slavery had technically been abolished two years earlier by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which covered the Confederate states. As Union troops retook territory, they emancipated enslaved people living there. And the orders issued on Juneteenth applied only to Texas. Slavery didn’t end in states like Kentucky and Delaware, which hadn’t seceded and therefore weren’t covered by Lincoln’s proclamation, until Dec. 18, 1865, when the 13th Amendment was adopted.
