The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution

Congress Abolishes Slavery and Legalizes Congressional Enforcement

May 7, 2009

Only a Constitutional Amendment would guarantee an end to slavery in every state for all time despite earlier legislative acts and presidential proclamations.

The Thirteenth Amendment was adopted by Congress in June 1865 when the House of Representatives passed it by a vote of 119-56. All states, including Southern states working to be readmitted to the Union, had to ratify the Amendment. The first of three “Civil War” Amendments, the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery and involuntary servitude and gave Congress legislative authority to enforce the emancipation.

The Need for the Thirteenth Amendment

The emancipation of Southern slaves began almost as soon as the war began. In 1861, General Benjamin Butler declared slaves crossing into Union lines as “contraband of war.” When General John C. Fremont issued a military field order freeing the slaves of Missouri, he was countermanded by President Lincoln; Lincoln needed Missouri to remain out of the Confederacy and freeing slaves at that point was counter productive.

In March 1862 Congress passed legislation that prohibited the return of fugitive slaves by Union forces. This was followed by the 2nd Confiscation Act that emancipated slaves in territory occupied by Union troops. Finally, in January 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves in any areas of the South that were in open rebellion to the federal government.

None of these measures freed all of the nation’s slaves, notably exempting Border States like Maryland. And by 1865, the Radical Congress sensed that events in the South were not in conformity to the Reconstruction aims and goals Congressional leaders championed. The redefinition of African American status in the South created new problems Congress would have to deal with.

Finally, while war-time proclamations and Congressional acts had freed most of the slaves, only a Constitutional Amendment could guarantee the freedom of all slaves for all time in every part of the nation.

What Did Emancipation Mean?

James Garfield best epitomized the dilemma by asking, “What is freedom? Is it the bare privilege of not being chained?” The freedmen of the South were uneducated and landless. Although some had received parcels of land from confiscated land, as with General Sherman’s Field Order #15 so often identified with “forty acres and a mule,” the majority of former slaves had no land.

As Reconstruction meandered through almost 12 years of agony, even those freedmen who had been given land lost it as new legislation and local power elites voided old agreements. In many cases, former slaves continued to work on or around the very plantations they had served as slaves but as tenant farmers or sharecroppers.

These were the conditions that prompted the second section of the Thirteenth Amendment: Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Most members of Congress recognized that the former Southern slaves were in no position to mainstream into society or actively compete in the marketplace.

Congress had wrestled with similar questions, albeit on a smaller scale, with Native Americans. Would freedmen become temporary wards of the state? How paternalistic should the federal government be? Men like Senator Charles Sumner sincerely wanted to help both the freedmen and poor Southern whites, proposing that the Freedmen’s Bureau be given permanent status and represented through a Cabinet position.

The Need for Federal Intervention

Southern reaction to Reconstruction was anything but cooperative. In North Carolina, the state legislature abolished all public schools to avoid having to educate black children. State legislatures passed laws limiting the types of employment blacks could pursue and enacted Black Codes that severely curtailed personal liberties, freedom of movement, and frequently reintroduced harsh criminal penalties formerly found in slave codes.

The Thirteenth Amendment would open the door to the Fourteenth Amendment which attempted to strengthen Congressional authority over obdurate Southern states even more. Sadly, the full effect of the Civil War Amendments would not be felt until the Civil Rights Movement of the 20th Century.

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