daily knowledge: Happy Juneteenth! Although Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 declared that all slaves in the Confederate States were free, enforcement wasn't possible in the states the Union did not control. on this day in 1865, 2000 Union troops led by Gordon Granger marched to Galveston, Texas and ordered that the 250,000 enslaved Black people be freed immediately. this day has gone down in history as one of the most important Black holidays and has been celebrated locally since the late 1800s.