Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware, and to a limited extent New Jersey, where chattel slavery and indentured servitude were finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.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.[6] Proposals to eliminate slavery by constitutional amendment were introduced by Representative Arthur Livermore in 1818 and by John Quincy Adams in 1839, but failed to gain significant traction.[9] Despite the compromise, tensions between North and South continued to rise over the subsequent decade, inflamed by, among other things, the publication of the 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin; fighting between pro-slavery and abolitionist forces in Kansas, beginning in 1854; the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which struck down provisions of the Compromise of 1850; abolitionist John Brown's 1859 attempt to start a slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, and the 1860 election of slavery critic Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.[10] Acting under presidential war powers, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with effect on January 1, 1863, which proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion.[13] By December 1863, Lincoln again used his war powers and issued a "Proclamation for Amnesty and Reconstruction", which offered Southern states a chance to peacefully rejoin the Union if they immediately abolished slavery and collected loyalty oaths from 10% of their voting population.[22][23] The committee's version used text from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which stipulates, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.[28] In the 1864 presidential race, former Free Soil Party candidate John C. Frémont threatened a third-party run opposing Lincoln, this time on a platform endorsing an anti-slavery amendment.[53] Representative Thaddeus Stevens later commented that "the greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption aided and abetted by the purest man in America"; however, Lincoln's precise role in making deals for votes remains unknown.With a total of 183 House members (one seat was vacant after Reuben Fenton was elected governor), 122 would have to vote "aye" to secure passage of the resolution; however, eight Democrats abstained, reducing the number to 117.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] When South Carolina ratified the Amendment in November 1865, it issued its own interpretive declaration that "any attempt by Congress toward legislating upon the political status of former slaves, or their civil relations, would be contrary to the Constitution of the United States.[110][111] Proponents of the Act, including Trumbull and Wilson, argued that Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment authorized the federal government to legislate civil rights for the States.[115] However, the effect of these laws waned as political will diminished and the federal government lost authority in the South, particularly after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction in exchange for a Republican presidency.[116] Southern business owners sought to reproduce the profitable arrangement of slavery with a system called peonage, in which disproportionately black workers were entrapped by loans and compelled to work indefinitely due to the resulting debt.[119] These workers remained destitute and persecuted, forced to work dangerous jobs and further confined legally by the racist Jim Crow laws that governed the South.[125] Under the leadership of Attorney General Francis Biddle, the Civil Rights Section invoked the constitutional amendments and legislation of the Reconstruction Era as the basis for its actions.[129] Thomas Jefferson authored an early version of that ordinance's anti-slavery clause, including the exception of punishment for a crime, and also sought to prohibit slavery in general after 1800.[137] In late 2020, Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Representative William Lacy Clay (D-MO) introduced a resolution to create a new amendment to close this loophole.As historian Amy Dru Stanley summarizes, "beyond a handful of landmark rulings striking down debt peonage, flagrant involuntary servitude, and some instances of race-based violence and discrimination, the Thirteenth Amendment has never been a potent source of rights claims."[140][141] United States v. Rhodes (1866),[142] one of the first Thirteenth Amendment cases, tested the constitutionality of provisions in the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that granted blacks redress in the federal courts.Kentucky law prohibited blacks from testifying against whites—an arrangement which compromised the ability of Nancy Talbot ("a citizen of the United States of the African race") to reach justice against a white person accused of robbing her."[155] In his solitary dissent, John Marshall Harlan (a Kentucky lawyer who changed his mind about civil rights law after witnessing organized racist violence) argued that "such discrimination practiced by corporations and individuals in the exercise of their public or quasi-public functions is a badge of servitude, the imposition of which congress may prevent under its power.[152]Attorneys in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)[157] argued that racial segregation involved "observances of a servile character coincident with the incidents of slavery", in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.36, to have been intended to cover the system of Mexican peonage and the Chinese coolie trade, the practical operation of which might have been a revival of the institution of slavery under a different and less offensive name.It is clear, however, that the amendment was not intended to introduce any novel doctrine with respect to certain descriptions of service which have always been treated as exceptional, such as military and naval enlistments, or to disturb the right of parents and guardians to the custody of their minor children or wards.[164] In Bailey v. Alabama the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed its holding that the Thirteenth Amendment is not solely a ban on chattel slavery, it also covers a much broader array of labor arrangements and social deprivations.The Court said: The plain intention [of the amendment] was to abolish slavery of whatever name and form and all its badges and incidents; to render impossible any state of bondage; to make labor free, by prohibiting that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another's benefit, which is the essence of involuntary servitude.And when racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery.Negro citizens, North and South, who saw in the Thirteenth Amendment a promise of freedom—freedom to "go and come at pleasure" and to "buy and sell when they please"—would be left with "a mere paper guarantee" if Congress were powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white man.The Court ruled that seamen's contracts had been considered unique from time immemorial, and that "the amendment was not intended to introduce any novel doctrine with respect to certain descriptions of service which have always been treated as exceptional."
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
permitted
forbidden
no mention in constitution
Constitutionof the United StatesPreambleCongressional ApportionmentTitles of NobilityCorwinChild LaborEqual RightsD.C. Voting RightsHistoryDrafting and ratification timelineConventionSigningFederalismRepublicanismBill of RightsReconstruction AmendmentsConstitutional lawof the United StatesArticlesAmendmentsJudicial reviewSeparation of powersEqual footingTiers of scrutinyLegislative branchExecutive branchJudicial branchState governmentLocal governmentFreedom of religionFreedom of speechFreedom of the pressFreedom of assemblyRight to petitionRight to keep and bear armsRight to trial by juryCriminal procedural rightsRight to privacyDue processEqual protectionCitizenshipVoting rightsRight to candidacyComprehensible rulesLiving ConstitutionOriginalismSubstantive due processPolitical process theoryJudicial restraintPurposivismTextualismStrict constructionismCommon good constitutionalismUnited States Constitutionslaveryinvoluntary servitudeas punishment for a crimestatesAmerican Civil WarAbraham LincolnEmancipation Proclamationdeclared on June 19, 1865KentuckyDelawareNew Jerseychattel slaveryindentured servitudepeonagesex traffickingstates that allowed slavery and states that prohibited itThree-fifths CompromiseapportioningUnited States House of RepresentativesElectoralFugitive Slave ClauseNorthern statesborder statesassassination of President LincolnAndrew JohnsonBlack CodesSlavery in the United StatesHistory of the United StatesHistory of the United States (1849–1865)Outline of United States historyEuropean colonizationthirteen American coloniesBritish Americaunfree personsContinental CongressImportation of PersonsFifth AmendmentDred Scott v. Sandfordabolitionist movementWilliam Lloyd GarrisonTheodore Dwight WeldAngelina GrimkéAmerican Colonization Societyindependent coloniesHenry ClayArthur LivermoreJohn Quincy AdamsMissouri Compromiseequality between the regionsWilmot ProvisoMexican–American WarCompromise of 1850Fugitive Slave ActUncle Tom's Cabinfighting between pro-slavery and abolitionist forcesDred ScottJohn Brown'sHarpers Ferryslavery critic Abraham LincolnConfederate States of AmericaPresidency of Abraham LincolnState of the UnionProclamation for Amnesty and ReconstructionJames Mitchell AshleyJames F. WilsonJohn B. Hendersonjoint resolutionSenate Judiciary CommitteeLyman TrumbullRadical RepublicansCharles SumnerThaddeus StevensNorthwest Ordinance