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13th Amendment to the Constitution
Slavery and 13th Amendment
13th Amendment
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize
or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including
that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." Text of the original 13th Amendment, also known as the Corwin Amendment, to the U.S.
Constitution as passed by the United States Congress on March 2, 1861, passed
by the U.S. Senate on March 3, 1861, and signed by President Buchanan on March 3, 1861. (The Three-Fifths Compromise, aka Three-fifths Clause.)
President James Buchanan publicly
endorsed and applauded the Corwin Amendment. President Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address, furthermore,
did not oppose the Corwin Amendment: "[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection
to its being made express and irrevocable." Just weeks prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, moreover, Lincoln penned a
letter to each governor asking for them to support the Corwin Amendment. (President
Abraham Lincoln and Southern Secession: Why did the South Secede and what Caused the Civil War?.)
| President Abraham Lincoln on Slavery |
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Abraham Lincoln, in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1861, specifically
referred to this amendment:
"I understand a proposed amendment [Corwin Amendment] to
the Constitution...has passed Congress [March 2, 1861], to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with
the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. I have no objection to its being made
express and irrevocable."
Lincoln, Slavery, and Civil War
The Emancipation Proclamation, which also
permitted and kept slavery intact in the border states, was a political decision to block the South from gaining recognition from England and France (The Trent Affair, Preventing Diplomatic Recognition of the Confederacy, and American Civil War and International Diplomacy). Whether slavery was intact or abolished, he stated that either was
completely acceptable in order to preserve the Union. (Civil War Causes: States Rights & Secession.)
Lincoln, who had previously obstructed the U.S. Supreme
Court from conducting a hearing or ruling on secession, merely invoked "freeing the slaves" as justification to
preserve the Union. As president, he was completely and unequivocally pro-Union. So, was the
war about freeing the slaves or denying Southern Secession? (Southern States Secede: Secession of the South History and Civil War Causes: States Rights & Secession.)
Almost thirty years before the Civil War, South Carolina threatened
to secede from the Union. Why? Because of High Tariffs and not because of slavery (Nullification Crisis). Later, when the South desired to secede, this was President Lincoln's response to secession, not slavery, in
his First Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861: "No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union." Lincoln
was adamantly concerned about secession and not about slavery.
13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States prohibits slavery:
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution
declared that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude...shall exist within the United States." Formally abolishing
slavery in the United States, the 13th Amendment was passed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the states
on December 6, 1865.
Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment
for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.
Proposal and Ratification
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed
to the legislatures of the several states by the Thirty-eighth United States Congress, on January 31, 1865. The amendment
was ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the thirty-six states on December 6, 1865. (It was ratified
by the necessary three-quarters of the states within one year of its proposal.) Mississippi, however, which was
the last of the thirty-six states in existence in 1865, ratified it in 1995. The dates of ratification were:
| # |
State
| Date
| |
| 1 |
Illinois
| Feb 1, 1865
| |
| 2 |
Rhode Island
| Feb 2, 1865
| |
| 3 |
Michigan
| Feb 3, 1865
| |
| 4 |
Maryland
| Feb 3, 1865
| |
| 5 |
New York
| Feb 3, 1865
| |
| 6 |
Pennsylvania
| Feb 3, 1865
| |
| 7 |
West Virginia
| Feb 3, 1865
| |
| 8 |
Missouri
| Feb 6, 1865
| |
| 9 |
Maine
| Feb 7, 1865
| |
| 10 |
Kansas
| Feb 7, 1865
| |
| 11 |
Massachusetts
| Feb 7, 1865
| |
| 12 |
Virginia
| Feb 9, 1865
| |
| 13 |
Ohio
| Feb 10, 1865
| |
| 14 |
Indiana
| Feb 13, 1865
| |
| 15 |
Nevada
| Feb 16, 1865
| |
| 16 |
Louisiana
| Feb 17, 1865
| |
| 17 |
Minnesota
| Feb 23, 1865
| |
| 18 |
Wisconsin
| Feb 24, 1865
| |
| 19 |
Vermont
| Mar 8, 1865
| |
| 20 |
Tennessee
| Apr 7, 1865
| |
| 21 |
Arkansas
| Apr 14, 1865
| |
| 22 |
Connecticut
| May 4, 1865
| |
| 23 |
New Hampshire
| Jul 1, 1865
| |
| 24 |
South Carolina
| Nov 13, 1865
| |
| 25 |
Alabama
| Dec 2, 1865
| |
| 26 |
North Carolina
| Dec 4, 1865
| |
| 27 |
Georgia
| Dec 6, 1865
| |
| 28 |
Oregon
| Dec 8, 1865
| |
| 29 |
California
| Dec 19, 1865
| |
| 30 |
Florida
| Dec 28, 1865
| |
| 31 |
Iowa
| Jan 15, 1866
| |
| 32 |
New Jersey
| Jan 23, 1866
| |
| 33 |
Texas
| Feb 18, 1870
| |
| 34 |
Delaware
| Feb 12, 1901
| |
| 35 |
Kentucky
| Mar 18, 1976
| |
| 36 |
Mississippi
| Mar 16, 1995 |
Analysis
Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865,
the 13th amendment abolished slavery in the United States.
