Thirteenth Amendment

Slavery in the United States Before the Civil War

Slavery had been a difficult issue for the United States from the beginning. Some of the Founding Fathers owned enslaved people, while others opposed the practice. As the United States progressed, the issue finally came to a head with the Civil War. Still, there were some important stops along the way.

Thirteenth Amendment: United States Constitution and Slavery

When Thomas Jefferson submitted his original draft of the United States constitution, it strongly condemned human enslavement. To preserve the Union, the Constitutional Convention cut the statements from the document because the Southern states were heavily invested in human enslavement. Two major compromises on slavery were made during the Constitutional Convention. One was that an enslaved person would count as three-fifths of a person when counting the population to determine representation and another that the slave trade would continue for at least another twenty years. As President, Jefferson would sign a law banning the importation of new slaves from Africa in 1807.

State Level Banning of Slavery

In the 1780s, Northern states had already begun to abolish slavery. By 1804, all Northern states had ended the practice. As more states joined the Union, the pressure became fierce on whether the state would allow human enslavement.

Fig.2 - Emancipation Proclamation Political Cartoon

Thirteenth Amendment: The Emancipation Proclamation

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, there were four million people enslaved across fifteen states. Eleven of those states aligned as the Confederate States of America. By 1862, Lincoln had come to believe that freeing the enslaved people within the Confederacy would help the Union win the Civil War. On January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued an executive order that came to be known as the Emancipation Proclamation. The order liberated all enslaved persons within the Confederate states.

Thirteenth Amendment Importance: Slavery in the Union

Ironically, slavery was not illegal in the Union until well after the Emancipation Proclamation freed people enslaved in the Confederacy. Despite slavery being a major factor in the Civil War, several slave states remained loyal to the Union. The military positions of the Union and some political factors kept these states from joining the Confederacy in whole or in part. Some of these states like Missouri were divided with rival governments claiming control of the state and were home to units that fought on both sides of the war, while others like Delaware remained strongly committed to the Union despite differences on human enslavement.

Slave States Loyal to the Union

• Delaware
• Kentucky
• Maryland
• Missouri

Fig.3 - House of Representatives Passes the Thirteenth Amendment

Thirteenth Amendment Significance

The path of the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress was not guaranteed. Although conflicts over human enslavement had played a large part in the Civil War, and the Northern states had banned it individually, passing a constitutional amendment was not easy. Passage of the amendment to the constitution would require Lincoln's direct involvement. Prior to this, he had not been as directly involved with the legislative work of Congress.

Thirteenth Amendment in the Senate

Senator John Henderson introduced the resolution creating the amendment in January 1864. There was strong support for quick passage in the Senate. In April 1864, the bill passed the Senate with the two-thirds majority needed for a constitutional amendment. The vote was 38 to 6.

Thirteenth Amendment in the House

Democrats in the Senate were initially very hesitant to support the bill and it didn't pass its first vote in June 1864. It was an election year and the Democratic party tended to be pro-slavery, later supporting White supremacy in the South. The Republican Party put its passage as their highest priority when Congress reconvened after the 1864 election. President Lincoln hosted Representatives at the White House to convince or pressure them for support. Eventually, the House passed the bill on January 31, 1865, with the required two-thirds majority, 116 to 56.

Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The day after the House passed the Thirteenth Amendment, President Lincoln signed the joint resolution and sent the amendment to the states for ratification on February 1, 1865. On December 6, 1865, the required three-fourths of the Union states ratified the amendment. Union slave states Delaware and Kentucky refused to ratify the amendment but where overruled by the three-fourths majority. The constitution was now changed, and slavery was not legal anywhere in the United States.

Effect of the Thirteenth Amendment

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, the Southern states which made up the Confederacy began to rejoin the Union. They returned to a constitution amended without them that outlawed the human enslavement their economy and society had been built upon. The Thirteenth Amendment was an important step, but the South would challenge its spirit with things like the Black Codes and Ku Klux Klan. Further amendments such as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments would be required to continue the struggle for liberty and equality that the Thirteenth Amendment began.