Galveston, Texas. June 19, 1865. General Gordon Granger lands with 2000 men and issues General Order Number 3, stating that, "in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free."
Celebrated to this day as Juneteenth.
Depends on your definition of "free," I guess.
From the Galveston Daily News, June 20, 1865, about the actions in Galveston of the Federal Provost Marshal-General for the state of Texas, Lt. Colonel R. G. Laughlin, 13th army corps:
He [Laughlin] requested the Mayor to say to the citizens that they should meet with the fullest protection in both person and property ... that negroes fleeing from the country to this city would not be allowed to live in idleness or become a burthen [their spelling] to the people, that they would be arrested as they arrived, and forced to work on fortifications or be put to other labor. ... The Mayor said that it had been his rule to send all such negroes home, but as the United States authorities were now here he would consult them ... The Provost Marshal General said, it might be very well to send them to their homes, but as he had work for them to do, he would send them, for the present, to the Quartermaster for employment. This was accordingly done, but the Quartermaster having no immediate work for them, sent them to jail for safe-keeping till he should want them. We mention this as an indication of the policy our Government is now pursuing in relation to runaway negroes.
That is consistent with General Orders, No. 3, the Juneteenth order. It said in part, "The Freedmen are advised to remain at their present homes, and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts; and they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."
If memory serves me correctly, later that summer the federal army encouraged/ordered former slaves to stay on their plantations. I think the army recognized that there would be a serious food problem in Texas if former slaves did not stay on their plantations and farms and produce food.
The argument that it was necessary to keep blacks on the plantations and farms to ensure food production was also a key argument used against enrolling slaves in the Confederate Army. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch of November 9, 1864 in part of their argument against enrolling slaves in the army:
Armies must be fed, and in order to feed them, crops must be made. The negroes are our agricultural laborers. Take them from farmwork, and you destroy the army more effectually than Grant can do it with a million of men to back he has in the field.
Then, of course, there was the Federal conscription of the former slaves during the war. See my old posts from the Official Records: Link 1 and Link 2.