The 13th amendment, which formally abolished slavery in the United States,
passed the Senate on April 8, 1864, and the House on January 31, 1865. On February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln approved
the Joint Resolution of Congress submitting the proposed amendment to the state legislatures. The necessary number of states
ratified it by December 6, 1865. The 13th amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
In 1863 President Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation declaring
“all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Nonetheless, the Emancipation Proclamation
did not end slavery in the nation. Lincoln recognized that the Emancipation Proclamation would have to be followed by a constitutional
amendment in order to guarantee the abolishment of slavery.
The 13th amendment was passed at the end of the Civil War before the
Southern states had been restored to the Union and should have easily passed the Congress. Although the Senate passed it in
April 1864, the House did not. At that point, Lincoln took an active role to ensure passage through congress. He insisted
that passage of the 13th amendment be added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His
efforts met with success when the House passed the bill in January 1865 with a vote of 119–56.
With the adoption of the 13th amendment, the United States found a final
constitutional solution to the issue of slavery. The 13th amendment, along with the 14th and 15th, is one of the trio of Civil
War amendments that greatly expanded the civil rights of Americans.
(Sources listed at bottom of page.)
Recommended Reading: Lincoln and Chief
Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President's War Powers, by James F. Simon
(Simon & Schuster) (Hardcover). Publishers Weekly:
This surprisingly taut and gripping book by NYU law professor Simon (What Kind of Nation) examines the limits of presidential
prerogative during the Civil War. Lincoln and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney saw eye to eye on certain matters; both,
for example, disliked slavery. But beginning in 1857, when Lincoln
criticized Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case, the pair began to spar. They diverged further once Lincoln
became president when Taney insisted that secession was constitutional and preferable to bloodshed, and blamed the Civil War
on Lincoln. Continued below...
In 1861, Taney argued that Lincoln's
suspension of habeas corpus was illegal. This holding was, Simon argues, "a clarion call for the president to respect the
civil liberties of American citizens." In an 1862 group
of cases, Taney joined a minority opinion that Lincoln lacked the authority to order the seizure
of Southern ships. Had Taney had the chance, suggests Simon, he would have declared the Emancipation Proclamation unconstitutional;
he and Lincoln agreed that the Constitution left slavery up to individual states, but Lincoln argued that the president's war powers
trumped states' rights. Simon's focus on Lincoln and Taney makes for a dramatic, charged narrative—and the focus on
presidential war powers makes this historical study extremely timely.
Related Reading:
Recommended Reading: The Real Lincoln: A New
Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Description: It hardly seems possible that there is more to say about someone who has been subjected
to such minute scrutiny in thousands of books and articles. Yet, Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln manages to raise fresh and morally probing questions, challenging the image of the martyred
16th president that has been fashioned carefully in marble and bronze, sentimentalism and myth. In doing so, DiLorenzo does
not follow the lead of M. E. Bradford or other Southern agrarians. He writes primarily not as a defender of the Old South
and its institutions, culture, and traditions, but as a libertarian enemy of the Leviathan state. Continued below...
DiLorenzo holds
Lincoln and
his war responsible for the triumph of "big government" and the birth of the ubiquitous, suffocating modern U.S. state. He seeks to replace the nation’s memory
of Lincoln as the “Great Emancipator” with the record of Lincoln as the “Great Centralizer.”
