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. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Congress submitted the Thirteenth Amendment to the states for their consideration only a few months before the end of the Civil War.1 On April 14, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln, one of the Amendment’s foremost proponents, was assassinated.2 Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency and successfully pressured several southern states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment as a condition of rejoining the Union.3 Secretary of State William Seward proclaimed the states’ ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 18, 1865.4
Although the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, state governments and private individuals continued to discriminate against African Americans and deny them equal rights under the law.5 Concerns that the Thirteenth Amendment did not sufficiently protect African Americans from various forms of discrimination led the Reconstruction-era Congress to enact civil rights legislation and propose the language that became the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution.6
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Footnotes
- 1
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A Resolution Submitting to the Legislatures of the Several States a Proposition to Amend the Constitution of the United States, https://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage? collId=llsl&fileName=013/llsl013.db&recNum=596.
- 2
- Rebecca E. Zietlow, James Ashley, the Great Strategist of the Thirteenth Amendment, 15 Geo. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 265, 301 (2017).
- 3
- Bruce Ackerman, Constitutional Politics/Constitutional Law, 99 Yale L.J. 453, 503–04 (1989).
- 4
- Proclamation No. 52, 13 Stat. 774, 775 (1865) (proclamation by Secretary of State William H. Seward of December 18, 1865). The Amendment attained the threshold for ratification and entry into force on December 6, 1865. Although slavery had already been abolished in most U.S. jurisdictions by the time of ratification, the Thirteenth Amendment freed some slaves in Delaware and Kentucky. Eric Foner, Abraham Lincoln, the Thirteenth Amendment, and the Problem of Freedom, 15 Geo. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 59, 62 (2017).
- 5
- See Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co., 392 U.S. 409, 426–37 (1968); Bell v. Maryland, 378 U.S. 226, 288, 303 (1964) (Goldberg, J., concurring); The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 8–10, 23 (1883); Peonage Cases, 123 F. 671, 673–74 (M.D. Ala. 1903).
- 6
- See, e.g., Act of April 9, 1866, ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27. The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted, in part, because of concerns about the civil rights of African Americans after the Civil War. See Bell, 378 U.S. at 293 (Goldberg, J., concurring) ( “A review of the relevant congressional debates reveals that the concept of civil rights which lay at the heart both of the contemporary legislative proposals and of the Fourteenth Amendment encompassed the right to equal treatment in public places—a right explicitly recognized to be a ‘civil’ rather than a ‘social’ right.” ). See also Amdt14.S1.1.1 Historical Background on Citizenship Clause through Amdt14.S1.1.2 Citizenship Clause Doctrine; Amdt15.1 Overview of Fifteenth Amendment, Right of Citizens to Vote through Amdt15.S2.2 Federal Remedial Legislation.