Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States completed the abolition of slavery in the United States. The amendment, passed in the months following the American Civil War (1861-1865), built on President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The 1863 proclamation had declared enslaved people free in the Confederate States still in rebellion.
The amendment
was set forth in two sections.
Section 1 states, “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 states, “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”
Thirteenth Amendment protections.
The 13th Amendment prohibits the practice of slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States. It prohibits the state and federal governments from authorizing slavery, and it prohibits private individuals and corporations from owning enslaved persons. The amendment also prohibits involuntary servitude—that is, treating employees as if they were enslaved. Consequently, the 13th Amendment prohibits employers from requiring their employees to enter into long-term contracts that make it difficult for employees to leave their jobs and seek better conditions and wages. The amendment also gives Congress the power to enact laws addressing what courts later called the “badges and incidents of slavery.” Congress has used this power to enact civil rights laws that outlaw race discrimination in contracts, employment, and housing. Congress has also used this power to pass laws that prohibit hate crimes based on race or ethnicity.
To a large extent, the 14th Amendment —which made clear that formerly enslaved people were citizens entitled to equal protection under the law—overshadows its predecessor amendment as a foundation of civil rights protections for all Americans. Courts have largely deferred to congressional power to enforce the 13th Amendment’s provisions.
History.
The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declared enslaved people free, but only in the Confederate States still in rebellion. The 13th Amendment was proposed on Jan. 31, 1865, during the last months of the American Civil War. It was ratified on Dec. 6, 1865, ending slavery in all parts of the United States. The amendment also extended principles of free labor throughout the United States, thereby declaring an end to the practice of debt peonage (forced labor in the service of a debt), which had existed in the North and the western territories. The 13th Amendment not only freed the enslaved people but also extended fundamental human rights to the newly freed people.
Congress soon passed legislation enforcing the amendment, including the 1866 Civil Rights Act. The act declared formerly enslaved people to be citizens of the United States, entitled to the fundamental rights of free citizens. The following year, Congress enacted the 14th Amendment, clarifying that those rights were enforceable against state governments.
In the years following the Reconstruction Era (1865-1877), the Supreme Court of the United States interpreted the 13th Amendment narrowly. For example, the court held that the amendment did not protect Black workers from attempts by white workers to oust them from their jobs. During the New Deal Era of the 1930’s and 1940’s, the Department of Justice under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman cited 13th Amendment protections as it sought to protect the rights of low-wage domestic and agricultural workers. In the 1968 case Jones v. Mayer, the court upheld a provision of the 1866 Civil Rights Act that prohibits race discrimination in real estate transactions. In its ruling, the court indicated that it would defer to congressional power—that is, Congress’s ability to craft legislation—to enforce the 13th Amendment. Since then, the court has continued to defer to congressional power.
