Original 'Juneteenth' order found in the National Archives

[swag]

Source: Washington Post

By Michael E. Ruane
June 18, 2020 at 4:36 p.m. PDT

The National Archives on Thursday located what appears to be the original handwritten “Juneteenth” military order informing thousands of people held in bondage in Texas they were free.

The decree, in the ornate handwriting of a general’s aide, was found in a formal order book stored in the Archives headquarters building in Washington. It is dated June 19, 1865, and signed by Maj. F.W. Emery, on behalf of Union Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger.

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, ‘all slaves are free,’ ” the order reads.

“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.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/06/18/juneteenth-celebration-george-floyd-protests/?fbclid=IwAR2EGp2Nalh9glyXdDwTfWuDFZQzqCRyQF6pjRUXz5aGnZaeNQpEQdLVetM

[bobbieinok]

1. Fascinating. Hadn't anyone thought it was important before?

[DrToast]

5. Oh god.....you know who is gonna take credit

[Igel]

11. The original piece of paper?

Wouldn't seem important to much of anybody that wasn't local to Galveston or in surrounding parts. Just another order written out by a local commander. Tens of thousands of those things. Galveston was a backwater, the Union troops reached there a couple of months after the Civil War had ended and, to some extent, the troops were surprised that the news hadn't reached Galveston already. But news travelled slowly, Galveston's not exactly on a main road to any place (it being an island off the coast of the west side of a bay, when all the news would come from the east).

Galveston's rise to glory (and then trashing by a hurricane) were both yet future.

Might even be the case that the piece of paper producing such an earth shaking non-event (for such it was considered at the time, not having 150 years of symbology and opposition glued to it) simply was in a box and probably listed by number and a short description written in somebody's cursive, something like unit name + general orders registry + dates covered. What you don't know exists can still be worth knowing.

This also wasn't the order written out and handed to officers to transmit to the troops or locals. This was the copy in the unit log book, part of the unit's permanent records. It's the file copy. The "original file copy", but still the file copy.

As for Juneteenth, it's been a local thing in the Houston/Galveston area for a long time because it was a order local to Galveston (and points nearby) that basically cleaned up some old, unfinished business. Official state holiday in Texas starting in 1980. It's spread mostly as a reaction and need to have a flag that can be saluted, not any kind of an organic holiday.

[dalton99a]

2. Kick

[diva77]

4. ah, I see we posted at the same time (you beat me by a split second!)

[diva77]

3. Here is image since link in OP has a paywall

[More_Cowbell]

6. Thanks for the images! nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

7. This is tremendous. And, yes, old museum items can get lost, incorrectly filed, uncataloged. . . nt

[LisaM]

8. I feel as if Juneteenth had been celebrated for a long time

it would have become more of our national psyche. What a loss.

[keithbvadu2]

9. It wasn't signed by Trump?

It wasn't signed by Trump?

[lastlib]

10. He's pulling out his Sharpie as we speak......