Here’s wishing you and your family the best the nation has to offer as we celebrate our country’s independence!  Enjoy your day!  We'll be back in the office tomorrow.

On June 19, 1865, about two months after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Va., Gordon Granger, a Union general, arrived in Galveston, Texas, to inform enslaved African Americans of their freedom and that the Civil War...