When was the 13th Amendment written and when was it ratified?

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The first bill introducing the anti-slavery 13th Amendment was introduced into the House of Representatives by James Mitchell Ashley (Ohio), on December 14, 1864, nearly a year after President Lincoln issued the final executive order for the Emancipation Proclamation.


James Falconer Wilson and John Brooks Henderson introduced competing legislation in the weeks that followed, as did a number of other Senators and Representatives. The Senate Judiciary Committee combined elements of the Ashley, Wilson and Henderson bills into a joint resolution for the Thirteenth Amendment, which the Senate quickly passed, 38-6, in April 1864.

The House of Representatives rejected the resolution. When Representative Ashley reintroduced it to the 38th Congress a few months later, President Lincoln coerced the House into supporting it by adding the 13th Amendment to the Republican party platform for the 1865 election year. The House capitulated and voted in favor of the resolution 119-56 on January 31, 1865.

President Lincoln signed the proposed Amendment and submitted it to the states the following day, February 1, 1865. The Amendment was ratified and adopted on December 6, 1865.

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.

The Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution , abolishing slavery, was proposed by Congress 31 January 1865, and ratified in December 1865

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