Thirteenth Amendment & Abolition of Slavery

• Abraham Lincoln described the destruction of American slavery as "astounding" in his second inaugural address.
• Despite decades of antislavery efforts, there were more slaves in the United States when the Civil War began than at any other time.
• Slaveholders and their allies controlled the federal government for almost the entire period since the founding of the republic.
• The Chicago Tribune declared in 1858 that "no man living" would see the end of American slavery.
• Abolition was a process with many causes and involved many individuals.

Thirteenth Amendment

• The Emancipation Proclamation was a critical step, but it did not abolish slavery by itself.
• The New York Times noted that while the proclamation "set free" slaves in applicable areas, Union army presence was required to ensure freedom.
• The final abolition of slavery came with the Thirteenth Amendment's ratification in December 1865.
• Freedom's Journal called for a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as early as 1827.
• Changing the Constitution is complex and time-consuming.
• Roughly 150 amendments to resolve the secession crisis were proposed during the winter of 1860-61.
• The Corwin Amendment would have prohibited future federal interference with slavery in the states; it won congressional approval but became moot with the outbreak of war.
• Lincoln stated he had always hated slavery, but was not an abolitionist and did not believe in equality between the races.
• Lincoln emerged as a major spokesman for the Republican party, committed to halting the westward expansion of slavery.
• He condemned slavery as a violation of the nation's founding principles.
• Lincoln believed the North must abide by the Constitution's provisions that protected slavery.
• The aim of the Republican party was to put slavery on the road to "ultimate extinction."
• Lincoln once suggested slavery might last another hundred years.
• His election was the catalyst for secession, civil war, and eventual abolition.

Abolishing Slavery

• One way of abolishing slavery is individual manumission.
• Second is emancipation by legal means.
• Legal emancipation is feasible in "societies with slaves" where owners lack the political power to prevent abolition laws.
• Lincoln believed abolition could only be accomplished with the cooperation of owners.
• He advocated gradual emancipation with monetary compensation and "colonization".
• A third mode of attacking slavery is military emancipation, with sides urging slaves to enlist as soldiers, usually promising freedom.
• Military emancipation freed numerous slaves during the Civil War.
• A constitutional amendment was required to destroy the system for good.
• Almost from the beginning of the Civil War, abolitionists and Radical Republicans pressed for action against the institution as a war measure.
• Lincoln began by returning to the plan of gradual, compensated emancipation coupled with colonization.
• He proposed this to political leaders in Delaware in November 1861, then presented it to Congress and the other border slave states.
• The border states were not interested.
• Lincoln's plan failed to win support among African-Americans.

Emancipation

• A powerful combination of events moved Lincoln to adopt a new policy toward slavery.
• In September 1862, in the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln announced his change in policy.
• In December, he again offered his old plan for state-by-state abolition.
• Neither Congress, the border states, nor the Confederacy paid any attention to these proposals.
• With the Emancipation Proclamation, national policy toward slavery changed dramatically.
• The proclamation was an act of military emancipation, grounded in Lincoln's authority as commander in chief.
• Lincoln did not free four million slaves with a stroke of his pen: around 800,000 of the nearly four million slaves were not covered by the proclamation.
• 3.1 million were despite its limitations.
• The proclamation did not immediately end slavery but it sounded the institution's death knell.
• As a presidential decree, the proclamation could be reversed by another president.
• Douglass felt the proclamation was "a vast and glorious step in the right direction. But unhappily, excellent as that paper is, it settles nothing."

After The Emancipation Proclamation

• The Emancipation Proclamation was a dramatic departure from Lincoln's previous statements and policies.
• It was immediate, not gradual, contained no mention of compensation for slaveowners, and made no reference to colonization.
• Enrolling black soldiers into the armed forces began.
• Overall, the Emancipation Proclamation fundamentally altered the character of the Civil War.
• As the army occupied territory and freed slaves, Lincoln redoubled his efforts to create Unionist state governments in portions of the South.
• Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, issued in December 1863, envisioned abolition by state action.
• Lincoln seemed to assume that the only slaves truly emancipated were those who physically came within Union lines.
• In August 1864, Lincoln urged Frederick Douglass to organize a group of "scouts" to venture behind enemy lines and encourage slaves to run off to the Union army.
• Lincoln feared the proclamation's constitutionality might be called into question after the war ended.

