The Thirteenth Amendment

Examples of The Thirteenth Amendment in the following topics:

• The Reconstruction Amendments

  • The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
  • When the Thirteenth Amendment became operational, the scope of Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was widened to include the entire nation.
  • In addition to abolishing slavery and prohibiting involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, the Thirteenth Amendment also nullified the Fugitive Slave Clause and the Three-Fifths Compromise.
  • The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S.

• The Second American Revolution

  • By attempting to secede from the perceived tyranny of the United States during the American Civil War, Confederates believed that they were invoking the Founding Fathers and the spirit of the American Revolution.
  • Amendments to the Constitution, allowed by the Article V Convention of 1787, were envisioned as a means to periodically adapt the constitution to changing times and maintain a "living constitution. " Southern Democrats argued that secession was justified by the Constitution.
  • Ironically, the revolution that took place during the Civil War had little to do with the revolutionary goals of the Confederacy.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted on December 6, 1865, officially outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude.
  • The economy was also revolutionized during the Civil War.

• From Gradualism to Abolition

  • An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, passed by the Pennsylvania legislature on March 1, 1780, was the first attempt by a government in the Western Hemisphere to begin the abolition of slavery.
  • The December 6, 1865, ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
  • Constitution ended slavery in the United States, but New Jersey's legislature did not approve the Thirteenth Amendment until February 1866, two months after it had been ratified by a three-fourths majority of all states.
  • In the early 1850s, the American abolitionist movement split into two camps over the issue of the U.S.
  • This issue arose in the late 1840s after the publication of The Unconstitutionality of Slavery by Lysander Spooner.

• The Contraband Camps

  • The status of African Americans, including escaped slaves from the South, was an issue in flux while the Civil War was being fought.
  • As the number of former slaves grew too large to be housed inside the Fort, the contraband slaves erected housing outside of the crowded base from the burned ruins of the City of Hampton.
  • For most of the contraband slaves, full emancipation did not take place until the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery in late 1865.
  • The term added to the ambiguity of many African-Americans’ situations during the Civil War.
  • That uncertainty continued until late 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted and contraband slaves became eligible for full emancipation.

• The Aftermath of the War

  • Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation enabled blacks to join the Union Army, giving the Union an advantage, and helped end the Civil War.
  • Historians have debated whether the Confederacy could have won the war.
  • About 190,000 volunteered, further enhancing the numerical advantage the Union armies enjoyed over the Confederates, who did not dare emulate the equivalent manpower source for fear of fundamentally undermining the legitimacy of slavery.
  • Slaves in the border states and those located in some former Confederate territory occupied prior to the Emancipation Proclamation were freed by state action or (on December 18, 1865) by the Thirteenth Amendment.
  • The full restoration of the Union was the work of a highly contentious postwar era known as Reconstruction.

• Emancipation

  • In 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order that freed the slaves in the Confederate states.
  • It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the 10 states then in rebellion, applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the United States at that time.
  • The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all of the rest of the 3.1 million freed as Union armies advanced.
  • Many immigrants in the North viewed the freed slaves as competition for already scarce jobs and as the reason the Civil War was being fought.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.

• Lincoln's Plan and Congress's Response

  • Lincoln's plan successfully began the Reconstruction process of ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment in all states.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865.
  • The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteed U.S. citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granted them federal civil rights.
  • The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869 and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
  • In addition, Congress required that each state draft a new state constitution—which would have to be approved by Congress—and that each state ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S.

• Reconstruction in the South

  • Johnson ignored the policy mandate, and he openly encouraged Southern states to deny ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  • Three Constitutional amendments, known as the Reconstruction Amendments, were adopted.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865.
  • The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteeing United States citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granting them federal civil rights.
  • The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869 and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude. " The amendment did not declare the vote an unconditional right; it prohibited these types of discrimination.

• The Radical Record

  • Johnson, however, was content with allowing former Confederate states into the Union as long as their state governments adopted the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery.
  • The Senate overrode the veto by the close vote of 33:15, the House by 122:41.
  • The Radical Republicans also passed the Reconstruction Amendments, which were directed at ending slavery and providing full citizenship to freedmen.
  • For instance, the Fourteenth Amendment, whose principal drafter was John Bingham, was designed to put the key provisions of the Civil Rights Act into the Constitution.
  • Full federal enforcement of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments did not occur until passage of legislation in the mid-1960s as a result of the African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955–1968).

• The Bourbons and the Redeemers

  • Redeemers were the southern wing of Bourbon Democrats—the conservative, pro-business wing of the Democratic Party during Reconstruction.
  • Strong supporters of reform movements such as the Civil Service Reform and opponents of the corrupt city bosses, Bourbons led the fight against the Tweed Ring.
  • The anticorruption theme earned the votes of many Republican Mugwumps in 1884.
  • Redeemers were the southern wing of the Bourbon Democrats—the conservative, pro-business faction in the Democratic Party who sought to oust the Republican coalition of freedmen, carpetbaggers, and scalawags.
  • The Thirteenth Amendment (banning slavery), Fourteenth Amendment (guaranteeing the civil rights of former slaves and ensuring equal protection of the laws), and Fifteenth Amendment (prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude) enshrined such political rights in the Constitution.