The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude,
except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April
8, 1864, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6,
1865. On December 18, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been adopted. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted after the American Civil War.
President Lincoln and other Republicans were concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which in 1863 declared the freedom of slaves in ten Confederate states then in rebellion, would be seen as a temporary war measure, since it was based solely on Lincoln's war powers. The Proclamation did not free any slaves in the border states nor did it abolish slavery. Because of this, Lincoln and other supporters believed that an amendment to the Constitution was needed.
History
When the Thirteenth Amendment was proposed, there had been no new amendments adopted in more than 60 years.
During the secession crisis, but prior to the outbreak of the Civil War,
the majority of slavery-related bills had protected slavery. The United
States had ceased slave importation and intervened militarily against
the Atlantic slave trade, but had made few proposals to abolish domestic
slavery, and only a small number to abolish the domestic slave trade. Representative John Quincy Adams
had made such a proposal in 1839, but there were no new proposals until
December 14, 1863, when a bill to support an amendment to abolish
slavery throughout the entire United States was introduced by
Representative James Mitchell Ashley (Republican, Ohio). This was soon followed by a similar proposal made by Representative James F. Wilson (Republican, Iowa).
Eventually the Congress and the public began to take notice, and a
number of additional legislative proposals were brought forward. On
January 11, 1864, Senator John B. Henderson of Missouri submitted a joint resolution
for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. The abolition of
slavery had historically been associated with Republicans, but Henderson
was one of the War Democrats. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lyman Trumbull (Republican, Illinois), became involved in merging different proposals for an amendment. On February 8 of that year, another Republican, Senator Charles Sumner (Radical Republican, Massachusetts), submitted a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as well as guarantee equality.
As the number of proposals and the extent of their scope began to grow,
the Senate Judiciary Committee presented the Senate with an amendment
proposal that combined the drafts of Ashley, Wilson and Henderson.
While the Senate passed the amendment on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6, the House was slower to give its approval. Representative Ashley was instrumental in its eventual passage. An ardent Free Soiler before becoming a Republican, he was the House floor manager and persuaded a number of Democrats to support it.
President Lincoln took an active role in working for its passage
through the House by ensuring the amendment was added to the Republican
Party platform for the 1864 presidential election
and using his powers adroitly. After heavy arm-twisting and promises of
patronage, the House narrowly reached the two-thirds majority needed to
pass the bill on January 31, 1865, by a vote of 119 to 56. The
Thirteenth Amendment's archival copy bears an apparent Presidential
signature, under the usual ones of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, after the words "Approved February 1, 1865".