Thread by @WPaulReeve

#utahjuneteenth a 🧵
What does Juneteenth have to do with Utah history? Utah remained loyal to the Union during the Civil War so we might think that Juneteenth does not involve Utah but we'd be wrong. 1/16

In Galveston, Texas news of freedom did not arrive until June 19, 1865, two months after the end of the Civil War. But when did Utah's enslaved people learn that they were free? 2/16

On June 13, 1862, John M. Bernhisel, Utah Territory’s delegate to Congress wrote to Brigham Young to fill him in on legislative happenings in Washington D.C. Bernhisel informed Young of his ongoing efforts to win statehood for Utah. 3/16

Bernhisel mentioned other political matters then playing out in D.C., including the fact that “Congress has passed a bill abolishing slavery in all the Territories of the United Sates, and only requires the sanction of the Executive to become a law.” 4/16

Bernhisel let Young know that “The polygamy bill has passed both Houses” of Congress. Young thus learned that within weeks of each other, Republicans had made good on their 1856 pledge to “prohibit in the territories, those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.” 5/16

On June 20, 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed into law “An Act to secure freedom to all persons within the Territories of the United States,” and in doing so he freed Utah’s roughly 35 enslaved people. June 20 is thus the anniversary of Utah's legal Juneteenth. 6/16

To be clear, the law that Lincoln signed was not the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment. This was a law that freed slaves in all U.S. Territories, including Utah. It passed in 1862, making Utah's Juneteenth three years ahead of that of the nation. 7/16

But when did Utah's enslaved learn of their freedom? That is a question more difficult to answer: On July 2, 1862, the Deseret News, a newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reported passage of the new law. 8/16

There was no banner headline or extensive story about what the law’s passage meant to Utah’s enslavers or to those who they enslaved. There was no sense of relief or feelings of joy expressed over the legal end of slavery in the territory. 9/16

In fact, the announcement in the Deseret News would have been easy to miss altogether. It was printed on page four, tucked into the middle of a column titled “From Washington,” with no fanfare or commentary whatsoever. 10/16

The paper simply informed its readers that the “President approved the bill prohibiting slavery in the Territories.” That was it. 11/16

There is no surviving evidence to indicate how or when news of the law’s passage might have made it into the hands of the territory’s enslavers, let alone into the hands of those whom they enslaved. 12/16

In 1899, Julius Taylor, the editor of the Broad Ax, a Black owned newspaper in Utah, interviewed two formerly enslaved people, Marinda Redd and her husband Alex Bankhead. 13/16

Alex remembered the “joyful expressions which were upon the faces of all the slaves when they ascertained that they had acquired their freedom through the fortunes of war.” 14/16

Bankhead’s remembrance however fails to indicate when he learned of the news or how he found out that he was free. Lincoln thus freed Utah's enslaved on June 20, 1862, but how and when news of freedom reached Utah's enslaved people remains obscure. 15/16

Christopher Rich, LaJean Carruth, and I tell the story of African American and Native American enslavement in Utah Territory in our forthcoming book from @OUPHistory, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah. 16/16