Thirteenth Amendment — Abolition of Slavery in the United States
The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified on 6 December 1865, states: "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." It was the culmination of the abolitionist movement and the Civil War. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863 had freed enslaved people in Confederate states as a wartime measure with uncertain legal permanence. Lincoln and the Republican Congress pushed the amendment through to make abolition constitutionally irrevocable. Congress passed it on 31 January 1865; Lincoln was assassinated on 14 April 1865, before its ratification was complete. The amendment freed approximately 4 million enslaved people. However, it did not grant citizenship, voting rights, or protection from discrimination — those required the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments — and was immediately followed by Black Codes and later Jim Crow laws in the Southern states that reimposed racial subordination through other means. The amendment nonetheless represented the most profound legal transformation in American history since the Constitution itself.
- Year: 1865 CE
- Category: Political
