On June 19, 1865, Union soldiers finally landed at Galveston, Texas with news that the war had ended and that the enslaved were now free – two and a half years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863. Today, June 19 is celebrated in Washington DC as Juneteenth, the day emancipation reached Texas, and is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery.