On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order officially declaring slavery illegal in the states currently rebelling from the Union. With a stroke of a pen, he freed some 75,000 slaves currently living in Confederate territories occupied by the Union at the time, and did jack shit for the 3.4 million slaves still living in the Confederacy and the 400,000 slaves still living in the Union. However, as a symbolic gesture, it was an important one. Not only did it formally tie the Union cause to ending slavery, something that had been steer cleared of to avoid pissing off racist northerners who purely saw the purpose of the war as maintaining the union, it also sowed discord in the Confederacy, who feared widespread slave revolts. Due to this, the Confederates did their level best to keep news of the proclamation from spreading, but of course news spread quickly through the grapevine. As a result, thousands of slaves began escaping and making their way towards Union lines.
In many ways the Emancipation Proclamation was more a political and military maneuver rather than an abolitionist one. On the war front, the proclamation promised to sow discord behind Confederate lines, shrinking their available labor force while at the same time bolstering Union ranks by allowing former slaves to serve in the army. On the political front, the proclamation gave Lincoln credibility amongst the abolitionists who were increasingly controlling the Republican party, guaranteeing he would secure his party’s nomination for the next election. It also made supporting the Confederacy no longer an option for Britain and France, countries that had outlawed slavery decades earlier but still had been supporting the Confederacy because it weakened the United States.
As the Confederacy crumbled over the next 28 months, and Union soldiers occupied an increasingly significant part of the rebel territory, hundreds of thousands of slaves were set free. However, after being freed they were pretty much left to fend themselves. Unsure what else to do, former slaves formed large refugee camps around military outposts, or followed the Union army as it made its way deeper into the Confederacy. Mostly disregarded, they began to succumb to disease and starvation, a problem largely ignored in the northern states, even by abolitionists. Some 250,000 former slaves died in the months following being set free.
General Lee surrendered at Appomattox on April 9, 1865, bringing the war to an official end. Wait, not entirely. Another Confederate army remained active in North Carolina until April 26 and another in Alabama until May 4. Even then the war was not entirely over. Far to the west, Texas remained unbowed. Cutoff in 1863 when the Union took control of the whole of the Mississippi River, Texas had remained an isolated pocket largely unconnected to the rest of the war. When a small Union contingent attempted to land at Brownsville at the southern tip of the state, they were repulsed after a short skirmish. However, though the commanding general in Texas was more than willing to continue fighting, his troops, not really all that onboard with the idea, abandoned him. With no army, Texas surrendered on May 26. Union General Gordon Granger did not arrive to occupy the state until 24 days later, arriving on June 19. One of his first orders was to proclaim all slaves in Texas to be free, ending slavery in the former Confederacy, though not in the United States. Slavery was not ended in Delaware and Kentucky until the passage of the 13th Amendment on December 6. The Five Civilized tribes in the Confederate aligned Indian Territory, now the state of Oklahoma, did not free their slaves until the following year.
Anyways, getting back to Texas, news quickly spread amongst the 250,000 slaves in the state that they sure as shit didn’t have to do what a bunch of asshats told them to do anymore. Rather pleased with this turn of events, they of course celebrated, a tradition they continued the next year on June 19, which later became known as Jubilee Day. The celebration remained an annual occurrence amongst the African-American population of Texas for years afterwards, becoming known as Juneteenth in the 1890’s. However, the celebration of the holiday dropped sharply at the end of the century, due to a combination of the growth of Jim Crow laws, African-Americans migrating to urban areas to find work, and the children of former slaves being more interested in integration. A revival took place during the 1930’s and 1940’s, during which time it started spreading to other parts of the country, but it declined again during the Civil Rights era which again focused on gaining freedoms and integration. A second revival began in the 1970’s, leading to its recognition as a state holiday in Texas in 1979, eventually becoming common nationwide amongst the African-American community by the 1990’s. Today it is becoming more mainstream, with calls to make it a national paid holiday.