Lincoln Unmasked, a best-seller, reveals that ‘other
side’ – the inglorious character – of the nation’s greatest tyrant and totalitarian. A controversial
book that is hailed by many and harshly criticized by others, Lincoln Unmasked, nevertheless,
is a thought-provoking study and view of Lincoln that was not taught in our public school system. (Also
available in hardcover: Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest
Abe .)
Recommended Reading: Lincoln and Douglas:
The Debates that Defined America (Simon & Schuster) (2008) (Hardcover). Description: In 1858, Abraham
Lincoln was known as a successful Illinois lawyer who had achieved some prominence in state politics as a leader in the new
Republican Party. Two years later, he was elected president and was on his way to becoming the greatest chief executive in
American history. What carried this one-term congressman from obscurity to fame was the campaign he mounted for the United
States Senate against the country's most formidable politician, Stephen A. Douglas, in the summer and fall of 1858. Lincoln
challenged Douglas directly in one of his greatest speeches -- "A house divided against itself cannot stand" -- and confronted
Douglas on the questions of slavery and the inviolability of the Union in seven fierce debates. As this brilliant narrative
by the prize-winning Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo dramatizes, Lincoln would emerge a predominant national figure, the leader
of his party, the man who would bear the burden of the national confrontation. Continued below...
Of course, the great issue between Lincoln and Douglas was slavery. Douglas
was the champion of "popular sovereignty," of letting states and territories decide for themselves whether to legalize slavery.
Lincoln drew a moral line, arguing that slavery was a violation both of natural law and of the principles expressed in the
Declaration of Independence. No majority could ever make slavery right, he argued. Lincoln lost that Senate race to Douglas,
though he came close to toppling the "Little Giant," whom almost everyone thought was unbeatable. Guelzo's Lincoln and Douglas
brings alive their debates and this whole year of campaigns and underscores their centrality in the greatest conflict in American
history. The encounters between Lincoln and Douglas engage a key question in American political life: What is democracy's
purpose? Is it to satisfy the desires of the majority? Or is it to achieve a just and moral public order? These were the real
questions in 1858 that led to the Civil War. They remain questions for Americans today.
Recommended Reading: Team of Rivals: The
Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (944 pages) (Simon & Schuster). Description: The life and times
of Abraham Lincoln have been analyzed and dissected in countless books. Do we need another Lincoln biography? In Team of Rivals,
esteemed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin proves that we do. Though she can't help but cover some familiar territory, her perspective
is focused enough to offer fresh insights into Lincoln's leadership style and his deep understanding of human behavior and
motivation. Goodwin makes the case for Lincoln's political genius by examining his relationships with three men he selected
for his cabinet, all of whom were opponents for the Republican nomination in 1860: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, and
Edward Bates. Continued below...
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation dispels the myths and mistakes surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation
and skillfully reconstructs how America's greatest president wrote the greatest American proclamation
of freedom. About the Author: Allen C. Guelzo is the Grace Ferguson Kea Professor of American History at Eastern
University (St. David's, Pennsylvania),
where he also directs the Templeton Honors
College. He is the author of five books, most recently the highly acclaimed
Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, which won the Lincoln Prize for 2000.
Recommended Reading: The Radical and the
Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. Review From
Publishers Weekly: The perennial tension between principle and pragmatism in politics frames this engaging account of two
Civil War Era icons. Historian Oakes (Slavery and Freedom) charts the course by which Douglass and Lincoln, initially far
apart on the antislavery spectrum, gravitated toward each other. Lincoln began as a moderate who advocated banning slavery
in the territories while tolerating it in the South, rejected social equality for blacks and wanted to send freedmen overseas—and
wound up abolishing slavery outright and increasingly supporting black voting rights. Conversely, the abolitionist firebrand
Douglass moved from an impatient, self-marginalizing moral rectitude to a recognition of compromise, coalition building and
incremental goals as necessary steps forward in a democracy. Continued below...
