CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Today’s Conley Commentary comes exactly between Juneteenth and Independence Day. One was observed 7 days ago, the other is 7 days away.
I am of two minds about Juneteenth. It marks the day the Union General Gordon Granger marched his troops into Galveston, Texas. The city still had a confederate militia. With overwhelming numbers, he assembled in the town square and announced that the Civil War had ended two-and-a-half-months ago. Militia members who didn’t lay down their arms would be killed. And that all slaves were free.
It is indeed worth celebrating the final, complete ending of human bondage in the United States. It is a day that both white and black Americans should rejoice in. This is the day that our nation set aside its original sin – slavery – and more than a million soldiers laid down their lives to settle the issue.
What Juneteenth should not become is a black independence day. I’ve already seen one Juneteenth banner that said “free-ish since 1865.” Wrong.
The day our nation celebrates its freedom is Independence Day. And let us be clear, if we remained a British colony, slavery would have existed much longer. The Brits banned the importing of slaves from Africa, but they permitted slave trading and breeding in their colonies, and showed no appetite to use the law or the military to end it. The British thought nothing of the caste system in their other colonies, in the Caribbean, in India, in Asia and in Africa.
The Declaration of Independence says that all men are created equal. And, certainly, when those words were written they did not include all people. Our nation’s greatness is that our idea of “all” are “equal” is expanding. The American conscience continues to grow towards our founding creed.
I’m Chris Conley.
Comments