116. General Order No. 3
Still legible
June 19, 1865 was 900 days after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect and 71 days after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant. Still, slavery persisted in Texas, the most remote state of the Confederacy. Indeed, as the Confederacy crumbled in the last year of the Civil War, many planters decamped west to Texas with their slaves. By the time Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston to assume command and direct Reconstruction, there were about 250,000 slaves in Texas.
Granger set to work, issuing orders the day he arrived. His third one read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.” - General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865
Many copies of the order existed, but the original, handwritten version was forgotten. In 2020, 155 years after declaring slavery over in Texas, it was unearthed by an archivist at the National Archives in Washington, who found it still legible, waiting to be read again.
Links:
Juneteenth and the Emancipation Proclamation – Jstor Daily, June 18, 2020
National Archives Safeguards Original ‘Juneteenth’ General Order – Michael Davis, National Archives News, June 19, 2020
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 words on 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country’s 250th anniversary. Through December 31, 2026.
I’m looking for ideas for this series — have something you’d like me to consider for inclusion? Please feel free to leave a comment!
This was timely. Thank you. My great-nephew arrived and we were discussing some Texas history on June 19. I'll show him this entry. Just amazing, isn't it how we discover what should have been filed, sealed, and labeled?!?!?