On December 15, 1865 Sec. of State William Seward announced that the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery had been ratified and that it was now the law of the land. For this new blog on Reconstruction I am posting some of the basics about the 13th Amendment.
Here is the text of the 13th Amendment:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxiii
13th Amendment
Amendment XIII
Section 1.
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.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Here is an image of the 13th Amendment. You will note that Lincoln affixed his signature to the Amendment, even though that is not Constitutionally required.
13th Amendment with Lincoln signature
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=40
For the amendment to become law, it needed the votes of 2/3 of the House and Senate and ratification by 3/4 of the states. The president is not required to sign the amendment for it to become law.
The amendment passed easily in the Senate on April 8, 1864, by a vote of 38 in favor to 6 opposed. Two Democrats joined the Republican majority in supporting the Amendment.
As anyone who has seen the movie Lincoln knows, the opposition to the Amendment in the House of Representatives was much stronger than in the Senate.
The House failed to pass the Amendment on June 15, 1864 when it voted 93 in favor of the Amendment and 65 against. The Amendment lacked the necessary 2/3 majority.
On January 31, 1865 a new vote on the Amendment was taken. The amendment passed by a vote of 119 to 56. Here is John Nicolay’s telegram to Lincoln that the Amendment had passed. Nicolay was a German immigrant.
Nicolay telegram Jan 31, 1865 to Lincoln
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=mal&fileName=mal1/403/4037900/malpage.db&recNum=0
Harper’s Weekly February 18, 1865 included this illustration of the scene in the House of Representatives when the Amendment passed.
The Columbia South Carolina Daily Phoenix published a front page editorial, reprinted from the Mobile Tribune, on December 14, 1865 urging Southern whites to accept that the 13th Amendment would soon be law and that resistance to the end of slavery would only harm the South. The editorial can be found here:
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84027008/1865-12-14/ed-1/seq-1/
Here is an except from the Columbia Daily Phoenix article:
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