Juneteenth by Choice Alone

Today is June 19^th, otherwise known as Juneteenth. We know that it is Juneteenth from the strained effort of certain voices in the media to remind us. As with any coordinated marketing campaign, one perspective is introduced to supplant another.

For thoroughness’ sake, on January 1^st, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln decreed the Emancipation Proclamation, which limitedly freed the slaves in states which were rebelling against the Union during the Civil War. Whether the individual slaves could make good on this emancipation depended mainly on whether the Union army controlled the area. On April 9^th, 1865, the Confederacy formally surrendered to the Union at Appomattox, Virginia, which paved the way for Union armies to march unimpeded through the states formerly in rebellion, and thereby, to allow those who had been enslaved to exercise their freedom, whether by departing the plantations and workhouses or negotiating employment contracts with the former slaveholders. On June 19^th, 1865, a Union army under the command of General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas. This deployment brought the promise of emancipation to 250,000 persons in the state, freeing them from the pernicious bondage of chattel slavery, as well as the slaves in the territory of Oklahoma, not yet annexed as a state.

To belabor the obvious, slavery in any form – whether between individuals or institutionalized by society – is the most abominable treatment of any human being by others. It cannot be condemned harshly enough. Liberation of those under enslavement is praiseworthy since it restores the individual’s free will and affords him the dignity of owning his work product. Yet the above cut-and-dry relation of events during the Civil War deliberately overlooks a painful truth about slavery’s abolition in this country.

Starting with President Lincoln, though folklore credits him for freeing the slaves, such was not his professed intention as president. In nothing less than his first inaugural address on March 4^th, 1861, Lincoln rehashed published statements which he had made to declare, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I beheve [sic] I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” (¶ 3) Far from a one-off utterance, Lincoln reiterated the sentiment in a missive sent in 1862 to the New York Tribune’s editor Horace Greeley:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

To Honest Abe’s credit, he was shooting straight when he told this northern, abolitionist newspaper that he would liberate not a solitary slave if it meant he could coerce the south to remain in the Union. True to his word, the vaunted Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 featured a glaring loophole in that by omission it permitted slavery’s continuation in the states of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee (some regions of which had aligned with the Confederacy, whilst others with the Union). It was not until the U.S. Constitution’s Thirteen Amendment’s ratification that the practice of slavery was outlawed nationwide in 1865.

Despite the modern trend towards rehabilitating Lincoln in the collective memory, the unfortunate perspective to be supplanted is that slavery’s abolition was more the product of political and military expediency than genuine concern for the enslaved.

Thus the coordinated marketing campaign to popularize the holiday of Juneteenth. Suddenly there is a slew of articles discussing the holiday’s history and advising people how to celebrate. There is even a flag to represent the holiday, to the delight of advertisers and vexillologists no less. Whereas organically certain communities in the USA had long celebrated abolition by local observances – often by vigils on or around the Emancipation Proclamation’s promulgation of January 1^st – President Joe Biden officially standardized observance of the holiday in 2021.

Declaration of a holiday is one of the most innocuous actions government can take, so this article seeks not to undermine Juneteenth in and of itself. But just as every Libertarian knows that good ideas require no force, nor do they require government’s imprimatur to be valid. For those who had started celebrating emancipation, even if then incomplete, they and their descendants and friends never needed government to tell them when, how or where to celebrate.

All this is to say that if you want to celebrate Juneteenth, then here’s to 160 years of freedom. If you do not want to celebrate, then no hard feelings either. On your day off you can just pout at your neighbor’s BBQ as you watch him with a cold one in hand devour a succulent freedom burger.