The newest federal holiday was to recognize the June 19, 1865, emancipation of enslaved black people in Texas. On that date northern Gen. Gordon Grainger of New York told black slaves who were not already aware of how to gain their freedom, of their new status in the US. These remaining slaves in Texas had not already taken advantage of the well-known “Mexican Caanan” a short distance southward.
South to the Promised Land
“Historian Alice Baumgartner states ‘After independence from Spain, in 1821, ‘Mexico passed these really radical antislavery laws, and Mexicans at all levels of society were serious about enforcing them. This was well-known to enslaved people on the US side of the border.’
In 1849, Mexico’s Congress decreed foreign slaves free “by the act of stepping on the national territory.” This soon became common knowledge among enslaved people in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas and what would later become Oklahoma. They envisioned what historian calls a “Mexican Canaan” across the Rio Grande – a promised land where they could be free.
They made the arduous journey through Texas . . . In the 1850s a dozen slaves were reaching Matamoros, Mexico every month. Two-hundred seventy arrived in Laredo, in Tamaulipas, just across the border from Laredo, Texas.”
(South to the Promised Land, Richard Grant. Smithsonian Magazine, July/August 2022, pg. 82; 84-85)