Some people immediately set off in search of lost family and friends, while others experienced confusion and uncertainty about their futures as freedpeople. Many newly emancipated people celebrated their independence at the holiday subsequently known as Juneteenth, though some found their celebrations thwarted by disgruntled former slave-owners. However, many black people in Texas remained enslaved for months, and in rare cases years, when their owners refused to release them. On June 19, 1865, at the end of the Civil War and over two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, General Gordon Granger landed in Galveston and declared that enslavement was ended. Some enslaved people were moved from the eastern areas of Texas or from other southern states to keep them away from Union troops, and many were made to labor for the Confederate Army, building fortifications and other methods of defense. While Felix Haywood’s life was undisturbed by the war, other enslaved people experienced upheaval. It was the ending of it that made the difference." Sometimes you didn’t know it was going on. The war wasn’t so great as folks suppose. Felix Haywood, who worked as a cowboy while enslaved in San Antonio, described his experience of the war when interviewed in 1937: “It’s a funny thing how folks always want to know about the war. Because Texas remained relatively unscathed by fighting during the war, life for enslaved African Americans continued in much the same way as it had before the fighting. On February 23, 1861, Texans voted to secede from the Union and joined the Confederate States of America. However, with Union General Granger’s emancipation announcement at the end of the war, African Americans celebrated their independence and began new lives as freedpeople. Life for enslaved African Americans remained relatively unchanged during the Civil War. Enslaved people made personal connections, and established family relationships wherever possible despite the odds, which was made more difficult by the changing nature of Texas and its white population. While there were no large-scale slave insurrections in Texas, enslaved people resisted in a variety of ways, the most common being running away. Most enslaved African Americans in Texas were forced into unskilled labor as field hands in the production of cotton, corn, and sugar, though some lived and worked on large plantations or in urban areas where they engaged in more skilled forms of labor as cooks, blacksmiths, and carpenters. A smaller number of enslaved people were brought via the international slave trade, though this had been illegal since 1806. Some enslaved people came through the domestic slave trade, which was centered in New Orleans. Most enslaved people in Texas were brought by white families from the southern United States. The number had increased to 182,566 by 1860. Texas's enslaved population grew rapidly: while there were 30,000 enslaved people in Texas in 1845, the census lists 58,161 enslaved African Americans in 1850. The Texas Legislature passed increasingly restrictive laws governing the lives of free blacks, including a law banishing all free black people from the Republic of Texas. The Texas Constitution of 1836 gave more protection to slaveholders while further controlling the lives of enslaved people through new slave codes. Free blacks struggled with new laws banning them from residence in the state, while the majority of black Texans remained enslaved. African American life after Texas Independence was shaped by new and existing legal constraints, enslavement, and violence.
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