Abe Lincoln and Juneteenth; what you may not know . . .

Most, if not all of us, were taught in school that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.  Like many other things taught in American schools, it’s not exactly true. 

In 1862, with the Civil War raging, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune, in response to editorial Greeley had written.  This letter revealed that Lincoln, the President, was motivated by his desire to restore the Union, not abolishing slavery.  His letter read in part:

 “. . . My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

Yours, A. Lincoln.

On January 1, 1863, while the country was in its third year of a civil war, Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation,  but this too is not exactly what we were taught, because it actually freed very few, if any slaves. It only freed slaves in the Confederate States where Lincoln had no power, so the proclamation meant virtually nothing. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to slaves in the border states of Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland, which practiced slavery but had not seceded, because Lincoln didn’t want to anger those States into joining the Confederacy.

Unfortunately, the bottom line is that Lincoln did not free any enslaved people where he had the power and authority to free them, and there were still states on the Union side where legal slavery continued after the Civil War.

The proclamation declared, "all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free."

Just as important, the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation may not have been the great humanitarian gesture we’ve all been taught.   Up until that point, Britain and France were sympathetic to the South and had considered supporting the Confederacy against the Union. Since many Europeans were against slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation effectively changed the minds of those countries who didn't want to be seen as openly siding with slavery, and the Confederacy, so it is possible that this was simply a clever political/ military maneuver by Lincoln to deprive the Confederacy of potential allies. Perhaps it was all just political theater. Absent some kind of smoking gun in the form of a written, historical document, we will never know the truth.

But since the history books are written by the winners, and politics is politics, Mr. Lincoln will forever be known as the Great Emancipator, regardless of what his true motivation may have been.

Which brings us to Juneteenth.   What is it?  It’s also called Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation day and Emancipation Day and is actually a combination of "June" and "nineteenth" and is the celebration of the day that one city in Texas was informed about the Emancipation Proclamation that was issued some two and a half years earlier.

On June 19, 1865, some two and half months after the Civil War ended , Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army landed in Galveston, Texas and announced to the city that the war was over and the slaves had been freed.  

Now you know.