Letter to the Editor: Rethinking date to celebrate end of slavery
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With the celebration of "Juneteenth" on June 19, it is time to clear up some misconceptions about the date and "celebration." While I am certainly glad that slavery was abolished in 1865, the Emancipation Proclamation by Lincoln on Sept. 22, 1862, did not free anyone and was not an amendment. The proclamation, which took effect on Jan. 1, 1863, actually freed no one at that time. It said that slaves residing in the states that are in rebellion (the Confederacy), are hereby free. It said nothing about slaves in some border states still in the North, namely Maryland, Missouri, Delaware and Kentucky, who remained loyal to the North, but allowed slavery. Those slaves in those states were not affected by the Proclamation by Lincoln. It took the 13th Amendment in 1865 to free them.
When Lincoln said that, the Southern states did not consider Lincoln their president, as they already had Jefferson Davis and their own "country." So, they ignored the proclamation until the North won the war. As was reported in national news, Juneteenth was a celebration of the proclamation because it took that long for the news to travel. It was a communication problem in a day of snail mail and not-so-instant news reporting.
The 13th Amendment was not ratified until Dec. 6, 1865, which in fact makes that the date that should be celebrated. When General Granger and Union troops arrived in Texas in June, 1865, he was reporting the Proclamation only in the South because the war had ended at Appomattox on April 9, 1865.
The 13th Amendment, as stated above, was ratified by the last state needed in Dec. 6, 1865. Until an amendment is ratified, it does not become law.
Why not recognize that as the real reason to celebrate? The 13th Amendment is the document that legally abolished slavery anywhere in the United States for all people. Until the 13th, slavery was still allowed in a few states still in the North. Wonder how the slaves in the border states felt when Lincoln freed slaves only in the South and not them? Probably not too much to celebrate about that!
Robert Sadler
Marietta