Freedom’s Continuous Journey
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” –Thomas Jefferson
On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger issued General Order No. 3 in Galveston, Texas. This momentous text was just over 100 words, but it changed the course of American history forever. As you know, General Order No. 3 emancipated the remaining enslaved people in Texas. It extended the reach of Thomas Jefferson’s lofty words and it finally stamped out the repugnant institution of chattel slavery in America.
Juneteenth was the culmination of almost a century of moral compromise and uncomfortable decision-making centered around the slavery question. On July 4, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved Jefferson’s statement that all men were created equal. Jefferson and his fellow Founding Fathers were flawed humans like the rest of us. As such, they struggled to live out even the ideals that they knew were so pure and good. July 4 began the journey to freedom, but the journey was not complete. Even after five more years of war with the British, America would struggle to fully implement Jefferson’s ideals. Several generations of leaders would kick the can down the road with stall tactics and indignities like the Missouri Compromise, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Chief Justice Roger Taney would then issue the ghastly, indefensible opinion in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the worst decision ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Finally, after 600,000 deaths and four years of bloody fighting, General Granger extended Jefferson’s ideal of freedom to the last of those who had not yet received it.
Yet, the journey of freedom still had its potholes after 1865. Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the violence of the Civil Rights movement still lay ahead. Even today, our nation is not perfect. It has never been perfect. It will never be perfect. To me, that is the whole essence of freedom’s journey.
Over the last several months, I’ve led our adult Sunday school class on a study of Ephesians. Unlike some of Paul’s other letters, Ephesians does not respond to a specific problem in the early Church. Instead, Paul sets forth a general guide towards greater communion with God and greater spiritual maturity. He outlines the shifts in behavior, thought, and relationships that come in that process. Paul never suggests that there is a “finish line” to this process. It is quite the opposite. Paul describes a lifelong journey of drawing closer to God. By doing so, we live out better lives and better relationships as a result. Perfection in this process is not possible. The goal is to grow better and better over time.
So it goes with America’s journey of freedom. Thomas Jefferson set forth ideals that were worth pursuing. He and many of his contemporaries failed to personally live up to those ideals, but that did not make the ideals any less valid or worth pursuing. Over the past 246 years, America has both struggled and taken great leaps forward in the journey to live out those ideals.
Today, on June 19, 2022, we celebrate Juneteenth as a national holiday for the first time. We do so in an America that is flawed (after all, it was built by and is led by flawed humans), but also an America that is orders of magnitude better than the world those enslaved persons in Texas knew on June 19, 1865.
Freedom, like communion with God, is a continuous journey. Let us not be troubled by the impossibility of perfection our personal life journey, in our relationships with others, and in our quest to build a better nation. Juneteenth was a monumental day. It was also a step along a continuous journey. Let us remember that lesson. Let us strive to be better both individually and together each day than we were the day before.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.