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KF5JRV > TODAY 18.12.25 09:30z 53 Lines 4392 Bytes #1 (0) @ WW
BID : 17531_KF5JRV
Subj: Today in History - Dec 18
Path: SR1BSZ<OK0NBR<OK2PEN<N3HYM<VE3CGR<N2NOV<NS2B<KF5JRV
Sent: 251218/0914Z 17531@KF5JRV.#NWAR.AR.USA.NA BPQ6.0.24
Following its ratification by the requisite three-quarters of the states earlier in the month, the 13th Amendment is formally a
dopted into the U.S. Constitution, ensuring that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Before the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln and other leaders of the anti-slavery Republican Party sought not to abolish sla
very but merely to stop its extension into new territories and states in the American West. This policy was unacceptable to mos
t Southern politicians, who believed that the growth of free states would turn the U.S. power structure irrevocably against the
m.
In November 1860, Lincolns election as president signaled the secession of seven Southern states and the formation of the Co
nfederate States of America. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, the Civil War began. Four more Southern states joined the
Confederacy, while four border slave states in the upper South remained in the Union.
Lincoln, though he privately detested slavery, responded cautiously to the call by abolitionists for emancipation of all enslav
ed Americans after the outbreak of the Civil War. As the war dragged on, however, the Republican-dominated federal government b
egan to realize the strategic advantages of emancipation: The liberation of enslaved people would weaken the Confederacy by dep
riving it of a major portion of its labor force, which would in turn strengthen the Union by producing an influx of manpower. W
ith 11 Southern states seceded from the Union, there were few pro-slavery congressmen to stand in the way of such an action.
In 1862, Congress annulled the fugitive slave laws, prohibited slavery in the U.S. territories, and authorized Lincoln to emplo
y formerly enslaved people in the army. Following the major Union victory at the Battle of Antietam in September, Lincoln issue
d a warning of his intent to issue an emancipation proclamation for all states still in rebellion on New Years Day.
That dayJanuary 1, 1863President Lincoln formally issued the Emancipation Proclamation, calling on the Union army to libe
rate all enslaved people in states still in rebellion as “an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military nec
essity.” These three million enslaved people were declared to be “then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The proclamatio
n exempted the border states that remained in the Union and all or parts of three Confederate states controlled by the Union ar
my.
The Emancipation Proclamation transformed the Civil War from a war against secession into a war for “a new birth of freedom,
as Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address in 1863. This ideological change discouraged the intervention of France or Engla
nd on the Confederacys behalf and enabled the Union to enlist the 180,000 African American soldiers and sailors who voluntee
red to fight between January 1, 1863, and the conclusion of the war.
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As the Confederacy staggered toward defeat, Lincoln realized that the Emancipation Proclamation, a war measure, might have litt
le constitutional authority once the war was over. The Republican Party subsequently introduced the 13th Amendment into Congres
s, and in April 1864 the necessary two-thirds of the overwhelmingly Republican Senate passed the amendment. However, the House
of Representatives, featuring a higher proportion of Democrats, did not pass the amendment by a two-thirds majority until Janua
ry 1865, three months before Confederate General Robert E. Lees surrender at Appomattox.
On December 2, 1865, Georgia became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, thus giving it the requisite three-fourths maj
ority of states approval necessary to make it the law of the land. Congress required former Confederate state to ratify the
amendment as a condition for re-admission into the Union. On December 18, the 13th Amendment was officially adopted into the Co
nstitution246 years after the first shipload of captive Africans landed at Jamestown, Virginia, and were bought as enslaved
workers.
Slaverys legacy and efforts to overcome it have remained central issues in U.S. society and politics, particularly during th
e post-Civil War Reconstruction era and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s.
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