Reconstruction - The 13th Amendment
The 13th Amendment
- Section 1 of the 13th Amendment says: 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 says: Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Historically, the 13th Amendment was unusual. The first 12 amendments had been adopted within 15 years of the Constitution’s creation and approval. The first 10 laws in the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights, were passed in 1791, the 11th Amendment came in 1795 and the 12th in 1804. When the 13th was proposed there had been no new amendments adopted in more than 60 years.
The objective of the 13th was also unusual. During the crises of secession and prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the majority of bills passed by Congress had kept slavery intact. There was very little proposed legislation to abolish slavery. Congress-memberJohn Quincy Adams made 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 Congress-member Ashley (R-OH). This was soon followed by a similar proposal made by Congress-member Wilson, (R-IA).
Eventually, Congress and the public began to take notice and a number of additional legislative proposals were brought forward. Sen.Henderson (D-MO) submitted a joint resolution for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery on January 11, 1864. The abolition of slavery had, historically, been associated with Republicans, but Henderson was a “war Democrat.” The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Lyman Trumbull (R-IL), became involved in merging all these different proposals together for an amendment. A radical Republican, Sen. Charles Sumner (R-M), submitted a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery as well as guarantee equality on February 8 of the same year. As the number of proposals and the extent of their scope grew, the Senate Judiciary Committee presented the Senate with an amendment proposal combining the drafts of Ashley, Wilson and Henderson.
After debating the amendment, the Senate passed it on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 to 6. Although they initially rejected the amendment, the House of Representatives passed it on January 31, 1865, by a vote of 119 to 56. President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution, February 1, 1865, and submitted the proposed amendment to the states for ratification. Secretary of StateWilliam Seward issued a public statement verifying the ratification of the 13th Amendment on December 18, 1865. The 13th Amendment completed legislation to abolish slavery, which began with the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. Approximately 40,000 slaves remaining in Kentucky were freed by the 13th Amendment.
Since the 13th Amendment was proposed before the Southern states had been restored to the Union after the Civil War, it should have easily passed the Congress. However, while the Senate did pass it in April of 1864, the House declined to do so. President Lincoln then took an active role to ensure its passage through the House by ensuring the amendment was added to the Republican Party platform for the upcoming Presidential elections. His efforts came to fruition when the House passed the bill in January 1865. The 13th Amendment's archival copy bears an apparent Presidential signature, under the usual ones of the Speaker of the House and the vice president after the words "Approved February 1, 1865."
Terminology
The 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments are collectively the post-Civil War legislative measures that effected a paradigm change in civil rights in the U.S. The Supreme Court has ruled that the 13th Amendment does not prohibit mandatory military service in the United States. But the 13th Amendment does prohibit specific performance as a judicial remedy for violations of contracts for personal services such as employment contracts. Offenses against the 13th Amendment were being prosecuted as late as 1947.
Prior to 1988, inflicting involuntary servitude through psychologically coercive means was included in the interpretation of the 13th Amendment. In 1988 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that compulsion of servitude through psychological coercion is not prohibited by the 13th Amendment. Psychological coercion had been the primary means of forcing involuntary servitude in the case of Elizabeth Ingalls in 1947. In 1988, U.S. v. Kozminski, this was circumscribed to mean only physical coercion. However, the Supreme Court held that there are exceptions. The court decision circumscribed involuntary servitude to be limited to those situations when the master subjects the servant to either threatened or actual physical force, threatened or actual state-imposed legal coercion, or fraud or deceit where the servant is a minor, an immigrant or mentally incompetent. The federal anti-slavery statutes were updated in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which expanded the federal statutes' coverage to cases in which victims are enslaved through psychological, as well as physical, coercion.
