On June 19, 1865, Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger and a contingent of some 2,000 Union troops entered Galveston, Texas, to deliver General Order No. 3, a proclamation to alert the enslaved Black residents of the state that they were free under the provisions of the Emancipation Proclamation.
In 1863, during the American Civil War, U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed more than 3,000,000 enslaved people living in the Confederate states. Yet freedom remained elusive for two more years for the more than 250,000 enslaved African Americans in Texas. It was not until Major General Granger and his soldiers arrived in Galveston and enforced the edict that the state’s enslaved residents finally experienced freedom.