Lincoln's loss in 1864

[David Lockmiller]

(06-18-2019 01:05 AM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  Douglass met with the president on August 19. In an open conversation that Douglass later recounted, Lincoln candidly acknowledged his fear that the "mad cry" for peace might bring a premature end to the war, "which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines." He had thought the publication of his Emancipation Proclamation would stimulate an exodus from the South, but, he lamented, "the slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped." Douglass suggested that "the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his proclamation." Hearing this, Lincoln proposed that the federal government might underwrite an organized "band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our Armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries." Douglass promised to confer with leaders in the black community on the possibility of such a plan.

(Source: Team of Rivals at pages 648-49.)

June 19, 1865, was the day that enslaved Texans got the news that President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation. It declared the freedom of the enslaved in rebelling states — two and a half years after its signing, and a few months before the 13th Amendment abolished slavery.

(Source: NYTimes June 19, 2019.)

“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.” —General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865


But African-Americans in Houston who wanted to commemorate the occasion shortly after emancipation ran into a problem: There were few, if any, public spaces where they could gather.

So a group led by the Rev. Jack Yates, a formerly enslaved Baptist minister, pooled together $1,000 in 1872 to purchase 10 acres of land for annual Juneteenth celebrations.

Those 10 acres are called Emancipation Park. The park, which completed a $33 million renovation two years ago, is considered Houston’s oldest.

(Source: NYTimes June 19, 2019.)