DK - The American Civil War

amendment passed the House

with two votes to spare. The news

was greeted with wild rejoicing

in Congress itself and by a 100-gun

salute in Washington, D.C. It was fitting

that among those celebrating inside

the House were African-Americans,

who had been admitted to the public

galleries for the first time the previous

P

resident Lincoln’s Emancipation

Proclamation of 1863 left

unfinished business. It gave

freedom to slaves only in the ten

named Confederate states that

had failed to rejoin the Union by

January 1st, the date on which the

proclamation came into force. Some

territories were specifically exempted

from its provisions, among them the

city of New Orleans and the 48 Virginia

counties then in the process of forming

the state of West Virginia. Other

slaveholding border states, where the

president still hoped to court moderate

opinion in favor of rejoining the Union,

were simply not mentioned at all. It

was clear, then, that some further

measure would be required if slavery

was to be banned forever across the

United States.

Passing the amendment

Lincoln himself believed that the

only suitable vehicle would be a

constitutional amendment. Yet there

were formidable obstacles in the way

of such a move. No new amendment

had been passed in 60 years, and

successful passage would require the

support of two-thirds of the members

of both Houses of Congress, and then

ratification by three-quarters of the

individual states. To make the measure

truly binding, Lincoln took this to mean

three-quarters of all states, including

those in the South that had taken up

arms to defend slavery.

The easy part proved to be getting

the amendment through the Senate,

whose Republican majority ensured its

smooth passage on April 8, 1864. The

House of Representatives proved more

recalcitrant, however, and the measure

failed to get the necessary two-thirds

majority by 13 votes.

Its fate then became a leading

issue in the 1864 presidential election

campaign, with the Republicans eagerly

adopting the cause as a central plank

of their platform. The Democrats

denounced the amendment as “unwise,

impolitic, cruel, and unworthy of the

support of a civilized people.” Lincoln’s

re-election in November 1864 effectively

The Thirteenth Amendment

Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 established the abolition of slavery as a Federal war aim, but abolitionists

feared that it might be set aside as a temporary measure once the conflict ended. The passing of the

Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution ensured that slavery was banned in the United States.

COLLAPSE OF THE CONFEDERACY 1864

settled the debate between the two

parties. But instead of choosing to wait

for the sitting of the Republican-

dominated 39th Congress in March

1865, the president used his annual

message to Congress on December 6,

1864, to introduce the measure.

Cheers in the House

Lincoln preferred to solicit the support

of dissenting Democrats in the lame-

duck 38th Congress, wanting to make

its passage a bipartisan measure. With

some arm-twisting, the necessary backing

was obtained; on January 31, 1865, the

BEFORE

The Thirteenth Amendment outlawing
slavery throughout the United States came
to be seen as a summary of the war’s moral
purpose. Yet four years earlier, the
situation had looked very different.

THE 1861 AMENDMENT
Ironically, the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865,
to address the instution of slavery, was
not the first adopted by Congress. In 1861,
when a final attempt was made to conciliate
the South, an amendment that guaranteed
the rights of slaveholding states had passed
the House and Senate. Although it had been
signed by President Buchanan on his last day
in office, it had never been ratified by the
individual states. The difference between it
and its successor marked the distance the
U.S. had traversed politically in the
intervening four years.

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION
President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation
Proclamation of 1863 ❮❮ 160–61 changed
fundamentally the character of the Civil War.
By embracing the abolition of slavery as the
backbone of Union policy, it gave the conflict
a fresh moral dimension. However, the form
it took was dictated by expediency. If slavery
was to be abolished once and for all, more
permanent measures were called for.

The Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1 of the Thirteenth Amendment declared that

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a

punishment for crime ... shall exist within the United

States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Jubilant scenes

In his diary, Republican congressman George W. Julian

wrote of the reaction in the House: “Members joined

in the shouting and kept it up for some minutes. Some

embraced one another, others wept like children.”

“there is only a question of

time ... may we not agree

that the sooner the better?”

PRESIDENT LINCOLN, IN HIS MESSAGE TO CONGRESS, DECEMBER 6, 1864