Our newest national holiday is celebrated on June 19, one all too few Americans were aware of until recently. In essence, Juneteenth is a second Independence Day.
After 2½ bloody years of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, ending slavery in the rebellious states. Escaped slave and brilliant orator Frederick Douglass quickly praised the act that he had fought so hard for.
“We are all liberated by this proclamation,” he wrote.
“The white man is liberated, the black man is liberated, the brave men now fighting the battles of their country against rebels and traitors are now liberated,” he wrote, calling it an “amazing approximation toward the sacred truth of human liberty."
An approximation, since it would take 2½ more years of carnage unparalleled in U.S. history. And even when Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his sword to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, it took months to break the last chains.
Texas was a........