The history of Juneteenth!
On June 19, 1865 Union Army General Gordon Granger, landed on the shores of Galveston, Texas and announced that, according to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, all slaves in states at war with the Union were free. However, for political and military reasons, the proclamation failed to include slaves being held in territory not at war with the United States. The Proclamation read as follows: “All enslaved person in the Confederate States of America in rebellion and not in Union hands were to be freed.” This excluded the states of Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri as well as those counties of Virginia that remained in the Union, and eventually became the state of West Virginia. So, one can argue that the Proclamation did not free any of the slaves in this country since the laws of the United States were not recognized by…
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