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.
Amendment XIII
In order to understand the background of the 13th,; 14th. & 15th. amendments to the Constitution, you must first understand the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 which were the precursor of them.
The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 began the period of time known as Radical Reconstruction. These laws included the following measures:
- The South was divided into five military districts and governed by military governors until acceptable state constitutions could be written and approved by Congress.
- All males, regardless of race, but excluding former Confederate leaders, were permitted to participate in the constitutional conventions that formed the new governments in each state.
- New state constitutions were required to provide for universal manhood suffrage (voting rights for all men) without regard to race.
- States were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment in order to be readmitted to the Union.
“Whereas no legal State governments or adequate protection for life or property now exists in the rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida. Texas and Arkansas; and whereas it is necessary that peace and good order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State governments can be legally established: Therefore,
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That said rebel States shall be divided into military districts and made subject to the military authority of the United States as hereinafter prescribed, and for that purpose Virginia shall constitute the first district; North Carolina and South Carolina the second district; Georgia, Alabama and Florida the third district; Mississippi and Arkansas the fourth district; and Louisiana and Texas the fifth district.”
Although the military conflict had ended, Reconstruction was in many ways still a war. This important struggle was waged by radical northerners who wanted to punish the South and Southerners who desperately wanted to preserve their way of life.
Under federal bayonets, blacks, including those who had recently been freed, received the right to vote, hold political offices, and become judges and police chiefs. They held positions that formerly belonged to Southern Democrats.
President Johnson vetoed all the Radical initiatives, but Congress overrode him each time. It was the Radical Republicans who impeached President Johnson in 1868. The Senate, by a single vote, failed to convict him, but his power to hinder radical reform was diminished.
This was the atmosphere under which Amendment XIII was passed.
It could be argued that rather than preserve the union by re assimilating the break-away Southern States a literal “Shotgun marriage” was affected at the point of a bayonet. The former Confederate States were not treated as formerly estranged brothers reintegrated into the family circle but as a conquered adversary to be ground into submission.
It cannot be ignored that, in war, “to the victor goes the spoils.” The animosity between the inhabitants of the north and south did not soften after the civil war ended. In fact, they still simmer to this day, especially with the current push to remove Southern civil war icons, statues and monuments.
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