The defeat of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House brought about the beginning of the end of the Civil War and the immediate realization of emancipation in Appomattox County. During the Appomattox Campaign, General Ulysses S. Grant’s armies, including over 5,000 United States Colored Troops, served as agents of emancipation. In effect, April 9 became Freedom Day in much of central and Southside Virginia that had never seen Federal soldiers during the war.
For 4,600 enslaved people in Appomattox County, this was the moment they had been awaiting for so long. Spencer Johnson later said, “I always was a Union man. I have been craving and wishing to be free all my life. I believed if the Yankees took the country we would be free and I was always wishing and praying for them to come.” Recalling the moment of her emancipation many years later, Fannie Berry stated, “Glory! Glory! Yes, child the Negroes are free, and when they knew that they were free they, Oh! Baby! Began to sing…’you are free, you are free’…such rejoicing and shouting, you never heard in your life.”
In the days and weeks after April 9, Federal troops slowly spread out across Virginia, enforcing the Emancipation Proclamation. On a tobacco farm in nearby Franklin County, Booker T. Washington (9 years old at the time) later remembered the moment in his memoirs: “We were told that we were free, and could go when and where we pleased. My mother leaned over and kissed her children, while tears of joy ran down her cheeks. She explained to us what it meant, that this was the day for which she had been so long praying, but fearing that she would never live to see.”
By early June the last remaining Confederate armies had surrendered. Throughout the South, the process of emancipation continued simultaneously. The celebration known as Juneteenth commemorates the realization of emancipation in Texas on June 19, 1865. That December, the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing the institution of chattel slavery throughout the United States, forever.
In the months and years to come, African Americans in Appomattox County, across Virginia, and throughout the South sought to exercise their civil rights, educate their children, establish churches, testify in court, vote, and become truly free. Despite the continued realities of racism, Jim Crow segregation, and the failures of Reconstruction, many throughout Virginia continued to commemorate April 9, 1865 as the day of their emancipation. At a Freedom Day celebration in Mecklenburg County, Virginia in 1866, the attendees proclaimed, “If Lee had never been beaten…the [Emancipation] proclamation would have been to no avail!”
