{"id":2616009,"date":"2026-06-19T07:43:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-juneteenth-proves-the-1619-project-crowd-wrong\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T07:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:46:08","slug":"why-juneteenth-proves-the-1619-project-crowd-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-juneteenth-proves-the-1619-project-crowd-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Juneteenth Proves The &#8216;1619 Project&#8217; Crowd Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhy-juneteenth-proves-the-1619-project-crowd-wrong%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2616009&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Juneteenth commemorates the day on June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger announced in Galveston, Texas, that all slaves were free, marking the practical end of slavery in the United states. This event occurred two months after lee\u2019s surrender at Appomattox and prior to the ratification of the 13th Amendment,which formally abolished slavery nationwide. Juneteenth has as been celebrated by many Black Americans as Emancipation Day or Jubilee, and in 2021, it became a federal holiday signed into law by President Biden. <\/p>\n<p>the holiday symbolizes the triumph of liberty over arbitrary rule and underscores the Union\u2019s victory in holding the nation together and ending slavery during the Civil War. It challenges narratives like the 1619 Project, which falsely claims that protecting slavery motivated the American Revolution and the founding of the nation, and emphasizes that the Founders\u2019 principles-particularly equality-were fundamentally opposed to slavery. Prominent Confederate figures such as Calhoun and Stephens misunderstood or deliberately distorted the founding motives, asserting that the U.S. was founded on racial hierarchies, but history shows that the principles of equality ultimately triumphed. <\/p>\n<p>The Civil War, the deadliest conflict in U.S. history, involved many who fought to end slavery, including Black troops who laid down their lives for freedom and the Union cause. Celebrating Juneteenth aligns with honoring America\u2019s true founding ideals, celebrating the ongoing struggle for liberty, and recognizing the notable sacrifices made to secure freedom for all.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>On June 19, 1865, Union General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, two months after Lee\u2019s surrender at Appomattox. He announced to the city\u2019s residents that all slaves in Texas were free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Some slaves remained enchained in the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri until the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.archives.gov\/milestone-documents\/13th-amendment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">13th Amendment\u2019s<\/a> ratification on Dec. 6 of that year, but ratification was a forgone conclusion. The amendment had already passed both houses of Congress, and mourning over Lincoln\u2019s assassination assured assent in three-fourths of loyal state legislatures.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, the Union\u2019s recapture of Texas marked slavery\u2019s practical extinction in America. The anniversary has long been celebrated by some black Americans as \u201cEmancipation Day,\u201d \u201cJubilee,\u201d or \u201cJuneteenth.\u201d In 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/world\/juneteenth-holiday-biden-1.6070354\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Joe Biden signed<\/a> bipartisan legislation making Juneteenth a federal holiday after unanimous Senate approval. <\/p>\n<p>Conservatives have had <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=VK6TkEpzGTc\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">a lukewarm relationship<\/a> with Juneteenth so far, in no small part because Biden codified it in an effort to pander to the Black Lives Matter-led leftist rage mob in the wake of George Floyd\u2019s death. The right has generally viewed Juneteenth as a leftist attempt to subvert Independence Day and divide Americans along racial lines. To the extent that we conservatives let <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/making-socialism-sexy-again-new-york-magazine-honors-our-first-female-wunderkind\/\" title=\"Making Socialism Sexy Again: New York Magazine Honors \u2018Our First Female Wunderkind\u2019\">left-wing institutions<\/a> and media portray the holiday as only a sectarian one, the criticism is justified. But it needn\u2019t be that way.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives should embrace this holiday as complementary to Independence Day, not in competition with it. Juneteenth symbolizes the triumph of liberty over arbitrary rule, the American Revolution\u2019s culmination. Commemorating Juneteenth repudiates the 1619 Project\u2019s make-believe version of the American founding and embraces our foundational creed as revivified by Lincoln and the Union\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n<p>The 1619 Project, a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/marybethgasman\/2021\/06\/03\/what-history-professors-really-think-about-the-1619-project\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">widely debunked<\/a> New York Times\u00a0series, claims that protecting slavery motivated the American Revolution, founding, and, ridiculously, the very Constitution that Frederick Douglass called a <a href=\"https:\/\/constitutioncenter.org\/the-constitution\/historic-document-library\/detail\/frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-1852\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cglorious liberty document.\u201d<\/a> Parents of all races and creeds rebelled as these ideas, meant to undermine our basic freedoms by association with slavery, were introduced into classrooms. But Juneteenth, properly understood, is completely incompatible with the 1619 Project worldview.<\/p>\n<p>This new holiday commemorates the successful effort to hold the Union together and, for the last two years of the Civil War, end slavery. Abraham Lincoln <a href=\"https:\/\/www.owleyes.org\/text\/gettysburg-address\/read\/text-of-lincolns-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">framed his opposition to slavery in terms of the founding<\/a>, and this <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >formulation found wide electoral support<\/a> in both 1860 and 1864. Even more tellingly, pro-slavery radicals and Confederate leaders did not embrace our supposedly racist founding. Instead, they openly disdained the Founding Fathers.