JuneteenthOhio - Columbus - June 17, 2011

In September of 1862, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln announced that he would free the slaves of all rebelling states that did not return to the Union by January 1863. A few months later, when January arrived, no state had returned and the order was signed.

Of course, since those states didn’t belong to the Union, this signature really didn’t free them.

But it did cause many slaves of those states to flee the plantations, hurting the agricultural economy. It also prevented Britain and France from helping the South.

Both of these things seriously hurt the South and aided in its defeat in April of 1865.

But slavery still continued until June of that year, when Union General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas with 2,000 federal troops to reclaim the state and enforce the freedom of the last remaining slaves in the country.

This emancipation occurred on June 19, 1865…

…a day that is now celebrated as Juneteenth.

Honoring the symbolic the end of slavery (it wasn’t officially abolished until December 1865 with the 13th Amendment), there are at least 39 states that celebrate Juneteeth, including various cities in Ohio alone.