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Lessons on the Law
Social Education 79(5), pp 289–292
©2015 National Council for the Social Studies
Slavery and its Legacies:
Marking the Sesquicentennial of the Thirteenth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Ana Lucia Araujo
The year 2015 marks the sesquicentennial of the Thirteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, which abolished slavery in the United States. The amendment was
an enormous step forward in a nation that experienced four years of a bloody
civil war, fought because of slavery. Yet the post-emancipation period presented
numerous and serious challenges. Why does the issue of slavery still generate so
much debate among scholars, politicians, activists, and the general public? How
do the legacies of slavery persist today, as we commemorate the sesquicentennial
of its legal abolition?
Fighting for Emancipation
The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, which abolished slavery in
1865, was not a gift. It was the result of a
long and gradual process, greatly determined by the daily fight led by abolitionists and slaves. Their efforts resulted
in the passing of a number of federal
and state legislative acts. The process
that culminated with the legal abolition
of slavery in the United States can only
be understood within the context of the
international anti-slavery and abolitionist movements that emerged during the
eighteenth century in Europe and the
Americas.
In 1791, the battle against slavery was
fought on the ground. Following the
beginning of the French Revolution in
1789, a great slave rebellion emerged in
Saint-Domingue, then the richest French
colony in the Americas. Although the
successful slave uprising led to the abolition of slavery in the French colonies
in 1794, slavery was reestablished after
Napoléon Bonaparte proclaimed himself First Consul for Life in 1802. But
despite the strong intervention of the
French army, the slave rebels won the
battle. In 1804, Saint-Domingue became
an independent country. Free of slavery,
the new black nation took the name Haiti.
The echoes of the Haitian Revolution
were heard across the Americas. On the
one hand, slave owners in Brazil, Cuba,
and the United States feared other slave
uprisings, which could lead to the end of
slavery in their countries as well. On the
other hand, as the abolitionist movement
evolved in Britain and gained great popular support, British Parliament passed
the Slave Trade Act of 1807 abolishing
the international slave trade to the British
colonies. This measure greatly affected
slaving nations such as the United States
and Brazil.
Although inspired by the same ideals
of freedom as the French Revolution, the
American Revolution did not aim to end
slavery. Many of its most important leaders, such as George Washington, James
Madison, and Thomas Jefferson— later
known as the founding fathers—were
large slave owners and never freed
their own slaves. After the 13 colonies
broke with Britain, the Declaration of
Independence of 1776 did not challenge slavery. Moreover, the original
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Constitution, adopted in 1787, not only
maintained slavery, but also empowered
slave owners.
Beginning in 1777, Northern states
abolished slavery, often through gradual
emancipation. This new context led to
a greater division between free states
and Southern slave states. This divide
became even more prominent during the congressional debates over the
incorporation of Missouri into the union.
Eventually, the solution to the issue was a
federal statute that became known as the
Missouri Compromise of 1820. This legislation admitted Missouri to the Union
as a slave state, but also admitted Maine
(separated from Massachusetts) as a free
state. In addition, slavery was banned
from all new states associated with the
Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri.
As industries of tobacco, rice, and cotton quickly expanded, slavery became
central to the economy of the United
States. By the middle of the eighteenth
century, U.S. slave owners were promoting the growth of the enslaved population
through natural reproduction. In 1807,
Congress passed the first Slave Trade
Act, which banned the importation of
slaves—but not, of course, the domestic
slave trade. The U.S. Census of 1860
estimated that 3,953,761 slaves lived in
the country, making up more than 12 percent of the total population.
A War about Slavery
When Abraham Lincoln was elected
This Harper's Weekly
cartoon depicts the
celebration that
erupted in the House
of Representatives after
the passage of the
Thirteenth Amendment.
(Harper's Weekly,
February 18, 1865)
president in November 1860, the number of states where slavery had been
abolished exceeded the number of slave
states. Despite his moderate positions
regarding slavery, Lincoln was obviously
not a representative of Southern planters
and slave owners. The call for secession
intensified during his campaign. After
his election, tensions between slave
and free states increased dramatically.
