What was the Thirteenth Amendment?

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, was approved by Congress on January 31, 1865, and took effect after ratification by the required three quarters of the states on December 6, 1865, ending the legal institution that had existed in the country since 1619. The amendment has two short sections. Section 1 reads: 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. Section 2 reads: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The wording deliberately echoed the Northwest Ordinance of July 13, 1787, which had banned slavery in the Northwest Territory and had served as a free soil model. The amendment passed the Senate on April 8, 1864 by 38 to 6 but failed in the House in June 1864 with 93 to 65, short of the two-thirds required. President Abraham Lincoln made passage a central goal of his second term. After his reelection on November 8, 1864 he pressed lame duck Democrats to switch their votes. The House passed the amendment on January 31, 1865 by 119 to 56, with celebrations in the chamber and across the country. Lincoln signed the resolution the next day, although a presidential signature was not required for a constitutional amendment.

Twenty-seven of the 36 states then in the Union ratified the amendment by December 6, 1865. The Reconstruction Act and the readmission process required former Confederate states to ratify the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments as a condition of regaining congressional representation. Mississippi did not formally ratify the Thirteenth Amendment until 1995 (and a clerical error delayed the official certification until February 7, 2013). Approximately 4 million people gained immediate freedom under the amendment. Combined with the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866, which Congress passed over President Andrew Johnson's veto and which guaranteed civil rights and protections to all citizens, the amendment laid the legal foundation for Black freedom.

The amendment did not by itself guarantee equality. The criminal punishment exception clause was used during Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras to justify convict leasing and chain gang labor that re-enslaved many Black Americans through unjust criminal prosecutions. Black codes passed in former Confederate states in 1865 and 1866 effectively re-imposed many slavery-like restrictions, prompting Congress to pass the Fourteenth Amendment ratified July 9, 1868 to guarantee equal protection and the Fifteenth Amendment ratified February 3, 1870 to guarantee voting rights. The Thirteenth Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to authorize Congress to outlaw the badges and incidents of slavery, including some forms of private discrimination.