Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Amendment XIII (the Thirteenth Amendment) of the United States Constitution states:

Section 1

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

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several States by the Thirty-eighth Congress, on January 31, 1865, and was declared, in a proclamation of the Secretary of State, dated the December 18, 1865, to have been ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the thirty-six States. The dates of ratification were:

• Illinois, February 1, 1865
• Rhode Island, February 2, 1865
• Michigan, February 2, 1865
• Maryland, February 3, 1865
• New York, February 3, 1865
• Pennsylvania, February 3, 1865
• West Virginia, February 3, 1865
• Missouri, February 6, 1865
• Maine, February 7, 1865
• Kansas, February 7, 1865
• Massachusetts, February 7, 1865
• Virginia, February 9, 1865
• Ohio, February 10, 1865
• Indiana, February 13, 1865
• Nevada, February 16, 1865
• Louisiana, February 17, 1865
• Minnesota, February 23, 1865
• Wisconsin, February 24, 1865
• Vermont, March 9, 1865
• Tennessee, April 7, 1865
• Arkansas, April 14, 1865
• Connecticut, May 4, 1865
• New Hampshire, July 1, 1865
• South Carolina, November 13, 1865
• Alabama, December 2, 1865
• North Carolina, December 4, 1865
• Georgia, December 6, 1865

Ratification was completed on December 6, 1865. The amendment was subsequently ratified by:

• Oregon, December 8, 1865
• California, December 19, 1865
• Florida, December 28, 1865 (Florida again ratified on June 9, 1868, upon its adoption of a new constitution)
• Iowa, January 15, 1866
• New Jersey, January 23, 1866 (after having rejected the amendment on March 16, 1865)
• Texas, February 18, 1870
• Delaware, February 12, 1901 (after having rejected the amendment on February 8, 1865)
• Kentucky, March 18, 1976 (after having rejected it on February 24, 1865).

The amendment was rejected by Mississippi on December 4, 1865. It was not ratified there until 1995.

Interpretation and history

This amendment completed the abolition of slavery, which had begun with President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The Emancipation Proclamation had only applied to slaves being held within states that were part of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. Slaves in states that did not attempt to leave the Union were not freed until this amendment was enacted.

See also

• The missing thirteenth amendment
• The Corwin Amendment

External links

• National Archives: 13th Amendment
• Ghost Amendment: The Thirteenth Amendment that Never Was