Support for Constitutional Amendment

• Increase in support for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery
• As soon as the Thirty-eighth Congress convened in December 1863, plans for amending the Constitution began to circulate.
• Representative James M. Ashley introduced the first such proposal on December 14.
• Francis Lieber composed a set of no fewer than seven amendments.
• Meanwhile, abolitionists launched a "fresh moral agitation" towards the goal of an amendment abolishing slavery.
• Campaign coordinated by the Women's Loyal National League, founded in 1863.
• Women activists suspended the movement for woman suffrage to press for an end to slavery.
• In February 1864, two tall black men carried a "monster" petition with 100,000 signatures onto the Senate floor
• Sumner introduced an amendment based on the 1791 French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.
• Wendell Phillips called for two amendments, one abolishing slavery and another barring any state from making "any distinction among its citizens on account of race and color."
• The final wording modeled on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.
• "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."
• In the act of abolition, the amendment for the first time introduced the word "slavery" into the Constitution.
• Trumbull also incorporated a second clause drawing on language proposed by Sumner and by Congressman James F. Wilson of Iowa.

Finalizing The Amendment

• Trumbull pointed out that while various acts of Congress and the Emancipation Proclamation had freed many slaves, they had not destroyed slavery's legal foundations.
• He rejected the idea that the war power itself, or the Constitution's clause guaranteeing to each state a republican form of government, gave Congress the power to abolish slavery.
• Republicans cited the ordinance's prohibition of slavery in the Old Northwest as evidence of the founders' supposed hostility to slavery.
• Not all Republicans initially supported the proposed amendment, but soon rallied around the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Much of the congressional discussion covered familiar ground.
• Republicans condemned slavery not simply as a violation of basic human rights but as an affront to the nation.
• The amendment's second section, granting enforcement power to Congress, embodied a new sense of national empowerment.
• "The language may be new in our country, but it is already well known in history."
• The Fourteenth Amendment has often been viewed as instituting a dramatic change in the federal system and a substantial enhancement of the authority of the central government.
• It was the Thirteenth Amendment that initiated this redefinition of federalism.

After The Amendment

• The first amendment in the nation's history to expand the power of the federal government rather than restraining it.
• James G. Blaine would later write the the relation between the national and state governments, respecting the question of human liberty, was radically changed.
• Freedom of the person became henceforth a matter of national concern.
• The amendment was immediate, not gradual, provided no monetary compensation for the abrogation of property in slaves, and said nothing about colonizing the former slaves outside the country.
• The Thirteenth Amendment added a fourth-allow the existence of slavery to the list of things the state and federal governments could not do.
• Democratic opposition to the amendment seemed surprising.
• Early in 1864, it appeared that the amendment might garner some support from northern Democrats anxious to sever their party from association with slavery
• Senator Lazarus Powell declared, ""The wooly-headed Negro," was "an inferior man and no fanaticism can raise him to the level of the Caucasian race."
• Much of the debate focused on the scope of congressional power.
• The House approved the Thirteenth Amendment by a vote of thirty-three to six.
• The four senators from the border slave states of Kentucky and Delaware voted against it, as did two northern Democrats.
• in June, in a vote almost entirely along party lines, the amendment mustered only ninety-three votes in the House, thirteen short of the necessary two-thirds majority

Lincoln’s Changing Stance

• As these events unfolded, Lincoln remained noncommittal.
• The nomination of John C. Frémont for president in late May 1864 by a convention in Cleveland that brought together critics of the administration from the left was what finally moved his hand.
• As part of Lincolns response, he directed Edwin D. Morgan to make the pending Thirteenth Amendment the "key note" of his speech opening