page_title: Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
section_title: Crafting the amendment
hierarchical_section_title: Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution / Proposal and ratification / Crafting the amendment
caption_attribution_description: James Mitchell Ashley. Library of Congress description: "Hon. James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio, Editor of Dispatch &amp; Gov. of Territory of Montana, Born"
context_page_description: The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865 and proclaimed on December 18. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.
  President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued on January 1, 1863 declared that the enslaved in Confederate-controlled areas were free. When they escaped to Union lines or federal forces advanced south, emancipation occurred without any compensation to the former owners. Texas was the last Confederate territory reached by the Union army. On June, 19, 1865 - Juneteenth - Union Army general Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to proclaim the war had ended and so had slavery. In the slave-owning areas controlled by Union forces on January 1, 1863 state action was used to abolish slavery. The exceptions were Kentucky and Delaware where slavery was finally ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.
context_section_description: Acting under presidential war powers, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with effect on January 1, 1863, which proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states that were still in rebellion. However, it did not affect the status of slaves in the border states that had remained loyal to the Union. That December, Lincoln again used his war powers and issued a "Proclamation for Amnesty and Reconstruction", which offered Southern states a chance to peacefully rejoin the Union if they abolished slavery and collected loyalty oaths from 10% of their voting population. Southern states did not readily accept the deal, and the status of slavery remained uncertain.
  In the final years of the Civil War, Union lawmakers debated various proposals for Reconstruction. Some of these called for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery nationally and permanently. On December 14, 1863, a bill proposing such an amendment was introduced by Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio. Representative James F. Wilson of Iowa soon followed with a similar proposal. On January 11, 1864, Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri submitted a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, became involved in merging different proposals for an amendment.
  Radical Republicans led by Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner and Pennsylvania Representative Thaddeus Stevens sought a more expansive version of the amendment. On February 8, 1864, Sumner submitted a constitutional amendment stating:
  All persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave; and the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this declaration into effect everywhere in the United States.
  Sumner tried to have his amendment sent to his committee, rather than the Trumbull-controlled Judiciary Committee, but the Senate refused. On February 10, the Senate Judiciary Committee presented the Senate with an amendment proposal based on drafts of Ashley, Wilson and Henderson.
  The Committee's version used text from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which stipulates, "There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." Though using Henderson's proposed amendment as the basis for its new draft, the Judiciary Committee removed language that would have allowed a constitutional amendment to be adopted with only a majority vote in each House of Congress and ratification by two-thirds of the states (instead of two-thirds and three-fourths, respectively).
caption: Representative James Mitchell Ashley proposed an amendment abolishing slavery in 1863.
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