I want to talk about emancipation, for anyone who is interested. As Juneteenth is being discussed there is a lot of misunderstandings about the Emancipation Proclamation, how slavery came to an end, and what made Texas different.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not free most enslaved people. The short version is that it applied mainly to the Confederate states. They obviously were not going to obey a dictum from a government whose authority they had rejected.

Slavery was not destroyed by one event or one person. It did not happen all at once. It was a protracted process that took place over the course of the Civil War. African Americans seized the moment from the onset of the war, to make it about abolition, even though the federal

government promised the reverse, to not interfere with slavery. They forced the government to contend with them. Both Confeds and U.S. officials underestimated that African Americans would become a factor. To paraphrase Du Bois crudely, he said this was the dumbest thing ever.

Both sides assumed they would passively stand by. They were wrong. AfAms forced themselves on the agenda by running away from day one in larger and larger numbers, filling what became known as contraband camps and confiscated plantations.

The Proclamation was issued Jan. 1863 and marked a key turning point, despite not freeing everyone. It signaled a new war aim, to combine the goal of destroying slavery to reuniting the union. It opened enlistment of black men. Now that was the thing most whites feared

most: Black men taking up arms against them. It also served as an enticement tool. It invited people to bolt, to leave slavery and find support within Union lines. Lincoln was reluctant to advance emancipation. He came along, step by halting step. It became clear that he could

not win the war unless he made it central to the war. He was not the “emancipator” in the image that most people have in mind, but he did change. That was critical as prez and commander in chief—and in that way he was most pivotal.

Emancipation was achieved first as de facto freedom, bit by bit. By the time the war ended it had been significantly eroded. Even those who did not flee or join the army made business as usual on plantations nearly ungovernable as they had been before the war.

Slavery effectively ended for most by the time Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865. This is where Texas comes in. It was the most isolated Confederate state with little presence of the Union Army. It was a safe haven for white people fleeing from slave states, as a result.

Absent the presence of the armed federal government, African Americans were on their own. Fewer were able to flee safely and fewer joined the Army. And then when the war ended, white folks in Texas kicked it up a notch. They fought viciously to preserve slavery.

That’s why it took the Army coming in in June to enforce emancipation. And even then, the wild, wild, West was on full display. White Texans fought back for months, retaliating violently against AfAms, hoping to keep them in bondage or at least get paid. Let's talk.