<\/p>\n<p>John Calhoun, the South Carolina statesman who nearly started the Civil War 30 years early, said that the Declaration of Independence\u2019s claim that \u201call men are created equal\u201d was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.uvu.edu\/ccs\/docs\/calhoun_error_of_all_men_created_equal.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">an \u201cerror.\u201d<\/a> Calhoun further pilloried Thomas Jefferson for being too idealistic and abstract in crafting the Declaration. <\/p>\n<p>Calhoun said Jefferson\u2019s belief in universal freedom caused him \u201cto take an utterly false view of the subordinate relation of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the former, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the latter; and that to deprive them of it was unjust and immoral.\u201d According to John Calhoun, the American founding was not about protecting slavery. It was not even compatible with slavery. Its underlying principles were antagonistic to slavery and would eventually threaten the institution. He was right about that.<\/p>\n<p>Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said in his infamous <a href=\"https:\/\/www.battlefields.org\/learn\/primary-sources\/cornerstone-speech\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">\u201cCornerstone Speech\u201d<\/a> that the founders \u201crested upon the assumption of the equality of races,\u201d an idea that he called \u201cfundamentally wrong,\u201d before asserting that the Confederacy \u201cis founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man.\u201d Paraphrased, the Confederate VP said, \u201cThe United States <em>was not founded on institutional racism, and that is why we seceded.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Stephens\u2019 \u201cgreat truth\u201d lost. The founders\u2019 greater truth that \u201call men are created equal \u2026 endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights\u201d won. That victory was a nationwide effort that involved ancestors from Americans of all races.<\/p>\n<p>The Civil War <a href=\"https:\/\/www.battlefields.org\/learn\/articles\/civil-war-casualties\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">claimed more lives<\/a> than any other American conflict, both in absolute and population-proportional terms. Many casualties were black troops who volunteered to fight under the same flag that the 1619 Project today instructs us to revile as racist and offensive. They <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=sQ2vYUc8iGg&#038;list=RDsQ2vYUc8iGg&#038;start_radio=1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">understood themselves<\/a> as defending their own rights and the law itself. <\/p>\n<p>But the majority of Union casualties were white Northerners (and Southerners, especially from states like <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalcommons.providence.edu\/history_papers_proj\/5\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tennessee<\/a> and Kentucky!) who left farms, ranches, and cities to both preserve the Union and destroy the proximate cause of its separation, slavery. (For those incredulous that destroying slavery was a major motivator for Union soldiers by 1864, read James McPherson\u2019s masterly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Cause-Comrades-Why-Fought-Civil\/dp\/0195124995\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2RON022NYSXN1&#038;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.759TC0H3ipbmrgkXy497Zen8_q2QS1u9EtnJT-DMCnxQ72jUx-WnjEOYVE3Lxyy_filXNHNbGHjy7YxgTVMBwlUJuBb6hBSnUNj5jFAyI3c.A3F3fWgfiNrffijYdlfVtlLaLHK_WmTZezA4Piu80fQ&#038;dib_tag=se&#038;keywords=james+mcpherson+for+cause+and+comrades&#038;qid=1781749886&#038;sprefix=james+mcpherson+for+cause+and+comrad,aps,215&#038;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>For Cause and Comrades<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>That ending slavery in the United States took so much blood and treasure is a tragedy. That it did end is a miracle. America\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/osage-nations-victorious-war-cry-after-judge-rules-wind-farm-on-tribal-land-must-be-dismantled-this-is-our-homeland\/\" title=\"Osage Nation celebrates as judge orders dismantling of wind farm on tribal land: &#039;This is our home!\">hard-fought triumph<\/a> over the forces of disunion and degradation, the revival of America\u2019s founding promise, is a victory to which we are all heirs. Let\u2019s double our celebration of American freedom this summer for our 250th. Celebrate Juneteenth.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Nathan Richendollar is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/missouris-abortion-proposal-is-way-more-radical-than-it-sounds\/\" title=\"Missouri&#039;s Abortion Proposal Is Way More Radical Than It Sounds\">2019 summa cum laude graduate<\/a> of Economics and Politics from Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. His work has also appeared in the Daily Caller, Foundation for Economic Education, Live Action, and the American Spectator. He lives in Southwest Missouri and works in the financial sector.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Juneteenth marks Texas slaves&#8217; freedom after Civil War end<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3469,"featured_media":2616010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-06-18T123952.135.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,33651],"tags":[56784,33729,28972],"class_list":["post-2616009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","category-the-western-journal","tag-1619-project","tag-american-history","tag-juneteenth"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Copy-of-Untitled-2026-06-18T123952.135.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2616009"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2616013,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616009\/revisions\/2616013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2616010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2616009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2616009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2616009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}