How Black Union soldiers made Juneteenth possible
The U.S. Colored Troops were among the first to arrive in Texas to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation—yet their story has long been overlooked.
On the morning of June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger arrived by ship at the Port of Galveston. Granger had been sent to Texas to issue five commands, most notably General Order Number 3:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free.”
Months after the end of the Civil War, enslavers in Texas had not yet complied with the Emancipation Proclamation. Granger’s mission was to finally enforce it. This day would go down in history as Juneteenth—now a national holiday in the United States and a worldwide celebration of freedom.
(Why Juneteenth is a celebration of hope.)
Yet to Granger’s surprise when he disembarked from the ship there were thousands of Union soldiers already in Galveston. Many were members of the United States Colored Troops (USCT), regiments of the Union Army that were predominantly African American such as the XXV Corps, the single largest African American unit during the Civil War.
For many years the Juneteenth narrative has centered around Granger and white Union soldiers while excluding the contributions of the USCT. During the Civil War more than 200,000 Black men fought in the Union Army and Navy. Some were free Black men, but the majority had joined the military after escaping enslavement or being liberated by Union forces.
My family comes from a long line of Galvestonians and my grandmother’s childhood friend Fay Williams often shared with me a saying passed down from earlier generations who were there for the first Juneteenth: “It was not a piece of paper that freed the slaves, but the men with the guns.” The real Juneteenth story cannot be told without capturing the experience of these unsung heroes.
The men with guns
The men with guns on Juneteenth were the freedom-fighting Union soldiers of the North. They were white soldiers, yes, but also Black men in uniform with guns and the authority to use them.
It wasn’t until about two years into the Civil War that Black men were formally given that authority. The Bureau of U.S. Colored Troops was established in May 1863 to recruit and organize Black regiments in the United States Army.
Abolitionist and civil rights leader Frederick Douglass was among the fiercest advocates for allowing Black men to serve in the military, stating, "Once you let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship.”
(These national park trails were created by America’s first Black soldiers.)
Black men fought for freedom and dignity by enlisting in the United States Army and Navy. With the recently declared Emancipation Proclamation as motivation, “African-descent soldiers became powerful allies to the Union cause, serving in a myriad of combat and combat-related duties,” wrote the late Hari Jones, a renowned Civil War historian and curator of the African American Civil War Museum. “They conducted raids, went on scouting patrols, guarded railroads and communication lines, garrisoned forts in rebel states, conducted assaults, built fortification, laid railroad tracks, and were among the most capable spies in the war.”
They also played a major role in bringing the war to a close. On April 3, 1865, the 25th Army Corps USCT regiments captured Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy. Many of these USCT soldiers were present at Appomattox when Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9.
Weeks later, on May 22, 1865, the then-famed 25th Army Corps received embarkation orders for Texas to secure the state and spread the message of freedom from plantation to plantation under the command of Major General Godfrey Weitzel.
“That the negro corps, under General Weitzel, has received marching orders is well known throughout their camps, and they are beginning to put on the war-paint with the impression that they are going to Texas,” wrote Thomas Morris Chester, an African American war correspondent. “They look forward to the period of embarkation with a great deal of satisfaction.”
By June 13, nine of these famed regiments that had captured Richmond were in Texas.
Slavery in Texas after the war
Texas enslavers and plantation owners had known about the Emancipation Proclamation for over two years but had no plans to voluntarily free enslaved people whom they considered their property. The Union soldiers would need to force them to comply.
Galveston, as was one of the largest cities in the state of Texas at the war’s end in 1865, was a natural place to start. The 1860 U.S. Census records 7,300 people living there with almost 1,200 of them being enslaved. In comparison, Houston only recorded 4,845 people with 1,069 enslaved and San Antonio had 8,235 people with 592 enslaved. The majority of the over 250,000 enslaved people in Texas lived further inland on large plantations.
That June, Union soldiers left Galveston by train, foot, horseback, and ship to deliver the message of freedom from plantation to plantation.
“All day long we seen them soldiers going back to San Antonio and different places,” recalled Hempstead resident Harriet Smith in a 1941 oral history with radio show host John Henry Faulk. She added, “Colored soldiers in droves. Went right along by our house.”
(Just across the border, this Mexican community also celebrates Juneteenth.)
Most of those men were United States Colored Troops. The XXV Corps had originally been sent to South Texas to secure the Mexico border but ran into bad weather and came up the coast to Galveston for supplies. “Galveston is now occupied by colored troops constituting a provost guard for the enforcement of law and order,” reported a July 8 article in The Wheeling Daily Register.
In the book Like Men of War: Black Troops in the Civil War 1862-1865, historian Noah Andre Trudeau wrote that by January 1866 there were 6,500 white soldiers and 19,768 black soldiers in Texas—a three to one ratio.
The real legacy of Juneteenth
The official end of U.S. slavery did not occur until the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, and even after that enslaved people in Indian territories like Oklahoma weren’t freed until the treaties were signed on June 14, 1866.
The unsung heroes of this American freedom experiment include the USCT as well as the former enslaved people and their descendants that kept this history alive for more than 155 years until Juneteenth was made a national holiday on June 17, 2021.
A Union victory would not have occurred without the USCT soldiers. And these soldiers would have been forgotten if not for the primary source material that recorded their contributions and the oral history that was passed down through many generations of descendants of enslaved people.
Juneteenth celebrates the evolution of our country to a more perfect union. That evolution includes expanding the narrative of our shared history to honor the contributions of the USCT soldiers who fought for their own freedom and for the union.
