Greater Nashua

NASHUA - Historical documentation chronicles an event that heralded for the nation the confirmed end of slavery, an accomplishment made on June 19, 1865, when Union soldiers arrived in the town of Galveston, Texas, an isolated region firmly under Confederate control, to announce to all the enslaved men, women and children there that they were … free! It was President Abraham Lincoln who declared on New Year's Day of 1863 that the Emancipation Proclamation was now the law of the land. Nevertheless, the decree took more than two years, after the end of the Civil War, for Union troops to reach the deepest parts of the Confederacy to enforce the law, so say documentarians. That history was shared with hundreds on June 19 during a festive Juneteenth commemoration at Nashua's Riverwalk Park, 23 Water St. It was an event sponsored by the Nashua Family Network (NFN), a local parent ...