More than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, almost five months since Congress passed the 13th Amendment, and more than two months after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army, all slaves were ordered free in Texas.
Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger led Union soldiers into Galveston, Texas, bringing an official announcement that slavery in the United States had ended by executive decree. While the Emancipation Proclamation was issued earlier, it was not fully implemented across the country, and many enslaved people in Texas continued to be held in bondage even after the Civil War ended. The troops arrived to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation, therefore, Juneteenth marks the effective end of slavery in Texas, but it wasn't the only date when slavery officially ended in the United States.