General Order No. 3 was an American legal decree issued in 1865 enforcing the

Emancipation Proclamation The Emancipation Proclamation, officially Proclamation 95, was a presidential proclamation and executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the Civil War. The Proclamation changed the legal st ...

to the residents of the U.S. state of

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

and freed all remaining

slaves Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

in the state. The

general order A general order, in military and paramilitary organizations, is a published directive, originated by a commander and binding upon all personnel under his or her command. Its purpose is to enforce a policy or procedure unique to the unit's situatio ...

was issued by Union General Gordon Granger on June 19, 1865, upon arriving at

Galveston, Texas Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galv ...

, at the end of the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

and two-and-a-half years after the original issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. The Order, and Granger's enforcement of it, is the central event commemorated by the holiday of

Juneteenth Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Deriving its name from combining "June" and "nineteenth", it is celebrated on the anniversary of General Order No. 3, i ...

, which originally celebrated the end of slavery in Texas. The order was not read aloud by the Union Army, but it was posted around town, and communicated to most African Americans by slavemasters. News of the Emancipation Proclamation had reached Texas and been covered in Texas newspapers, but due to the lack of Union military presence, it had not been enforced.

Physical document

Official record

While several contemporary printed versions of the order have long been known, the original handwritten official record was

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and publicized by the

National Archives and Records Administration The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...

on June 18, 2020. The document is physically located in the

National Archives Building The National Archives Building, known informally as Archives I, is the headquarters of the United States National Archives and Records Administration. It is located north of the National Mall at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington ...

in Washington, D.C., and is maintained by the Textual Records Division. The text was recorded by the Assistant Adjutant General, Major F. W. Emery in a bound record book of general orders issued by the Army. It is cataloged as part of the National Archives' collection "Record Group 393: Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands".

Text

The following is the text of the official recorded version of the order:

Galveston Texas June 19th 1865. General Orders No. 3. 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. By order of Major General Granger F.W. Emery Major A.A. Genl.

Printed versions

The text of the order was circulated and reprinted in many contemporary

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

s and other sources which have been preserved. One of the earliest was the ''Galveston Tri-Weekly News'', which printed General Order No. 3 on June 20, 1865, the day after it was issued. On July 7, 1865, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' printed a copy of General Order No. 3 among a series of other recent general orders issued by Granger, which it described as "interesting news from Texas" under the headline "THE SLAVES ALL FREE."

Misconceptions

A common misconception holds that the Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in the United States, or that the General Order No. 3 on June 19, 1865, marked the end of slavery in the United States. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified and proclaimed in December 1865, was the article that made slavery illegal in the United States nationwide, not the Emancipation Proclamation. Another common misconception is that it took over two years for news of the Emancipation Proclamation to reach Texas, and that slaves didn't know they had already been freed by it. In fact, news of the Proclamation had reached Texas long before 1865, and many slaves knew about Lincoln's order emancipating them, but they had not been freed since the Union army had yet to reach Texas to enforce the Proclamation. Only after the arrival of the Union army and General Order No. 3 was the Proclamation widely enforced in Texas.

References

External links

* * * National Archives catalog record: " General Orders Issued, 6/1865 - 7/1865," from Record Group 393: Records of U.S. Army Continental Commands, 1817 - 1947; created by War Department. Division of the Gulf. Department of Texas. (6/27/1865 - 8/6/1866). {{Juneteenth American Civil War documents General orders Juneteenth Military emancipation in the American Civil War