Notes from the Archives: Juneteenth

The order read:

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.

In 1862, at the height of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation only abolished slavery in the Confederate South and did not apply to enslaved people in the Confederate States of America. It also did not emancipate enslaved people in the four border states of Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware, or in Texas. In 1865, Congress passed a law abolishing slavery throughout the United States. The 1865 reading of General Order No. 3 in Galveston signaled the total emancipation of all enslaved people in the United States. Later that year, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, cementing the abolition of slavery in the United States.

Throughout 1865 and 1866, celebrations of emancipation broke out across the country. In Boston, the Board of Aldermen ordered that bells be rung on January 1, 1866, “in token of the rejoicing at the consummation of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States.”

June Nineteenth, often referred to as Juneteenth, is widely celebrated as Emancipation Day in the United States.