Today is Juneteenth – a celebration of the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation on June 19, 1865 in Texas announcing that the war was over and that Texas slaves were free. Of course, the original proclamation by Lincoln was made September 22, 1862 and made official January 1st, 1893. Everyone else in the Union seemed to have gotten the news.
How did a slave force of 250,000 people in the biggest territory in the Confederacy still remain in bondage two years after they were set free?
Was there a vast conspiracy by Texas slaveholders to keep the news of Emancipation away from slaves? How was this accomplished?
Did Texas slaves know about Emancipation anyway?
Did Lincoln know Texas slaveholders refused to emancipate their slaves? Did he allow Texas slavery to continue?
Weren’t Northern abolitionists aware of this defiance of the law?
Was the Underground Railroad active in Texas at this time?
Was a messenger really murdered en route to Texas to deliver the emancipation?
Any truth to the rumor that, beginning in late 1863, Union forces were in collusion with Texas cotton growers to keep the slave force intact in order to deliver one last huge bumper crop before they were set free?
Please, please. Don’t everyone rush to answer at once…
The operative phrase of the OP being “Everyone else in the Union”. Texas’s “Union” status (along with a few other states) was disputed in 1862, and stayed that way until 1865. The Texans weren’t paying much attention to Mr. Lincoln, as a rule.
That’s a slip, not an operative phrase. The Confederates were given a military order by Lincoln to release their slaves. That most chose to ignore it was at their peril. There were Southerners in other states – Louisiana, South Carolina and Florida leap to mind – who did manumit their slaves in 1863. What’s odd about Texas is no one seems to even acknowledged the Proclamation publicly until Union troops arrived in Galveston in 1865. Or am I deluded?
My understanding is that at least slaves in other states – border, southern, northern, west – knew of or heard something about the Emancipation. My questions why Texas slaves seemed so out of the loop, and why abolitionist efforts seem absent, still haven’t been answered. But perhaps the overall mystery can’t be answered factually.
That sounded very condescending. Of course Askia knew this. But his question isn’t why the slaves weren’t all released promptly on Jan. 1 1863, but why the Texas experience didn’t jibe with what happened in the rest of the Lower South.