When was the Thirteenth Amendment ratified?

The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified on December 6, 1865 when Georgia became the 27th state to approve it, meeting the constitutional requirement of three quarters of the states. Secretary of State William Seward issued the certification of ratification on December 18, 1865, eight months after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865 and the official end of Confederate organized resistance in the spring of 1865.

The path to ratification ran through Congress and the states. Congress had passed the proposed amendment on January 31, 1865 with the House vote of 119 to 56 narrowly clearing the two thirds required after Lincoln's intense lobbying of lame duck Democrats. Eleven days later, on February 1, 1865, Lincoln signed the joint resolution submitting the amendment to the states, although a presidential signature was not required and was generally considered ceremonial only. Illinois ratified that same day, the first state to do so.

Other states followed quickly. By the spring of 1865, with the Civil War ending, ratification was both a peace measure and a constitutional necessity. President Andrew Johnson, who had taken office after Lincoln's assassination, made ratification a precondition for restoring former Confederate states to representation in Congress. Several southern states ratified during 1865, including South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi (although Mississippi's ratification document was misplaced and not officially certified until February 7, 2013).

When Georgia ratified on December 6, 1865, Seward formally certified the amendment as part of the Constitution on December 18, 1865. By that date Florida and Texas (December 18 and 18, 1870) and Delaware and Kentucky still had not ratified, but the three quarters threshold had been crossed. New Jersey, Iowa, California, Florida, and others ratified later. Mississippi's official 2013 certification was the last formal ratification of the amendment by an original state.

Approximately 4 million enslaved people gained legal freedom under the amendment. The end of slavery as a legal institution was not the end of forced labor or racial caste in the United States. Black codes passed by former Confederate states in late 1865 and 1866 imposed harsh restrictions on Black labor, residence, and movement.

Congress responded with the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866 (passed over President Johnson's veto), the Reconstruction Acts of 1867, the Fourteenth Amendment ratified July 9, 1868 guaranteeing equal protection, and the Fifteenth Amendment ratified February 3, 1870 guaranteeing voting rights regardless of race. Together these constitute the foundational legal framework of the modern United States.