Opinion | The end of slavery in the United States

Juneteenth commemorates the date in 1865 when the Union army brought the news of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation to enslaved people in Texas at the end of the Civil War. However, the 1863 proclamation freed the enslaved people only in the states in the Confederacy. Slavery was still allowed in states that did not secede from the United States, including Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky. Maryland abolished slavery on Nov. 1, 1864, and Missouri did the same on Jan. 11, 1865. Enslaved people in Delaware and Kentucky were not freed until slavery was prohibited “within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” by the 13th Amendment when it was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865.