Union soldiers were depicted reading the Emancipation Proclamation to an enslaved family in 1864 by artist Lucius Stebbins (public domain).

“The people are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.” — Major-General Gordon Granger, United States Army, Galveston Texas, June 19, 1865

With those words, the United States of America took another step forward in the effort to completely eradicate the savage practice of chattel slavery across the nation. It was on that date that Union Major-General Gordon Granger, commanding officer of the United States’ District of Texas, began to inform African American men, women and children who were still being held in bondage across Texas (despite President Abraham Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863 and despite the Confederacy’s surrender in Virginia on April 9, 1865) that the people who had enslaved and brutalized them no longer had any power over them.

That same day, Major-General Granger also served notice to enslavers across Texas that their days of treating other human beings as their personal property were over. He did so by publishing General Orders, No. 3 in newspapers statewide. Not as forceful as it should have been, because its wording discouraged many newly-freed people from truly escaping from their enslavers while also effectively encouraging those enslavers to continue their efforts to dominate and subjugate the same people they had long exploited (as poorly-paid “employees”), his directive was still forceful enough to move the United States forward in its long struggle to become a fairer and more just nation:

Headquarters, District of Texas,
Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865.

General Orders, No. 3.

The people 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 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 (Signed,)
F. W. Emery, Maj. and A. A. G.

Around that same time, a reporter for The New York Tribune described the atmosphere in and around the city where Major-General Granger was headquartered:

Galveston is a city of dogs and desolation. It is hard to tell which a stranger would be soonest impressed with — the multiplicity of the canine or the poverty and degradation of the human species.

…. No other Southern city of its prominence and local importance is so utterly insignificant and God-forsaken in appearance. It is desolation desolated, for before the war it was a parched and barren land. There is no shady park, and but one pleasant ride. The trees are stunted and scraggy like the people…. 

Loyalty does not manifest itself. There are loud professions. There are bitter and, I doubt not, sincere cursings of Davis and Kirby Smith. There are more welcomes to our presence, and especially to our greenbacks. But true loyalty — that prefers the United States to Texas; that venerates Washington above Houston; that loves freedom more than Slavery — is an exceedingly rare pearl in Galveston. I know how hard it is to distinguish the genuine from the counterfeit, but I am forced to believe the statement made to me a few days since by one who was well acquainted in every part of the State.

I asked him what he thought of the Amnesty Proclamation. He replied, “If it is carried out strictly, with its exceptions, not a wealthy man in Texas can escape, for all have aided and voluntarily assisted the Rebellion.”

THE LONE STAR CONFEDERACY

Even now, while Union soldiers patrol the streets, and a powerful fleet is anchored off the city, these narrow-minded and impoverished people cling to the idea of State independence. They want to fly the “Lone Star” flag once more, to subdivide their country into four States or more, and to become a recognized power in the world. Hireling editors and selfish leaders have actually made the masses believe that Texas came into the Union with the promise that she could go out again next year if she chose to do so….

THE SLAVES

There are many more slaves in Texas than there were before the war, but the institution is waning even here….

Aiding with Reconstruction

It is worth noting that, during the Union’s 1864 Red River Campaign, a small group of 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantrymen actually became eyewitnesses to what life was like in Texas during the American Civil War. While their perspectives would have been somewhat limited, because they were actually watching events unfold while they were being force marched to Camp Ford near Tyler, Texas, and were then confined there as prisoners of war (POWs), they encountered both impoverished Texans and the brutality of chattel enslavement — compelled to watch helplessly as Confederate civilians and soldiers terrorized enslaved Black men, women and children while forcing them to perform back-breaking work.

Although a significant number of the seventeen 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers who were imprisoned at Camp Ford died there from starvation, disease and harsh treatment, most managed to survive — many of whom were subsequently given medical care by Union Army physicians and then honorably discharged on surgeons’ certificates of disability because their bodies and minds were no longer fit for duty.

But some actually recovered, returned to duty with the 47th Pennsylvania Veteran Volunteers and continued to serve with the regiment — by trying to help communities in Georgia and South Carolina rebuild as they returned to the Union. First Sergeant James Crownover, Corporal James Downs, Sergeant John Garber Miller, and Private William J. Smith were among the former Camp Ford POWs who traveled with their fellow 47th Pennsylvanians to Savannah, Georgia and to Charleston, South Carolina for provost and Reconstruction Era-related duties during that same summer of 1865 when enslaved people in Texas were being informed that they were finally free. Also traveling with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers to Georgia and South Carolina were nine formerly enslaved Black men who had enlisted in the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry in 1862 (in South Carolina) and in 1864 (in Louisiana): Aaron Bullard (later known as “Aaron French“), James Bullard, John Bullard, Bristor Gethers, John Hamilton (later known as “Hamilton Blanchard“), Thomas Haywood, Abraham Jassum, Edward Jassum, and Samuel Jones.

Likely unaware of Major-General Gordon Granger’s emancipation announcement when it was first published on June 19, 1865, they eventually learned about what had happened that day as word spread beyond the borders of Texas. All nine ultimately survived the war, and went on to forge new lives for themselves as Freedmen. One even went on to become a delegate to a Republican Party convention during his post-war years.

Meanwhile, that important date would come and go every year across the nation. Remembered and commemorated as “Juneteenth” in Texas initially, and then in Louisiana and other states, as community elders, church leaders and educators taught new generations about the Emancipation Days of 1863 and 1865, June 19th was finally declared as an official federal holiday when the United States of America’s Juneteenth National Independence Day Act was signed into law on June 17, 2021.

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