Dear Reader:

As students in school, didn’t we pretty much accept everything the teacher told us about historical information … and took it as “gospel?”… after all they were the teacher. In those days, terms like being a ” critical analyst ” and not accepting information without further examination… were not part of the core of learning… it was more … open up and swallow.

One of the few historical facts that most American students remember after graduation, is the Emancipation Proclamation… when Lincoln freed the slaves… but unfortunately it usually stops there. It was a great thing… and Lincoln the greatest President. End of story.

Today we know that the there was nothing ” simple” about the Emancipation Proclamation… from start to finish. Freedom would not appear magically by the stroke of a pen at the start of a new year… midnight-January 1 1863 to be exact.

Nobody ( certainly not southern slave holders ) were anxious to spread the ” good news” to their plantations and farm enslaved workers… no internet to help out…so pretty much ” mum” was the word about this now famous document.

The Emancipation Proclamation could not be enforced until the war was over and the Union had won. In a famous 1941 interview… one of the few remaining slaves from the Civil War period, Laura Snalley, remembered as a child from Belleville, Texas, that the ” old master” never spoke of the Emancipation Proclamation so nothing changed for months and they were finally turned loose on June 19. They called it initially ” Celebrate Day.”

Juneteenth started as a state holiday in Texas in 1980 and spread to several other states as a state holiday remembering the freeing of the slaves.

Finally President Biden in 2021 signed a bill passed by Congress that set aside June 19th ( Juneteenth) as a federal holiday. It was the date that news of the war’s end and the slaves’ freedom reached Galveston, Texas under the command of Union General Gordon Granger-two months after Lee surrendered to Grant. *** It took the 13th Amendment to permanently abolish slavery.

So until tomorrow… at the reception held for Lee… she said: ” If people have been taught to hate, they can be taught to love and it is up to all of us to do it.”

Today is my favorite day-Winnie the Pooh

Mollie and Eloise got Lachlan all checked into camp yesterday -he is in the Loggerback Tribe!