The announcement in Texas of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation took effect (technically) at the beginning of 1863, but since the year before slave owners had been gradually moving their slaves to Texas to escape it. In June 1865 when the 13th Amendment was in the last stages of being ratified, Major General Gordon Granger established the Union Army's authority over Texas and announced that "in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free". This had little practical effect for some years but the day is marked, as the day not when slaves were freed in a practical sense but the day when the proclamation was made by the Union Army in the last Confederate state.