In December 1860, South Carolina
issued a proclamation announcing its
secession from the United States, an
action it felt was justified by the growing hostility to the institution of slavery
by the free states. In the four months
that followed South Carolina’s secession,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi,
Texas, and Louisiana announced their
separation from the Union, forming the
Confederate States of America.
As the climate of unrest persisted in
the South, Lincoln had promised in his
March 4, 1861, inaugural address not
to interfere in the states where slavery
existed. But his statement did not calm
the rising tension because the problem
of slavery had already divided the country. The Civil War exploded five weeks
later when the Confederacy attacked
federal Fort Sumter, in Charleston,
South Carolina. In the next months,
Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and
Tennessee also joined the Confederacy,
which elected Jefferson Davis as its
president in November 1861.
Emancipation became a central issue
not only for Lincoln’s presidency, but
also for the Union’s victory.1 As the war
evolved and the Union army moved
towards the Confederate states, unrest
among the enslaved population increased
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and made racial inequalities more visible in Washington D.C., where slavery
remained legal. Between 1861 and 1862,
the persistence of slavery in the national
capital became a concern among U.S. legislators, especially when waves of slaves
from Virginia and Maryland started
escaping to Washington, D.C.2 Whereas
fugitives from secessionist Virginia could
not be claimed, federal fugitive laws were
still enforced. As a result, Maryland fugitive slaves were sent to jail, creating a
controversial situation that gained public
attention and eventually contributed to
the end of slavery in the national capital.
Abolishing Slavery in the United
States
In December 1861, Senator (and later
Vice-President) Henry Wilson proposed
a congressional bill abolishing slavery in
Despite the passage of
the 13th Amendment
ending chattel slavery,
the struggle for civil
rights has continued.
This photograph shows
some of the hundreds
of thousands who
participated in the 1963
march on Washington
for jobs and freedom.
(Courtesy of the U.S.
National Archives and
Records Administration,
August 1963)
Washington, D.C, which, despite opposition, was approved. Lincoln signed
the District of Columbia Compensated
Emancipation Act on April 16, 1862. Yet
despite the particular context of war, as
was done in the British West Indies and
Saint-Domingue, this first U.S. emancipation act included a clause to compensate slave owners. It is important to
note that compensated emancipation was
not a new proposal. In 1849, Lincoln
had already proposed emancipation in
Washington, D.C., in exchange for financial compensation to the slave owners.
In legal terms, slaves were considered
property. The principle of compensated
emancipation was based on the Fifth
Amendment, which clearly established
that government expropriation of property required indemnification.3
The
District
of
Columbia
Emancipation Act determined that
slave owners would be compensated
up to $300 per slave. However, the
indemnification would be paid only to
the slave owners who confirmed loyalty
to the Union. On September 22, 1862
(effective on January 1, 1863), as part of
a strategy to fight the Confederate states
and gain the support of freed slaves
who would be able to join the Union’s
Army, Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation of the Confederate states
of the South. Despite excluding 450,000
slaves in the border slave states of the
Union (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland,
and Missouri) and 275,000 slaves
in Tennessee, and many thousands in
areas controlled by the Union army in
the states of Louisiana and Virginia, the
decree freed more than three million
enslaved men, women, and children, and
favored the enlistment of black soldiers
in the Union Army.4
After four years of a bloody Civil
War, slavery was eventually abolished in the United States through the
Thirteenth Amendment, which was ratified by the states by December 1865.
As Reconstruction started, there were
a number of proposals overseen by the
newly created Freedmen’s Bureau to
provide financial and material reparations to former slaves, especially through
land ownership and education. In 1865,
President Andrew Johnson, who succeeded Lincoln after his assassination,
revoked the bureau’s order to redistribute land confiscated during the war to
freedmen and freedwomen.5
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Reconstruction and the Legacies
of Slavery
Freed at last, several hundreds of thousands of African American men, women,
and children were not provided with any
significant financial and material means
to rebuild their lives as free individuals. During Reconstruction, the newly
freed population continued to face economic, social, and racial discrimination.
