Download The 13th Amendment

The 13th Amendment
By: Kyle Kay, Georgia Dettmann and
Harrison Shapiro
The Thirteenth Amendment
● The Thirteenth Amendment was added to the
Constitution to abolish slavery.
● The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by different
states at different times in 1865.
● The amendment is two sections and two sentences
long.
Emancipation Proclamation and the
Thirteenth Amendment
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The Emancipation Proclamation freed all the slaves in the rebelling
southern states.
Lincoln sold this to America by making it a military measure to deplete the
South's workforce and used his power as Commander in Chief of the
military to pass it.
While a useful temporary measure, the Emancipation Proclamation did not
free all the slaves in America and may not have maintained its legality and
validity after the war.
In January 1864, a Missouri congressman drafted a proposal for a
constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, likely after Lincoln persuaded
him to. This became the Thirteenth Amendment.
Politics of the Thirteenth Amendment
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To pass a constitutional amendment, a two-thirds supermajority vote is
required in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. The
Amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states. No
presidential approval is required for it to pass.
The state of Nevada was admitted to the Union to ratify the amendment.
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The Amendment was passed during the war when there were no Southern
congressman in congress. It should have passed easily.
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The Senate passed the Amendment on April 8, 1864.
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The Amendment was initially shot down by the House of Representatives
but was eventually passed on December 18th.
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Lincoln used corruption and other political tactics to convince House
Democrats to vote for the Amendment.
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The vote was extremely close. But the Amendment passed.
Ratification
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In order for constitutional amendments to become valid, three-quarters of
the states must ratify them.
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The amendment was ratified by different states at different times throughout
1865.
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These initial ratification dates range from February 1st, 1865 (Illinois) to
December 6th, 1865 (Georgia)
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Some states ratified the Amendment later after initially rejecting it.
Ratification and Key
Ratified amendment, 1865
Ratified amendment post-enactment, 1865–1870
Ratified amendment after first rejecting amendment, 1866–1995
Territories of the United States in 1865, not yet states
Appomattox and the End of the Civil
War
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After the Confederates suffered a brutal defeat in the Appomattox
campaign, General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army decided to
surrender his army to General Ulysses S. Grant of the Union Army.
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General Lee and General Grant passed notes to each other to decide the
date of meeting at Appomattox.
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The two planned to meet in the Town of Appomattox Court House, Virginia
on April 9th, 1865.
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General Lee's men were sent home, but all war equipment was
surrendered.
The Assassination of Abraham
Lincoln
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John Wilkes Booth was a young and handsome actor who was fiercely
loyal to the Confederacy.
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In February of 1865, Booth tried to kidnap the President but failed.
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Booth waited in a foyer and walked up behind Lincoln when the sounds of
his footsteps were concealed by laughter. Booth Shot him and escaped.
Seward survived the assassination attempt and Johnson was never
attacked.
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Booth was found in a barn in Virginia. Cavalry set the barn on fire and shot
him.
Lincoln only allowed one bodyguard to protect him.
Booth plotted to shoot Lincoln at the play Our American Cousin on April
14th while two accomplices each assassinated Secretary of State William
Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson.
Presidential Reconstruction
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The Thirteenth Amendment meant that a huge change had to occur in
Southern society and the South's economy. Reconstruction would help
ease the South into this new way of life.
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Lincoln's Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction made it very easy
for formerly Confederate people and areas to rejoin the Union.
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Andrew Johnson, who took over after Lincoln's death, finished his vision of
Reconstruction. The new South was too much like the old South, however,
and radical Republicans in Congress were outraged.
Congressional Reconstruction and
"Redemption"
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The Republicans won the 1866 election by a landslide because most voters still distrusted the
Democrats.
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The Reconstruction Act, passed by an angry Congress led by radical Republicans, declared that
no legal governments existed in the South and divided it into five military districts.
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Under the Reconstruction Act, to rejoin the Union Southern states had to ratify the Fourteenth
Amendment and grant suffrage to freedmen.
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One of the requirements for these Southern states to rejoin the Union was that they had to
create new state constitutions. However, only three groups of people could participate in the
conventions to create them: blacks, Northerners living in the South, and Southerners who could
prove that they had not participated in or directly supported the rebellion (there were very few of
these people).
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The fraud-ridden and close 1876 election ended after backroom deals allowed the Republican
candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes to become President. Hayes pulled the army out of the South
and in doing this ended Reconstruction.
The Fourteenth Amendment
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The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments are all related to
black rights and are known together as the "Reconstruction Amendments."
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The Fourteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1866, but it was
ratified in 1868.
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This amendment makes anyone born in the United States a citizen. This
includes blacks and any children of immigrants born in the United States. It
was a huge leap forward because it granted these people the full rights of
United States citizens.
The Fifteenth Amendment
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This amendment passed Congress in 1869 and was ratified in 1870.
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In the text of the Amendment it grants suffrage to any male born in the
United States. This was a huge thing for many races other than blacks as
well, including Native Americans, Chinese, and immigrants from other
countries as well.
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This Amendment also ensured that black votes were not counted as "subvotes."
The Fourteenth amendment did not specifically grant African Americans
the right to vote, although it lowered congressional representation for
states that denied them the vote. This amendment specifically granted
them this right.
Racism and Discrimination
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The Thirteenth Amendment did not make blacks equal to whites or give
them complete legal equality. As well as this, the Thirteenth Amendment
does not even expressly mention blacks.
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"Jim Crow" laws were laws that segregated blacks and whites in public
places, mostly in the South. Jim Crow-type laws were not made illegal by
the Thirteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court upheld Jim Crow laws and
declared the 1875 Civil Rights Act unconstitutional in an 8-1 vote.
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Due process of the law and suffrage were not granted to freed slaves by
the Thirteenth Amendment either. These were granted to black people by
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Slavery in Other Forms
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After the end of legal slavery, bondage appeared in other guises, including
the Chinese coolie system and a kind of debt-based slavery in the Deep
South backed up by local police called "peonage."
Coolies were indentured laborers from China. Thousands of them were
coerced or even kidnapped to work in other countries. Coolies were forced
to work hard and had to endure constant abuse from white laborers.
Peonage is a debt-based method of indentured servitude. It existed in the
South as a method of keeping forced laborers. Despite peonage being
outlawed, sharecropping emerged in the South instead. Sharecropping
was never outlawed but simply died out when tractors replaced laborers.
The Supreme Court made peonage and the coolie system illegal after
rulings in the Slaughter House Cases of 1872 and the Clyatt v. United
States case in 1905.
Slavelike migrant labor by mexican immigrants exists in parts of America.
The End