Washington D.C. (WHTM) On January 31, 1865, the U.S. Congress passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which ended ...

To place slave emancipation on a secure constitutional footing, Congress proposed on January 31, 1865, to abolish slavery by constitutional amendment. Ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment ...

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On December 6, 1865, exactly one year after his last address to Congress, Georgia became the 27th state to ratify the 13th Amendment, raising the total to the necessary three-quarters of the states.

Experience supported these conjectures: no amendment, however minor its attempt to strengthen the general government, had ever survived the ratification ... be denied by a thirteenth, the majority ...

For more than a century after the states ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court determined that Congress’s power to legislate against the badges and incidents of slavery did not ...