Juneteenth: Texas’ Final Independence Day

Texas History as it is known throughout the world is primarily a history of independence and liberty. Freedom and the unchained spirit. But as with any vision, the reality often falls short of the ideal, and Texas is no different.

We Texans proudly fly Six Flags in honor of the unique history that saw our land change hands from nation to nation while the same pioneering spirit that ran through the veins of Texans remained unfiltered.

Along with those six flags, Texas can lay rightful claim to four Independence Days. The one most celebrated, of course, is the only one that didn’t actually have any effect on the Lone Star State at the time it happened – the Fourth of July, 1776. Outside of a half dozen Spanish Texans who fought for their country as allies of the United States, the American Revolution passed with only a mild interest in Texas.

A generation later, Texas got its first true independence Day – Diez y Seis, September 16, 1810 – when Father Hidalgo made the call for Mexican independence from Spain. That revolution soon spread to Texas and the Mexican citizens of San Antonio – with the help of American and Indian mercenaries – expelled the Spanish, only to be crushed in the brutal Battle of Medina in 1813. It wasn’t until 1821 that Spain was finally evicted from Mexico.

Spain, and then Mexico, invited Anglo colonists to settle in Texas, partly in an effort to rebuild after the devastation of the early days of the Mexican Revolution. But while the early relations were benign between the colonists and Mexico City, they began to deteriorate rapidly as the Mexican government slid into dictatorship and the Anglo immigration became a wave that both terrified the Mexican leaders and emboldened the separatist elements. Finally, on March 2, 1836, with the Alamo surrounded by 3,000 Mexican soldiers, Texans – Anglo and Hispanic alike – chose independence over submission.

But as each stand for freedom was made, there was always an element missing. The same voices which passionately advocated for their own freedom were in many cases denying it to others. Slavery, the scourge and original sin of America – and Texas as well – remained deeply entrenched. Some in early America and Texas refused to talk about it and others hoped it would fade away as economic forces slowly strangled it.

In Texas, slavery had a slow start. The first slave – other than Indians routinely enslaved by other tribes – was a black African who was shipwrecked along with several Spaniards on Galveston Island in 1528. The slave, Estevanico, was treated essentially as an equal following the shipwreck, and along with explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and three other men, attempted to make his way through the interior of Texas. Captured by Indians, he was enslaved again, this time along with his companions. They later escaped and made their way back to Spanish lands.

Although Spain had employed slavery to a vast degree in its dominions, much of its slavery was focused on mining and the production of precious metals, which was not a significant industry in Texas. While Americans found Northern American Indian tribes to be poorly suited as slaves and therefore turned to Black Africans, Spain found a much more docile and exploitable human element in its dominions. Black slavery in New Spain was generally reserved for the Caribbean and Cuba.

A few African slaves were nonetheless imported into Mexico proper – including the ancestors of the mixed-race Vicente Guerrero, one of the heroes of the Mexican Revolution. In 1829, as President of Mexico, Guerrero signed a decree which banned slavery throughout the colonies, including Texas. Importation of new slaves had been banned in 1823, but many early Anglo settlers had already brought slaves and many new arrivals didn’t care or take the law seriously. 

Nonetheless, slavery was rather limited in early Texas, due to its geography and the poverty of many of its earliest immigrants. And in subsistence farming, slaves were not just labor, but another mouth to feed. 

Unlike the settled Southern states, where large plantations had developed, most Texans lived in very primitive conditions, and the few that did own slaves generally had only one or two per family. On the harsh frontier, where Indian raids were common, slaves were occasionally armed in order to participate in the common defense. Although some tribes welcomed escaped slaves into their midst, the most feared of raiders – the Comanches – slaughtered blacks and whites alike without bias. On the few occasions when Comanches captured slaves, they were often sold to other Indian tribes, most notably the Cherokees. 

At the Battle of the Alamo, William Barret Travis’ slave Joe fought alongside his master until the latter was killed. Captured after the battle by the Mexicans, who did not know he had fought, he became the one and only combatant at the fortress who survived and was released. One other slave survived the Alamo. Another had died during the battle.

But as Texas grew, slavery began to grow, and grow rapidly. The security and density of population that made slavery possible increased. And while the earliest settlers focused their agriculture on food crops in order to survive, settlers after Independence and in the first years of statehood began to turn to cash crops like cotton. It was these which made slavery possible – and profitable. Slaves were used in a variety of jobs, mostly agricultural. They were generally prohibited from jobs breaking horses, because if a slave was killed in the process, his owner suffered a financial loss. If a poor white cowboy was killed, however, no one lost any money.

For economic reasons, slavery was confined to the very eastern parts of the Lone Star State, and only gradually began to move towards the center. It fared poorly in South Texas, where cheap Mexican labor made slavery unprofitable. In the west, ranching predominated and unlike farming, where slaves worked in groups and could be supervised, ranching allowed limitless chances of escape.

Additionally, as German immigrants flooded into the Texas Hill Country, they brought with them an aversion to slavery. Very few Germans in Texas owned slaves, and when the Civil War came, many of them stayed loyal to the Union over that issue.

As the Civil War raged, little changed in Texas. Unlike states on the fringes of the Confederacy, few slaves in Texas could have escaped to Union lines. But poor communication meant that little news came to Texas. Even many whites outside of the major cities of Houston and Galveston received their news partially and late. What trickled down to the slaves was even less.

Thus, when Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, it barely created a stir in Texas. The Union Army had failed miserably in all its attempts to invade Texas. Until an armed presence arrived in Texas, the document was essentially meaningless.

Finally, with the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865, the Civil War came to a close. But in far away Texas, few even knew that. In the last battle of the Civil War, which took place after the official Confederate surrender, a Confederate Army in Texas won, only to learn from their prisoners that the war had ended.

Thus, it was two months after the end of the war when Federal gunboats finally arrived in Galveston and unloaded occupation troops in the City. According to a commonly-cited story, on June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger, stood on the steps of a villa in the city and read the official order that ended slavery in Texas:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. 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. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.”

June 19, 1865 – Juneteeth – became for many African-Americans in Texas a symbolic date for the long march of freedom that began years before, but would take over 100 years to fully realize. On the first anniversary of the proclamation, a small celebration was held. Over the years it grew, and jumped beyond the borders of Texas. For other states, who had no such holiday, the Texas celebration became their own, and now Juneteenth is celebrated worldwide.

Finally, belatedly, but justly, freedom came to all Texans on Juneteenth. As history has proven time and time again, the truth failed to live up to the ideal, but nonetheless, the biggest step had been taken. Texas, which had three Independence Days to celebrate, now had a fourth.