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posted ago by Insignificant ago by Insignificant +25 / -2

Just a few facts for everyone that wants to celebrate this potential new holiday:

-Juneteenth is a celebration of June 19th, 1865

-It is to celebrate the emancipation of slaves in Confederate states, not the ones in the north (even though most searches will say that slavery was already abolished in northern states by 1805)

-Juneteenth is obviously a shortened version of June nineteenth, so perhaps we should start calling July 4th something else like "Julourth"?

-Emancipation was not the same for all slaves...for many it simply meant they would be transferred to Union territory where they could still be "employed"...you didn't think Lincoln freed his own housekeepers did you?

-The Underground Railroad ended in Canada for a reason; "freed" slaves caught in Union territory were often returned to their "employers" or simply "reemployed" by loving bosses in Union territory

-In Lincoln's famous Inaugural Speech in 1861, he completely removed the slavery issue from contention between the North and South by promising to enforce the fugitive slave clause and supporting a Constitutional Amendment which would explicitly protect slavery

-Lysander Spooner, a fiery abolitionist, wrote in his 1870 book No Treason, “The pretense that the ‘abolition of slavery’ was either a motive or justification for the war is a fraud of the same character with that of ‘maintaining the national honor.” This is the same guy that helped plot John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry as well as funded slave uprisings and militias in the South. How is it that one of the top abolitionists of the day claimed that slavery was not the cause of the war?

To be clear, I have no problem celebrating the end of slavery in America, but did it ever really happen? We and all of our ancestors have been debt slaves since this nation's inception.