger in Galveston, proclaiming and enforcing freedom of enslaved people in Texas.



The order read as follows:
"Head Quarters District of Texas

Galveston Texas June 19th 1865.

General Orders

No. 3.

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.

By order of Major General Granger

F.W. Emery

Major A.A. Genl."

Of course this did not reach all enslaved peoples in the state immediately, which numbered around 250,000, but is the date that became the traditional date to celebrate "Emancipation Day".

The following link is a quick listen of an interview given in 1949 in Hempstead from a first hand account of the reaction to the news.
https://www.npr.org/2015/06/19/415809476/juneteenth-marks-day-slaves-in-texas-were-told-they-were-free

" LAURA SMALLEY: We didn't know where to go. Mom and them didn't know where to go. You see, after freedom broke, they started just, like, to turn some of them out, you know? We didn't know where to go. They turned us out just like, you know, you turn out cattle (laughter), I'd say."

I have also heard that day and reaction referred to as "The Great Scatter", as many newly freed people began to look for friends and family members that may have been sold to other farms.

This celebration started as a primarily Texas one, the Great Migration helped spread it throughout the US and now is a federal holiday. It is good to see a Texas tradition spread across the US.

All of this. All the fight and tears and death and sacrifice, all the dreams of freedom and equality, all of it through all of history, was wasted if we don't change the course we're on now.

cbr said:

---

All of this. All the fight and tears and death and sacrifice, all the dreams of freedom and equality, all of it through all of history, was wasted if we don't change the course we're on now.

---

A to the men!

pmart said:

---

Changing course happens often in history, choosing the right course is the more rare thing. I like learning about history, because in part, it gives us a chance to learn from past mistakes. I would say the mistakes we could learn from here is not only slavery (yes, I know it existed for thousands of years), but also slavery based on color with no tangible way out. Creating a class system in part based on skin color, something that I would say still affects us today. But more egregiously we contradicted what we said this country is all about "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

---

That was getting, and basically was fixed.

Now we are moving to a new dystopian dark age of orwellian big tech communist elites, and creating racial divides that were almost gone in order to get there. The enlightenment was humanity's only chance at greatness. Expanding its opportunities to everyone was a good thing. It progressed slowly from the 1830's until its derailing by the ruling class in the 1960's, but people were making it work pretty well anyway.

However, strong, united, educated, self sufficient people cant be exploited by a cemented ruling class, and that fact explains everything that has been happening for the last few decades, other than the brief derailing of the ival office puppet parade from 2016-20.

Great question.

I wonder if Lincoln did have a plan but it died with him in Ford's Theater?

I do have the impression that politics after the War, and especially the politics of Reconstruction, were a hot mess. There was very little consensus in the North and many only wanted a chance to make a quick buck off of the South. Plus, any plan that smacked of going light on the South was DOA (see Johnson's impeachment).

And the South didn't help its own cause much. From reading Grant's biography, he was very frustrated with the South because many in it refused to acknowledge that they had just lost the war. Many tried to keep on doing exactly what they'd been doing before, including maintaining slavery in the guise of "share cropping".

What the U.S. needed after the Civil War, but unfortunately did not have or even want, was a George Marshall who could work to heal the wounds and bind the nation back together. In many ways, the issues that led to the Civil War have never been fully resolved. I had a ConLaw prof in law school that used to say that many of those issues, such as states rights, were decided on the battlefield. But I think he was wrong. Although those arguments were silenced for a long, long time, they were never actually resolved.

Rabid Cougar said:

---

Ahem.... Delaware: February 12, 1901

Kentucky ....March 18, 1976

---

Does Delaware even actually exist? I think it a fantasy place created for electoral votes.

Do you know what Della wears?

Her New Jersey, ha ha, dad joke for you.