In 1861, when the Civil War began, there were over
169,000 slaves in Texas, constituting 30 percent of
the state’s population. Although Abraham Lincoln
did not initially wage war in order to destroy slavery,
by the fall of 1862 he had come to view abolition as a
necessary step to winning the war. Consequently, he
issued the Emancipation Proclamation at the
beginning of 1863. In Texas, however, news of
emancipation and the ability to enforce it did not
come until Union troops landed at Galveston on June
19, 1865.
General Gordon Granger read the
Emancipation Proclamation to the people of
Galveston that day, announcing that all slaves in
Texas were freed. The date became the holiday
known by African Americans as “Juneteenth.” Over
the weeks and months following the first Juneteenth,
Union troops occupied the Lone Star State. Some of
these troops were themselves African Americans, and
they had must have had the enjoyable duty of
bringing Lincoln’s Proclamation to many black
families.