Although the Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in 1870, prohibited disenfranchisement based on “race, color, or previous
condition of servitude,” in Southern
states explicit violence, fraud, poll taxes,
literacy tests, and other mechanisms to
limit the ability of registration were
used during the Jim Crow era to prevent
African Americans from voting.
Immediately after the abolition of
slavery, in order to control the newly
freed population, Southern states passed
a series of laws based on older slave
codes. Known as Black Codes, these
laws greatly restricted the freedom of
African Americans. Among others, a
system of convict leasing (penal labor)
was introduced in the Southern states
such as Georgia, Mississippi, Florida,
and North Carolina, to replace the
slave workforce. Punished by vagrancy,
many African Americans were sent to
prison in order to provide unpaid workers to plantations and factories, leading
to the exponential growth of the prison
population. In the next decades of the
twentieth century, especially in the South
but also in the North, Jim Crow laws
sanctioned racial segregation in various
areas, including public spaces, schools,
transportation, and the military.
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by the long struggle
of the civil rights movement, which
eventually ended legal segregation in
the United States. Still, these changes
could not erase the centuries during
which African Americans were submitted to forced labor, violence, and social
exclusion. Racial inequalities remain in
the post-civil rights era through racial
discrimination embodied in African
Americans’ lack of access to healthcare
and higher unemployment rates. Today
even if African Americans represent
12 percent of the U.S. population, they
constitute 40 percent of the incarcerated
population.
In recent years, slavery has been the
subject of novels, films, plays, websites,
and museum exhibitions. Never before
have so many monuments and memorials
to remember slavery been unveiled in the
United States. The growing need to create
these memorials and to talk about slavery
are indicators that the wounds of this
tragic past have left deep scars that are
far from being healed. At the same time,
through the newly emerging Black Lives
Matter movement and during the recent
debates to remove the Confederate flag
from public buildings, African American
youth are actively responding to urgent
social issues, including police brutality
and black mass incarceration.
Today, slavery is officially recognized
as a crime against humanity by the United
Nations. Teaching slavery and African
American history in schools nationwide helps us come to terms with slavery and its legacies in the United States.
Presenting a balanced and accurate view
of the history of slavery in textbooks and
recognizing this tragic chapter of U.S.
history as a human atrocity is certainly
a necessary step to understanding our
difficult past and constructing a future
with fewer social inequalities and more
tolerance.
Discussion Questions
1. What are the legacies of slavery in
the United States?
2. Why was the District of Columbia
Emancipation Act the first and
only federal legislation that compensated slave owners?
3. Should emancipated slaves also
have received compensation?
4. What did the Thirteenth
Amendment do? Did it accomplish
its aims?
5. Was the Civil War inevitable?
6. Was the Civil War about slavery?
Was it about emancipation?
Notes
1. Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and
American Slavery (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011),
242.
2. Kate Masur, An Example For All the Land:
Emancipation and the Struggle Over Equality in
Washington, D.C. (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2010), 23–24.
3.Foner, The Fiery Trial, 182.
4. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished
Revolution, 1863–1877 (New York: Harper Collins,
2014), 7.
5. Alfred L. Brophy, Reparations Pro & Con (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 26–27.
Lessons on the Law is a contribution of the
American Bar Association Division for Public
Education. The content in this article does
not necessarily represent the official policies
or positions of the American Bar Association,
its Board of Governors, or the ABA Standing
Committee on Public Education.
Ana Lucia Araujo is a historian and author.
She is a Professor of History at Howard University
in Washington, D.C. She has published several books
on the history and memory of slavery, including
Shadows of the Slave Past: Memory, Heritage, and
Slavery (2014), and Public Memory of Slavery: Victims and Perpetrators in the South Atlantic (2010).
Currently, she is writing a book on the transnational
history of reparations for slavery and the Atlantic
slave trade. She tweets at @analuciaraujo_
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