Free
On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. The proclamation officially ended slavery in the Confederate states. From that day on, all people who had been enslaved there were free. Well, sort of
In those days, there was no mass communications. There was no social media. So news spread slowly. And especially this news. The Union didn’t have enough soldiers to enforce the proclamation. So in many places, slavery continued. Texas was the last state to abandon the institution. But all that changed on June 19, 1865, when General Gordon Granger and almost 2,000 troops arrived in Galveston. There, Granger issued General Order No. 3. The order ended slavery in Texas.
