Mapped: From the Emancipation Proclamation to Juneteenth
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Juneteenth commemorates the day when enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas, learned they were free 2½ years after the passing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Why it matters: At the end of the Civil War, Texas' enslaved Black people had yet to obtain freedom.
Zoom out: By the start of the Civil War in 1861, most of the Union had abolished slavery.
- Vermont became the first colony to emancipate its Black slaves in 1777.
- Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey introduced gradual abolition in 1780–1804, leading to full emancipation by 1865.
- Slavery was abolished in the federal territories in 1862.
- President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863.
Between the lines: Enforcement of the Proclamation was neither instantaneous nor easy in the Confederacy.
- The Proclamation wasn't enforced in slaveholding border states such as Missouri and Maryland, as well as in Union-occupied Tennessee.
- Union victories, recruitment of contraband Black men and women, and direct intervention by soldiers were some of the many ways the Proclamation was enforced.
Zoom in: By the end of the war, Texas' estimated 250,000 enslaved people remained out of the Proclamation's reach. On June 19, 1865, Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger ordered the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Galveston, Texas. Soon after, his General Order No. 3 circulated in newspapers and through word of mouth to freed slaves across Texas.
