The Rider Into Galveston

On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger rode into Galveston, Texas, carrying news that was already two and a half years old. The Emancipation Proclamation had been signed in January 1863, but in the remote corners of Texas, over 250,000 enslaved men and women had never heard a word of it. They labored under the same brutality, lived under the same terror, completely unaware that their freedom had already been secured.…