As the nation celebrates the newest federal holiday on June 20 — Juneteenth Day — it is instructive to understand what the Emancipation Proclamation meant for Delaware.
In a practical sense, the signature executive order by President Abraham Lincoln represented stark handwriting on the Civil War-battered wall that signaled to the entire country that the tragic era of the “peculiar institution” of slavery was soon approaching its end.
However, in purely a legal sense, the Emancipation Proclamation meant nothing to the First State, as the executive order’s abolishment of slavery applied only to the Confederate Southern states. At the time of the signing of that liberating document on Jan. 1, 1863, while all Northern states had already abolished slavery, the Union border states of Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri continued legally to be slave states.
While Maryland and Missouri ended their practices of slavery in 1864 and 1865, respectively, Delaware and Kentucky continued to legally sanction slavery in their states after the Juneteenth-June 19, 1865, announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas, the last affected former Confederate state where the order was proclaimed. Legal slavery, however, would be short-lived.
To be sure, the practice of slavery in Delaware had diminished greatly by that time. According to the late Dr. William H. Williams’ “Slavery and Freedom in Delaware 1639-1865” — the only scholarly account of the peculiar institution in the First State — the slave population of 8,887 in 1790 had decreased to 1,798 in 1860. By mid-1865, there were only a few hundred slaves remaining in Delaware.
Even with that diminishment of slavery, Delaware lawmakers were adamant about the state’s right to make its own decision on slavery. Despite Delaware’s refusal to ratify the 13th Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, the requisite two-thirds ratification by the existing states was confirmed on Dec. 18, 1865, effectively abolishing slavery in the United States.
Delaware’s dragging of its feet on slavery abolishment notwithstanding, the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment were an essential but never more than a small step in righting the 246-year injustice to Blacks in the U.S. In addition, Delaware also declined to ratify the 14th Amendment (guaranteeing equal rights to all citizens) and the 15th Amendment (giving Blacks the right to vote), which became a part of the U.S. Constitution in 1868 and 1870, respectively. Delaware did not ratify those constitutional amendments until 1901 — more than three decades after their adoption.
The First State’s opposition to those three constitutional amendments portended the disenfranchisement difficulties that laid ahead for Delaware’s African Americans in terms of voting rights, civil rights and the provision for educational opportunity.
The question, therefore, is: If equality and justice were elusive for more than 100 years after the abolishment of slavery, what are we celebrating and recognizing with Juneteenth Day?
It is in recognition of the first significant step to deliver this country from the societal illusion and sickness of White supremacy. Thus, while this country is still recovering from the criminal choices it made to enforce the subjugation and captivity of Blacks during that dark era, we can celebrate the beginning that Juneteenth represents. Despite Delaware’s opposition to the abolishment of slavery and the inapplicability of the Emancipation Proclamation to Delaware at that time, Juneteenth became a beginning for this state, as well.
The Emancipation Proclamation executive order made the 13th Amendment fait accompli, leading to the eventual reality — albeit slow in the making over the last 157 years — that change toward a more equitable and just union for all people was inevitable. Delaware’s opposition to abolishment notwithstanding, the two measures meant the end of slavery in the First State, just as it did for the rest of the country.
Of course, the First State of the current time is diametrically different from the Delaware of the 1800s. Today, equality and opportunity abound in much greater measure for all people throughout the state’s breadth and length. In 2016, the Delaware General Assembly and then-Gov. Jack Markell took responsibility for the state’s past race relations sins through a resolution in which the state apologized for slavery and the Jim Crow-era laws.
On Friday, Delaware State University — which, beginning in 1891, was part of that change by providing a higher education and high school opportunity for Blacks in Delaware and beyond — held a Juneteenth celebration at its DSU Downtown location. The First State’s only historically Black university considered it part of its community service obligation to facilitate a celebration event and thereby help preserve the history that Juneteenth represents.
Carlos Holmes is the university historian for Delaware State University, as well as its director of news services.
