Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

1865 amendment abolishing slavery

"Thirteenth Amendment" redirects here. For other uses, see Thirteenth Amendment (disambiguation).

The Thirteenth Amendment ( Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution made slavery and involuntary servitude illegal, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representatives on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865, and proclaimed on December 18, 1865. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective on January 1, 1863, declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas (and thus almost all slaves) were free. When they escaped to Union lines or federal forces (including now-former slaves) advanced south, emancipation occurred without any compensation to the former owners. Texas was the last Confederate slave state, where enforcement of the proclamation was declared on June 19, 1865. In the slave-owning areas controlled by Union forces on January 1, 1863, state action was used to abolish slavery. The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware, where chattel slavery and indentured servitude were finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

In contrast to the other Reconstruction Amendments, the Thirteenth Amendment has rarely been cited in case law, but it has been used to strike down peonage and some race-based discrimination as " badges and incidents of slavery". The Thirteenth Amendment has also been invoked to empower Congress to make laws against modern forms of slavery, such as sex trafficking. It was the first amendment to directly govern private individuals instead of just the government.[1]

From its inception in 1776, the United States was divided into states that allowed slavery and states that prohibited it. Slavery was implicitly recognized in the original Constitution in provisions such as the Three-fifths Compromise (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3), which provided that three-fifths of each state's enslaved population ("other persons") was to be added to its free population for the purposes of apportioning seats in the United States House of Representatives, its number of Electoral votes, and direct taxes among the states. The Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3) provided that slaves held under the laws of one state who escaped to another state did not become free, but remained slaves.

Though three million Confederate slaves were eventually freed as a result of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, their postwar status was uncertain. To ensure that abolition was beyond legal challenge, an amendment to the Constitution to that effect was drafted. On April 8, 1864, the Senate passed an amendment to abolish slavery. After one unsuccessful vote and extensive legislative maneuvering by the Lincoln administration, the House followed suit on January 31, 1865. The measure was swiftly ratified by nearly all Northern states, along with a sufficient number of border states up to the assassination of President Lincoln. However, the approval came via his successor, President Andrew Johnson, who encouraged the "reconstructed" Southern states of Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia to agree, which brought the count to 27 states, leading to its adoption before the end of 1865.

Though the Amendment abolished slavery throughout the United States, some black Americans, particularly in the South, were subjected to other forms of involuntary labor, such as under the Black Codes. They were also victims of white supremacist violence, selective enforcement of statutes, and other disabilities. Many such abuses were given cover by the Amendment's penal labor exception.

Ratification by the states

Ratified amendment, 1865

Ratified amendment post-enactment, 1865–1870

Ratified amendment after first rejecting amendment, 1866–1995

Territories of the United States in 1865, not yet states

On February 1, 1865, when the proposed amendment was submitted to the states for ratification, there were 36 states in the U.S., including those that had been in rebellion; at least 27 states had to ratify the amendment for it to come into force. By the end of February, 18 states had ratified the amendment, Illinois being the first. Among them were the states of Virginia and Louisiana, states with large territories then held separately by the Union and the Confederacy. In these cases, it was the Union recognized legislatures, operating out of Alexandria, Virginia and New Orleans respectively, that ratified the amendment. These, along with subsequent ratifications from Arkansas and Tennessee raised the issues of how many seceded states had legally valid legislatures; and if there were fewer legislatures than states, if Article V required ratification by three-fourths of the states or three-fourths of the legally valid state legislatures.[74] President Lincoln in his last speech, on April 11, 1865, called the question about whether the Southern states were in or out of the Union a "pernicious abstraction". He declared they were not "in their proper practical relation with the Union"; whence everyone's object should be to restore that relation.[75] Lincoln was assassinated three days later.

With Congress out of session, the new president, Andrew Johnson, began a period known as "Presidential Reconstruction", in which he personally oversaw the creation of new state governments throughout the South. He oversaw the convening of state political conventions populated by delegates whom he deemed to be loyal. Three leading issues came before the conventions: secession itself, the abolition of slavery, and the Confederate war debt. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina held conventions in 1865, while Texas' convention did not organize until March 1866.[76][77][78] Johnson hoped to prevent deliberation over whether to re-admit the Southern states by accomplishing full ratification before Congress reconvened in December. He believed he could silence those who wished to deny the Southern states their place in the Union by pointing to how essential their assent had been to the successful ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.[79]

Direct negotiations between state governments and the Johnson administration ensued. As the summer wore on, administration officials began giving assurances of the measure's limited scope with their demands for ratification. Johnson himself suggested dir