What was amendment 13

On February 3, at the Hampton Roads Conference , Lincoln met with them aboard a steamboat called the River Queen, but the meeting ended quickly, after he refused to grant any concessions. On January 31, , the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of , just over the required two-thirds majority.

The following day, Lincoln approved a joint resolution of Congress submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification. But he would not see final ratification: Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, , and the necessary number of states did not ratify the 13th Amendment until December 6. While Section 1 of the 13th Amendment outlawed chattel slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime , Section 2 gave the U.

The law invalidated the so-called black codes , those laws put into place in the former Confederate states that governed the behavior of black people, effectively keeping them dependent on their former owners. Congress also required the former Confederate states to ratify the 13th Amendment in order to regain representation in the federal government.

Together with the 14th and 15th Amendments, also ratified during the Reconstruction era, the 13th Amendment sought to establish equality for black Americans. Despite these efforts, the struggle to achieve full equality and guarantee the civil rights of all Americans has continued well into the 21st century.

Constitution: Abolition of Slavery , OurDocuments. The Thirteenth Amendment, Constitution Center. Norton, But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The 14th Amendment to the U. The 15th Amendment, which sought to protect the voting rights of African American men after the Civil War, was adopted into the U. Constitution in Despite the amendment, by the late s discriminatory practices were used to prevent Black citizens from exercising their The First Amendment to the U. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, religion and the press.

It also protects the right to peaceful protest and to petition the government. For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

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Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service. Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives. After the United States Civil War devastated the country, President Abraham Lincoln aimed to reunite the nation as quickly as possible. Before the war even ended he had created a plan referred to as Reconstruction.

However, a week after the war ended, Lincoln was assassinated and Andrew Johnson was sworn in as President. Black codes were established in many states that curtailed the rights of African Americans. Congress responded with the Civil Rights Act of , but that did not prevent states from passing discriminatory legislation. Investigate this complex period of national rebuilding and retrenchment further with these resources.

From the s until the start of the U. Civil War, abolitionists called on the federal government to prohibit the ownership of people in the Southern states. It is unique in another way as well: although the Constitution obliquely acknowledged and accommodated slavery in its original text, the Thirteenth Amendment was the first explicit mention of slavery in the Constitution.

The most immediate impact of the Thirteenth Amendment was to end chattel slavery as it was practiced in the southern United States. For example, the Thirteenth Amendment bans peonage, which occurs when a person is compelled to work to pay off a debt. Former slaves and other poor citizens became indebted to merchants and plantation owners for living and working expenses.

Unable to repay their debts, they became trapped in a cycle of work-without-pay. The Supreme Court held this practice unconstitutional in Bailey v.

Alabama Most scholars also assume it would violate the Thirteenth Amendment to order specific performance of a service contract. An example of this situation would be where an employee has a contract to work for a full year but wants to leave after six months. Forcing the employee to continue to work instead of paying a financial penalty to get out of her contract would almost certainly violate the Thirteenth Amendment. Notably, the Amendment does allow a person convicted of a crime to be forced to work.

Thus, prison labor practices, from chain gangs to prison laundries, do not run afoul of the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment has also been interpreted to permit the government to require certain forms of public service, presumably extending to military service and jury duty.

For example, the Anti-Peonage Act of prohibits peonage, and another federal law, 18 U. Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment has broader applicability as well. In The Civil Rights Cases , the Court held that racial discrimination in private inns, theaters, and public transportation did not qualify as a badge or incident of slavery.

In a series of cases in the s and s, however, the Court held that racial discrimination by private housing developers and private schools is among the badges and incidents of slavery that Congress may outlaw under Section Two of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Hate Crimes Prevention Act of which criminalizes race-based hate crimes and the Trafficking Victims Protection Act which penalizes human trafficking and protects its survivors. The Supreme Court has yet to evaluate these laws. Despite its significance in American history, the Thirteenth Amendment is not one of the more frequently invoked parts of our Constitution today. Does it govern the fairness of modern labor practices?

Does it empower Congress to pass broad-ranging civil rights laws? Whatever the outcome of those debates, though, the Thirteenth Amendment deserves recognition as an historic and solemn promise that slavery will never again exist in the United States. The ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment was a transformative moment in American history. That law invalidated the Black Codes, laws passed by southern states after the Civil War that sought to keep the former slaves effectively tethered to their former plantation owners.