13th Amendment

Abolishes slavery & involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime - Signers: Speaker of the House Schuyler Colfax (R-IN) & Vice President Hannibal Hamlin (R-M) The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 18... 64, by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted by the States on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed it to have been enacted. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War. The Amendment reads: Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except in the punishment for a 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. 13th Amendment signed by the Members of the House of Representatives and U.S. Senate in 1865 that passed the landmark legislation. Slavery had been tacitly protected in the original Constitution through clauses such as the Three-Fifths Compromise, in which three-fifths of the slave population was counted for representation in the United States House of Representatives. Prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, more than sixty years had passed since the last amendment to the Constitution had been successfully ratified. Though many slaves had been declared free by Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, their post-war status was uncertain. 13th Amendment is exhibited in its first appearance, in book form. The full title of the publication is The Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States of America by R. Spalding, New York, 1865. Decorative Cloth, 1st Edition. 8vo - 7¾" - 9¾" tall. Harper's Weekly, New York, February 18, 1865, capturing a jubilant scene captioned: "Scene in the House on the Passage of the Proposition to Amend the Constitution", being ...Read More