Compare the end of slavery in the United States to emancipation elsewhere in the world

The legal designation of Juneteenth as a federal holiday recognizes a pivotal moment in U.S. history. While nearly every state and many cities previously celebrated Juneteenth, President Biden’s signing this into law on June 18 provided the nation’s highest approval and recognition.

Unfortunately, most of the reporting on Juneteenth erroneously conflates the arrival of Gen. Gordon Granger and Union troops in Galveston, Tex., on June 19, 1865, with the official end of slavery in the United States. That’s a misreading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

A recent Gallup Poll reported that 37 percent of adults say they know “a lot” or “some” about Juneteenth, and that 69 percent of African Americans made those claims. But it is not clear what respondents actually know.

The limits of the Emancipation Proclamation

As a legal matter, slavery officially ended in the United States on Dec. 6, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was ratified by three-quarters of the then-states — 27 out of 36 — and became a part of the Constitution. The text reads, in part, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” Some legal historians, scholars, activists and even filmmakers have seen the “exception” clause as a loophole, included to appease the South, allowing states to reinstitute slave-like conditions such as chain gangs and prison labor.

Nevertheless, at that moment, chattel slavery was forever outlawed — including in the last two slaveholding states, Delaware and Kentucky. Neither had done so before then; neither were bound to do so under the provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation, which emancipated enslaved people only in states“ in rebellion against the United States.”

Eleven states comprised the Confederate States of America, formed after Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860. Those states were Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Four of the states (Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia) seceded formally after Lincoln’s inauguration although they sympathized with the Confederate states earlier. They joined after the attack on Fort Sumter.

Four slaveholding states — Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri — did not join the Confederacy. The number would rise to five in June 1863 when slaveholding West Virginia joined the Union and not the Confederacy. Close to half a million enslaved people lived in these states — which had Confederate sympathizers but remained in the Union.

After a year and a half of war, Lincoln came to believe that the only way to save the Union was to abolish slavery. In August 1862, he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, which was to take effect Jan. 1, 1863, with his signature. Because he saw it as a war measure, the order freed only the enslaved people in states “in rebellion against the United States.” Lincoln famously wrote in a letter to abolitionist and newspaper publisher Horace Greeley: “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.”

That last clause outlines exactly what the Emancipation Proclamation did: Free some and not others. It did not apply to enslaved people in the five non-Confederate states noted above. The order did affect Texas, but not those states since they were not in rebellion.

It is also true that three of those five states abolished slavery through state legislative action before Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, 1865. Maryland did so Oct. 13, 1864; Missouri, on Jan. 11, 1865; and West Virginia on Feb. 3, 1865. While many citizens of those states opposed abolition, practical and pro-Union sentiments prevailed.

The 13th Amendment gave emancipation a firm legal foundation

Lincoln reportedly worried that his proclamation could be challenged at some point by a future Congress, or that it might even be declared unconstitutional by a South-friendly Supreme Court. To strengthen the proclamation’s grant of freedom and to ensure that the entire nation remained free of slavery, Lincoln and his radical Republican allies in Congress pushed through the 13th Amendment. It passed both chambers of Congress on Jan. 31, 1865, with two-thirds votes from the House and the Senate. Lincoln did not live to see it ratified 11 months later on Dec. 6, 1865.

There does not seem to be much of a record of celebration of the 13th Amendment’s ratification, either then or now, whether by African Americans or the rest of the country. Activist Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders certainly advocated for the amendment and cheered its passage. However, it was never given the attention of Juneteenth.

In 2015, President Barack Obama delivered remarks commemorating the 150th anniversary of the ratification. But even those remarks were barely noticed in Washington, D.C., let alone nationally.

So why do we celebrate Juneteenth?

On the other hand, African Americans in Texas began to celebrate Juneteenth as early as 1866. Those celebrations began to spread as Black Texans migrated to other states and other African Americans came to value the event. Juneteenth makes sense; it specifically involved African American Union soldiers in delivering the news, and it also literally freed enslaved people. That event truly brought the military end of the Civil War.

Douglass had a hopeful but somber response to the 13th Amendment, saying, “Verily, the work does not end with the abolition of slavery, but only begins.” Perhaps that established a somber approach to the amendment’s passage. African Americans understood then as now that abolishing slavery was not the same as establishing equality and full inclusion in U.S. society. That’s why it is critical to know the history and why the struggle continues for racial justice.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify when Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia joined the Confederacy.

Clarence Lusane is a professor of political science at Howard University and the author of “The Black History of the White House” (City Lights, 2010), among other books.

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