Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
“[O]n the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free. . . .”
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
All-American bloodbath raging.
More than two years of an unrelenting Civil War.
Union versus Confederacy.
North versus South.
Father versus son.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
An Emancipation Proclamation issued—
Symbolic, but illusory.
Nary a single enslaved person then went free.
Absent the North’s military conquest of rebel States,
The Emancipation Proclamation would be but a dead letter.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
Union victory expanding; Eyes on the freedom prize.
Black enlistment skyrocketed.
Liberated, they would liberate others.
Tens of thousands of melanated Union soldiers and sailors,
Freeing as they had been freed.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
Like wildfire, the word spread.
Murmurings.
Shouts.
Hallelujah choruses.
Eventually, the free would know of their freedom.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
A latter-day Gabriel appeared.
Galveston, Texas, June 19, 1865.
Major-General Gordon Granger delivered the gospel.
The Union triumphed over the defiant Confederacy.
The Emancipation Proclamation yet lived.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
In an otherwise unremarkable summer,
The fates would have their day.
June 19, 1865.
Freedom Day—Juneteenth.
The day emancipation touched down.
Free at last. Free at last.
Thank God almighty, we’re free at last.
“I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free; and that the Executive government of the United States . . . will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.”