The 13th Amendment comprises a very short statement that prohibits slavery, except for convicted criminals, and a short statement that allows Congress to pass laws to enforce this prohibition: 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. This amendment was first introduced in the U.S. Senate early in 1864, when the war was still under way. The Senate passed the amendment in April 1864, but the House did not pass it until January 1865. After Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, his successor Andrew Johnson made ratification of the 13th Amendment a requirement for readmission to the Union. Eighteen states ratified it very shortly after Congress formally approved it. After much delay by the former Confederate states, it was ratified by the minimum of twenty-seven of the thirty-six states on December 6, 1865. Texas did not formally ratify the 13th Amendment until February 18, 1870. Until then the official position in Texas was that this amendment already had been implicitly adopted. This position was adopted by the Constitutional Convention of 1866. As the Handbook of Texas explains, "[T]he members agreed that the Thirteenth Amendment, by then a part of the Constitution, had abolished slavery and that since they had taken the oath to support that Constitution, they had indirectly abolished slavery. They reasoned, therefore, that a direct and formal ratification of the amendment was not necessary and voted to allow the taking of the constitutional oath to suffice." While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Select Citation Style Copy CitationShare Share Share to social media Facebook Twitter URL https://www.britannica.com/topic/Thirteenth-AmendmentGive Feedback External Websites Feedback Corrections? Updates? Omissions? Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). Feedback Type Your Feedback Submit FeedbackThank you for your feedback Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. External Websites
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Alternate titles: “Slavery Abolished” By The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica Table of Contents
Thirteenth Amendment, amendment (1865) to the Constitution of the United States that formally abolished slavery. Although the words slavery and slave are never mentioned in the Constitution, the Thirteenth Amendment abrogated those sections of the Constitution which had tacitly codified the “peculiar institution”: Article I, Section 2, regarding apportionment of representation in the House of Representatives, which had been “determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons provided for the appointment,” with “all other persons” meaning slaves; Article I, Section 9, which had established 1807 as the end date for the importation of slaves, referred to in this case as “such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit”; and Article IV, Section 2, which mandated the return to their owners of fugitive slaves, here defined as persons “held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another.” The Emancipation Proclamation, declared and promulgated by Pres. Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the American Civil War, freed only those slaves held in the Confederate States of America. In depriving the South of its greatest economic resource—abundant free human labour—Lincoln’s proclamation was intended primarily as an instrument of military strategy. Only when emancipation was universally proposed through the Thirteenth Amendment did it become national policy. Moreover, the legality of abolition by presidential edict was questionable. Britannica Quiz History: Fact or Fiction?The full text of the amendment is:
The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, but did not pass in the House until January 31, 1865. The joint resolution of both bodies that submitted the amendment to the states for approval was signed by Lincoln on February 1, 1865. However, he did not live to see its ratification. Assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, he died on April 15, 1865, and the amendment was not ratified by the required number of states until December 6, 1865. What impact did the 13th Amendment have?In the aftermath of the Civil War, this amendment banned slavery in the United States, ending a barbaric system that had been legal in America for well over a hundred years. Four million people, an entire eighth of the U.S. population, were freed as a result.
What happened to slaves after the 13th Amendment?The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freed African Americans in rebel states, and after the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment emancipated all U.S. slaves wherever they were.
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