OPINION:
On June 19, 1865, not even a century after our nation’s founding, a Union Army general – following an order given by President Abraham Lincoln – breathed new life into the ideals first laid out by our Founders. In issuing his General Order Number 3, General Gordon Granger informed the citizens of Galveston, Texas, that slaves were free. He created a cause for celebration that we now honor with our newest federal holiday, Juneteenth.
Why hasn’t the Republican Party made more of an effort to celebrate Juneteenth? This two-year-old federal holiday offers tremendous opportunities to deepen the party’s ties to African-American communities across the country. Failure to take advantage of these opportunities is political malpractice.
This holiday would not exist if it were not for the Republican Party. The event the holiday honors – the end of slavery in the United States – was brought about by the first Republican president, acting to implement the principal platform plank of his political party, which was at that time less than a decade old, and which had been founded for the express purpose of blocking the expansion of slavery. That first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, fought a brutal and bloody war, at great cost in blood and treasure, to bring to fruition his party’s vision of equality for all.
In doing so, Lincoln was acting to fulfill the promise first made, in his unforgettable phrase, “four score and seven years ago,” when our Founding Fathers signed their names to a document declaring their belief that it was a “self evident” truth that “all men are created equal” and “they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” which included “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The notion that “all men are created equal” had never before been made part of a governing document. It was a tremendous advance in the milestones of human liberty.
Some of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence – including its principal author, Thomas Jefferson – were, at the time they signed the document, slave-owners themselves. In fact, more than half the signers of the Declaration owned slaves at the time they signed the document, and almost half of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention more than a decade later also owned slaves.
That these men put their names to a document declaring the equality of all men didn’t make them hypocrites. They had been born into a society where slavery was legal and common – at the time of the signing of the Declaration, all thirteen colonies had laws that allowed slavery.
Nevertheless, many of our Founding Fathers believed slavery to be evil, and worked to hasten its abolition.
George Washington wrote of slavery in 1786 that “there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it,” and famously freed all his slaves in his will. Benjamin Franklin, who owned slaves earlier in his life, later became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and declared his belief that “slavery is … an atrocious debasement of human nature.” George Mason, at the Constitutional Convention, said, “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a country.”
In signing their names to the Declaration, which contained that never-before-uttered principle that denied the legitimacy of slavery, and in refusing to recognize and legitimize slavery in the Constitution, the Founders hoped to hasten slavery’s passing.
It was left to a later generation to complete the task of abolishing slavery outright.
Enter the Republican Party, born in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin. The expansion of slavery into new states had become a major issue years earlier and, combined with other social and cultural issues, led to a party realignment; the new party declared itself staunchly opposed to slavery’s expansion. Its first presidential candidate ran for office in 1856 but lost; four years later, its second candidate for president, Abraham Lincoln, won the presidency, and the party was firmly established.
Then came the Civil War, and more than 600,000 dead. A year and a half into the war, Lincoln announced in September 1862 that on the first day of the new year, slaves in the rebellious states would be liberated. On January 1, 1863, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
But the work was not yet complete. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery, had been moved successfully through the Senate in 1864 but not through the House. Lincoln pushed to have support for the amendment added as a plank to the 1864 GOP platform on which he would campaign and succeeded; then, upon winning reelection, he worked to push the amendment through the House. The House passed the resolution in January 1865, and on February 1, 1865, Lincoln approved the joint resolution submitting the proposed amendment to the states for ratification.
News traveled slowly in those days. It wasn’t until General Granger arrived in Galveston and issued General Order Number 3 on June 19, 1865, that the residents of the area learned that slaves had been emancipated.
That’s how June 19 became the day to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States.
It’s noteworthy that following the Civil War, our nation’s political leaders didn’t abandon the founding documents. The victors didn’t use their control to write themselves a new constitution, locking themselves into control in perpetuity, as has happened in so many other countries we can think of. Only in America did we go through a Civil War and then double down on our founding documents, reaffirming our joint commitment to the principles established therein.
And while Democrat President Joe Biden gets credit for being the president who signed into law a resolution establishing a national holiday to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States, the cause for celebration itself was brought to you courtesy of the Republican Party and its first and most revered president.
In other words, this holiday might as well be named, “Republicans Ended Slavery Day.”
So why isn’t there a banner across the front door of the Republican National Committee building on First Street Southeast in Washington, DC, proclaiming Juneteenth?
- Bill Pascoe, a political consultant, has been working to promote individual liberty for more than four decades.
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