The Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished slavery in the United States, was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and ratified on December 6, 1865. The amendment was the first of three Reconstruction amendments adopted in the years following the Civil War. Although the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, declared that “all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free,” the Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to slaveholding border states or to areas within Confederate states that were already under Union control. Recognizing that a constitutional amendment was necessary to guarantee the permanent abolition of slavery in the nation, President Lincoln actively pursued the passage of the Thirteenth 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.
Source: The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, January 31, 1865; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789–1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
Evaluating the Evidence