Words of Freedom

The Thirteenth Amendment (1865)

The Thirteenth Amendment did for people living on land controlled by the Union what the Emancipation Proclamation did only for those on land then controlled by the Confederacy-abolish slavery in the U.S. The amendment was proposed by the Congress on January 31, 1865, while the Civil War still raged. By war's end just over three months later, it had been ratified by 21 states. Ratification was completed December 6, 1865, when Georgia became the sixth of the former Confederate states to ratify the Amendment; Mississippi had rejected the Amendment two days earlier. Interestingly, while the Southern states' ratification of the Amendment was counted toward the necessary two-thirds of states necessary to amend the Constitution, those states' representatives had not yet been re-admitted to the Congress.

Section 1. 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.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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