Douglass's views on race were essentially modern; the book is really a study
through his eyes of the more complex figure of Lincoln. Oakes lucidly explores how political realities and military necessity
influenced Lincoln's tortuous path to emancipation, and asks whether his often bigoted pronouncements represented real conviction
or strategic concessions to white racism. As Douglass shifts from denouncing Lincoln's foot-dragging to revering his achievements,
Oakes vividly conveys both the immense distance America traveled to arrive at a more enlightened place and the fraught politics
that brought it there. AWARDED FIVE STARS by americancivilwarhistory.org
Recommended Reading: Lincoln and Freedom:
Slavery, Emancipation, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Hardcover). Description: Lincoln’s reelection
in 1864 was a pivotal moment in the history of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation had officially gone into effect
on January 1, 1863, and the proposed Thirteenth Amendment had become a campaign issue. Lincoln and Freedom: Slavery, Emancipation,
and the Thirteenth Amendment captures these historic times, profiling the individuals, events, and enactments that led to
slavery’s abolition. Fifteen leading Lincoln scholars contribute to this collection, covering slavery from its roots
in 1619 Jamestown, through the adoption of the Constitution, to Abraham Lincoln’s presidency. Continued below…
This comprehensive volume, edited by Harold Holzer and Sara Vaughn Gabbard,
presents Abraham Lincoln’s response to the issue of slavery as politician, president, writer, orator, and commander-in-chief.
Topics include the history of slavery in North America, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, the evolution of Lincoln’s
view of presidential powers, the influence of religion on Lincoln, and the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation. This
collection effectively explores slavery as a Constitutional issue, both from the viewpoint of the original intent of the nation’s
founders as they failed to deal with slavery, and as a study of the Constitutional authority of the commander-in-chief as
Lincoln interpreted it. Addressed are the timing of Lincoln’s decision for emancipation and its effect on the public,
the military, and the slaves themselves. Other topics covered include the role of the U.S. Colored Troops, the election campaign
of 1864, and the legislative debate over the Thirteenth Amendment. The volume concludes with a heavily illustrated essay on
the role that iconography played in forming and informing public opinion about emancipation and the amendments that officially
granted freedom and civil rights to African Americans. Lincoln and Freedom provides a comprehensive political history of slavery
in America and offers a rare look at how Lincoln’s views, statements, and actions played a vital role in the story of
emancipation.
Sources: Alexander Tsesis, The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom:
A Legal History (2004); Christopher A. Bryant (2003). "Stopping Time: The Pro-Slavery and ‘Irrevocable’ Thirteenth
Amendment". Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 26: 501. ISSN 01934872; Alton R. Lee (1961). "The Corwin Amendment
in the Secession Crisis". Ohio Historical Quarterly 70 (1): 1–26; Michael Vorenberg, Final Freedom: The Civil War,
the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (2001); Herman Belz, Emancipation and Equal Rights: Politics and Constitutionalism
in the Civil War Era (1978); Mitch Kachun, Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations,
1808-1915 (2003); C. Peter Ripley, Roy E. Finkenbine, Michael F. Hembree, Donald Yacovone, Witness for Freedom: African American
Voices on Race, Slavery, and Emancipation (1993); Library of Congress; National Park Service; National Archives; Canfield,
Leon H. & Wilder, Howard B. The Making of modern America, 1956; Adams, Charles. When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing
the Case for Southern Secession. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005; Hawes, Robert, One Nation, Indivisible? A
Study of Secession and the Constitution, 2006; Nichols, Roy F. "United States vs. Jefferson Davis, 1865–1869."
American Historical Review 31 (1926): 266–284; Watson, David K. "The Trial of Jefferson Davis: An Interesting Constitutional
Question." Yale Law Journal 24 (1915): 669–676; Blackford, Charles M. "The Trials and Trial of Jefferson Davis." Southern
Historical Society Papers 29 (1901): 45–81; Bradley, Chester. "Was Jefferson Davis Disguised As a Woman When Captured?"
Journal of Mississippi History vol. 36 (Aug. 1974): 243–268; Fairman, Charles. Reconstruction and Reunion 1864–88.
Part I. New York: Macmillan, 1971; Hagan, Horace Henry. "United States vs. Jefferson Davis." Sewanee Review 25 (1917): 220–225;
William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Man and His Hour, 1991; The Papers of Jefferson Davis at Rice University; Cooper, William
J. Jefferson Davis, Jefferson Davis: The Essential Writings ed. by William J. Cooper, 2003; Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson
Davis: Constitutionalist; His Letters, Papers, and Speeches (10 vols., 1923); Jefferson Davis. The Rise and Fall of the Confederate
Government (1881; numerous reprints).
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