This Week in History: Congress Passes the 13th Amendment

On the 31st of January 1865, the 13th Amendment to the US constitution was passed by congress, just three months before the end of the US Civil War. The amendment stated that: “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”. While the amendment immediately ended the legal practice of chattel slavery, it would take almost another century for African Americans to achieve racial equality.

Prior to the amendment’s passing, nearly four million African Americans lived in chattel slavery, working under the absolute control of white slaveholders. Such enslaved people would be working an average of 14 hours a day either in fields or domestic spaces, often punished with whipping, branding and rape to prevent disobedience or running away.

The American Civil War marked a significant shift in American attitudes to slavery, often inspired by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman as strong-willed African American heroes. Over 180,000 black soldiers fought in the Union army, determined to triumph over the Confederacy and end slavery in America for good. With President Lincoln recognising the need for an end to Southern slavery, the 13th Amendment was signed as a further development of the Emancipation Proclamation, an 1863 act declaring an end to slavery in the secessionist Confederate states.

Though the 13th Amendment marked a monumental shift in the direction of racial equality, there was still massive marginalisation of African Americans. Provisions made to former slaves were insufficient to put them on an equal footing to white citizens, with political and economic segregation persisting for decades after. With involuntary servitude still permitted for criminal punishment, chain gangs and forced prison labour ensured that African Americans were still manipulated as a source of free labour. Even after the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbade discrimination based on race, African Americans still struggle to see equality with their white counterparts, with high levels of incarceration and police brutality among their populations.

The Thirteenth Amendment is a landmark political achievement, liberating millions of enslaved people from a system of oppression across the USA. The promise of liberty given to these formerly enslaved people remains central to black activism, with significant work still to go before the promise of true freedom is granted to African Americans.

Bibliography

Buccola, Nicholas. 2013. The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass : In Pursuit of American Liberty (New York: New York Univ. Press).

Childs, Dennis. 2015. Slaves of the State (University of Minnesota Press).

Davis, John. 1998. ‘Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington, D.C.’, The Art Bulletin, 80.1: 67 <https://doi.org/10.2307/3051254>

The Constitution of the United States of America, Amendment XIII (1865). 

Tsesis, Alexander. 2004. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom : A Legal History (New York: New York University Press).

Walters, Kerry. 2020. Harriet Tubman: A Life in American History (Bloomsbury Publishing USA).