December 10, 2015

The 13th Amendment turns 150

September 18, 2015
By Tom Donnelly

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 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

This December, the 13th Amendment turns 150 years old. So, while it’s tempting to spend this Constitution Day celebrating George Washington, James Madison, and the “miracle in Philadelphia,” let’s not forget about the constitutional achievements of President Lincoln and his generation, including the transformational 13th Amendment.

In the summer of 1787, Washington and his generation crafted the most durable form of government in world history, and Constitution Day itself commemorates the day that the Framers signed the original document before sending it to the states for ratification. On the issue of slavery, the Framers refused to mention that “peculiar institution” by name, and Madison and his colleagues rejected some of the most radical proposals of the pro-slavery delegates. Nevertheless, in one key compromise—the Three-Fifths Clause (Article I, Section 2)—the Framers skewed the division of political power towards Southern slaveholders in antebellum America. It would take President Lincoln and his generation—including thousands of African Americans willing to fight for their own freedom—to abolish slavery once and for all. Even as Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter, this outcome was far from inevitable.

Prior to the Civil War, the 13th Amendment’s ambitious remedy—immediate, uncompensated emancipation—was a mere pipe dream. Instead, anti-slavery politicians like Abraham Lincoln focused on more modest goals, such as an end to slavery in the federal territories and gradual, compensated emancipation in the slave states. The 1860 Republican Party platform typified this modest agenda, recognizing the “inviolate … right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively.”

Click on Link:

http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2015/09/the-13th-amendment-turns-150/