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Vocapedia > USA > U.S. Constitution
Thirteenth Amendment 1865
Abolition of slavery
thirteenth Amendment
Ratified in 1865, the amendment states in full:
“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.” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/movies/13th-review-ava-duvernay.html
Approval in the House on Jan. 31, 1865, trailed the amendment’s passage in the Senate on April 8, 1864, by almost 10 months.
Its adoption by 27 states the following December introduced the word “slavery” into the Constitution for the first time. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/the-birth-of-the-13th-amendment/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution officially abolished slavery in America, and was ratified on December 6, 1865, after the conclusion of the American Civil War.
The amendment states: “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.”
When the American Civil War (1861-65) began, President Abraham Lincoln (1809-65) carefully framed the conflict as concerning the preservation of the Union rather than the abolition of slavery.
Although he personally found the practice of slavery abhorrent, he knew that neither Northerners nor the residents of the border slave states would support abolition as a war aim.
However, by mid-1862, as thousands of slaves fled to join the invading Northern armies, Lincoln was convinced that abolition had become a sound military strategy, as well as the morally correct path.
On September 22, soon after the Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in Maryland, he issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, declaring that as of January 1, 1863, all slaves in the rebellious states “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.”
While the Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave (there were an estimated 800,000 slaves in border states and some 3 million more in Confederate states), it was an important turning point in the war, transforming the fight to preserve the nation into a battle for human freedom. http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment
The citizenship portion of the 14th Amendment was tied together with the idea of suffrage for all men.
If Black men were made citizens, for the most part, they could also be made voters.
(This didn’t work as smoothly as some had thought. It would require the adoption of the 15th Amendment two years later, in 1870, to guarantee that right, as it read:
“The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”)
One of the heroes of the 14th Amendment as well as the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery was Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania.
He badgered Lincoln on abolishing slavery and he helped to write the 13th Amendment.
Indeed, he gave the closing remarks on the debate of the amendment.
As the National Endowment for the Humanities has noted, when the House passed the bill that authorized the 13th Amendment, Stevens said,
“I will be satisfied if my epitaph shall be written thus, ‘Here lies one who never rose to any eminence, and who only courted the low ambition to have it said that he had striven o ameliorate the condition of the poor, the lowly, the downtrodden of every race and language and color.’ ”
Stevens would also help write the 14th Amendment, and in the lead-up to it he was quite prescient on “universal enfranchisement,” offering words then that we would do well to heed today.
In January of 1868, Stevens wrote in The New York Times:
So far as I took any position with regard to Negro suffrage, it was and is that universal suffrage is an inalienable right, and that since the amendments to the Constitution, to deprive the Negroes of it would be a violation of the Constitution as well as of a natural right.
True, I deemed the hastening of the bestowal of the franchise as very essential to the welfare of the nation, because without it I believe that the Government will pass into the hands of rebels and their friends, and that such an event would be disastrous to the whole country.
With universal suffrage, I believe the true men of the nation can maintain their position.
Without it, whether that suffrage be impartial, or in any way qualified, I look upon this Republic as likely to relapse into an oligarchy, which will be ruled by coarse copperheadism and proud conservatism.
Copperheads were Northern Democrats, mostly in the Midwest, who opposed the Civil War and emancipation and wanted to negotiate a compromise with the South to preserve the Union.
The name comes from the copperhead snake, a notoriously sneaky serpent.
But the 14th Amendment would go on to be passed and ratified, and it signified the birth of Black citizenship.
The day is such an important marker of citizenship that when the first Black senator, Hiram Revels of Mississippi, arrived in Washington to be seated in 1870, his being seated was objected to by conservative congressmen, some arguing that he had only been a citizen since the ratification of the 14th Amendment two years earlier and thus didn’t meet the citizenship requirements for a senator.
(By the way, Revels was born in America and fought in the Civil War.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/
https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/13thamendment.html https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/13th-amendment-ratified
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/03/
http://www.npr.org/2016/10/07/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/
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