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On this anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, it’s important to remember how much of slavery’s regime still remained intact at that moment. By some estimates, as many as 3 million enslaved people had not yet been liberated.
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Many of them were in Texas, where 1000s of Confederate planters had forcibly marched black men, women and children to prevent their emancipation by US forces. Estimates vary, but as many as 150,000 enslaved people may have been “refugeed” to TX. wcm1.web.rice.edu/how-many-refugeed-slaves-in-texas.html
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One of them was Henrietta Wood, the subject of my forthcoming book. In July 1863, while US won victories at Vicksburg & Gettysburg, she and approx. 300 enslaved people were force-marched from Mississippi to Texas, where she remained captive until 1866.
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Another of them was Henry, who was taken from Louisiana to Texas and then back to Louisiana. On that return trip he was flogged in the summer of 1865, despite the nearby USCT troops who tried to intervene. wcm1.web.rice.edu/refugeed-slaves-oah.html
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These stories and others from along the war’s ragged edge serve as reminders that wars do not always stop at surrenders. And also that, as @odonovanse1 has written, “the end of the Civil War must not be confused with the end of slavery.”