Labor is defined as work of economic or financial value. Un-free labor, or labor not willingly given, is obtained in a number of ways: First, by causing or threatening to cause serious harm to any person; by physically restraining or threatening to physically restrain another person; by abusing or threatening to abuse the law or legal process; by knowingly destroying, concealing, removing, confiscating or possessing any actual or purported passport or other immigration document, or any other actual or purported government identification document, of another person; through blackmail and/or causing or threatening to cause financial harm, or using financial control over, to any person.
Peonage: Refers to a person in "debt servitude," or involuntary servitude tied to the payment of a debt. Compulsion to servitude includes the use of force, the threat of force, or the threat of legal coercion to compel a person to work against his or her will. Involuntary Servitude: Refers to a person held by actual force, threats of force, or threats of legal coercion in a condition of slavery—compulsory service or labor against his or her will. This also includes the condition in which people are compelled to work against their will by a "climate of fear" evoked by the use of force, the threat of force, or the threat of legal coercion that is sufficient to compel service against a person's will. i.e., suffer legal consequences unless compliant with demands made upon them. The first Supreme Court case to uphold the ban against involuntary servitude was Bailey v. Alabama in 1911. Forced Labor is labor or service obtained by: threats of serious harm or physical restraint; by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe they would suffer serious harm or physical restraint if they did not perform such labor or services, or by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process.
Victims of human trafficking and other conditions of forced labor are commonly coerced by threat of legal actions to their detriment. A leading example is the deportation of illegal immigrants. "The prospect of being forced to leave the United States, no matter how degrading the current living conditions, sometimes serves as a deterrent to reporting the situation to law enforcement." Victims of forced labor and trafficking are protected by Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241 - Conspiracy Against Rights says: Conspiracy to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person's rights or privileges secured by the Constitution or the laws of the United States. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242 - Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law says: It is a crime for any person acting under color of law (federal, state or local officials who enforce statutes, ordinances, regulations, or customs) to willfully deprive or cause to be deprived the rights, privileges or immunities of any person secured or protected by the Constitution and laws of the U.S. This includes willfully subjecting to or causing to be subjected any person to different punishments, pains or penalties, than those prescribed for punishment of citizens on account of such person being an alien or by reason of his/her color or race.
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several states by the 38th Congress, on January 31, 1865. The amendment was declared, in a proclamation of Secretary of State William Henry Seward, dated December 18, 1865, to have been ratified by the legislatures of 27 of the then 36 states. Although it was ratified by the necessary three-fourths of the states within a year of its proposal, its most recent ratification occurred in 1995 in Mississippi, which was the last of the 36 states in existence in 1865 to ratify it.
The dates of ratification were:
Illinois (February 1, 1865) Rhode Island (February 2, 1865) Michigan (February 3, 1865) Maryland (February 3, 1865) New York (February 3, 1865) Pennsylvania (February 3, 1865) West Virginia (February 3, 1865) Missouri (February 6, 1865) Maine (February 7, 1865) Kansas (February 7, 1865) Massachusetts (February 7, 1865) Virginia (February 9, 1865) Ohio (February 10, 1865) Indiana (February 13, 1865) Nevada (February 16, 1865) Louisiana (February 17, 1865) Minnesota (February 23, 1865) Wisconsin (February 24, 1865) Vermont (March 8, 1865) Tennessee (April 7, 1865) Arkansas (April 14, 1865) Connecticut (May 4, 1865) New Hampshire (July 1, 1865) South Carolina (November 13, 1865) Alabama (December 2, 1865) North Carolina (December 4, 1865) Georgia (December 6, 1865)
Ratification was completed on December 6, 1865. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
Oregon (December 8, 1865) California (December 19, 1865) Florida (December 28, 1865, reaffirmed on June 9, 1869) Iowa (January 15, 1866) New Jersey (January 23, 1866, after having rejected it on March 16, 1865) Texas (February 18, 1870) Delaware (February 12, 1901, after having rejected it on February 8, 1865) Kentucky (March 18, 1976, after having rejected it on February 24, 1865) Mississippi (March 16, 1995, after having rejected it on December 5, 1865)
