UNION ORDER OF EMANCIPATION IN TEXAS (JUNETEENTH)

Union order of emancipation in Texas (Juneteenth)

Two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and months after the main Confederate armies had surrendered, Union military authority was still spreading across the far corners of the former Confederacy. On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston, Texas, at the head of Union troops and read General Order No. 3, announcing that enslaved people in Texas were free under federal law. The presence of Union soldiers gave force to words that had, in many places, remained unenforced during the war. For the newly freed, the day marked both an end and a beginning, closing one chapter of bondage and opening another of uncertain freedom, labor contracts, and political struggle. While the Army would soon be reduced in size, soldiers and officers in the Reconstruction era would continue to act as guardians, however imperfect, of new rights in the South. Juneteenth would later be commemorated as a holiday of emancipation, with its origins rooted in a specific moment when military power carried a promise into practice.