On this day in 1865, the 13th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted, officially abolishing slavery in the United States.
On a personal level, President Abraham Lincoln was a vigorous abolitionist. But it took until halfway into the Civil War before he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling for the liberation of enslaved people in Confederate states and shifting the war from an internal conflict to one centered on a fight for justice through the abolition of slavery. That prompted the voluntary enlistment of nearly 200,000 African Americans to fight in the war.
As the war neared its end, the Republican Party moved to amend the Constitution to ensure that efforts to roll back the abolition of slavery would be impossible. After debating several ideas, a proposed amendment was introduced that would ban slavery and involuntary servitude (except as a punishment for criminal activity).
It took little time for the Senate, dominated by Lincoln’s Republican Party, to pass the amendment. But the House took longer to pass it, holding the process up until January 1865, a few months before the war ended that May.
It took until months after the Civil War’s end in May 1865 for the amendment to reach the threshold of ratification by three-fourths of states in the country. The amendment crossed that threshold when Georgia became the 27th state to ratify the amendment on Dec. 2. Former Confederate states were required to ratify the amendment to be re-admitted into the country.
You can read more about the amendment at History.com.
