![]() On Septem– in the midst of the American Civil War – President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The spread of slavery, as well as the opposing anti-slavery and abolitionist movements, made it the most pertinent American policy issue in the first half of the 19th century. No such offerings were given in the Southern states, where the largest amount of slave labor was concentrated in the country. Over the first few decades of the United States’ existence, every state in the North had either eliminated slavery entirely, or provided ways for slaves to either be emancipated, or to emancipate themselves. Sandford, which undermined the abolitionist’s use of the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery. This was reinforced in the 1857 Supreme Court case of Dred Scott v. The Fugitive Slave Cause, located in Article IV, Section 2, further asserted that a slave who was bound by the laws of their home state remained slaves wherever they went, even if they fled to a non-slavery state. This was designed to handle the apportionment of the substantial enslaved population across the country, specifically for measuring the number of seats the individual states should have in the House of Representatives. Only the Three-Fifths Compromise, mentioned in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, made any reference to the way enslaved persons were to be regarded by the federal government, that being as “three-fifths” of a fully free citizen. ![]() Up until 1865, slavery was sparingly mentioned in the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment was the final answer to the question surrounding the institution of slavery in the United 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.Ĭongress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. It forbids chattel slavery across the United States and in every territory under its control, except as a criminal punishment. ![]() 1865 (Library of Congress)Īmendment Thirteen to the Constitution – the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments – was ratified on December 6, 1865. Illustration celebrating the emancipation of African Americans with the Thirteenth Amendment, c.
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