Juneteenth commemorates 1865 Texas order declaring enslaved people were free

Juneteenth National Independence Day became a federal holiday in 2021 when it was signed into law by President Joseph R. Biden after being passed by both houses of Congress. The new holiday commemorates an order issued by Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, in which he declared that the enslaved people in Texas would thereafter be free.

With so much attention given to the new holiday, Gloucester native and family historian Gloria Waller, in 2021 reflected on her family’s connection to Juneteenth. Waller said that her great-grandfather, Sam Mayo, was among the federal troops in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865.

What is sometimes not well understood is that the Civil War did not come to an absolute halt when General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. Military conflict continued in areas that remained under the control of the Confederacy.

Texas was one such place. Harvard historian Annette Gordon Reed says that perhaps the event that most directly led to General Granger’s order and thereby Juneteenth was the surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Army on May 26, 1865. General Granger arrived in Galveston on June 19, with 2,000 federal troops, many of whom were Black soldiers..