From the Emancipation Proclamation to the 13th Amendment in Dated Steps

Ask most Americans the date slavery ended in the United States and you will get January 1, 1863. It is a good answer to a different question. On that day a President signed a document that freed enslaved people in the parts of the country still in rebellion. It did not free everyone. It did not make freedom permanent. And Abraham Lincoln, the author, knew it better than anyone.

Ending slavery in law took three more years, a presidential election, a House vote that failed and then a House vote that passed, and the ratification of a constitutional amendment on a date almost nobody remembers. It also took a party. I want to walk you through it in order, with a date and a reason for each step, because the order is the lesson. Real change in America is usually a staircase, not a leap.

Why a proclamation was never going to be enough

Before the dates, let me state the problem the way Lincoln saw it. There were three of them.

1. It rested on the war power. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as Commander in Chief, as a military measure against states in rebellion. That was the only constitutional ground he believed he had. It meant the proclamation applied only where his military authority reached, and it raised a question that every lawyer in the country could see: what happens when the war ends and the war power goes away?
2. It left slavery standing in the loyal border states. Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri were slave states that stayed in the Union, and the proclamation did not touch them. It also exempted Tennessee and certain areas of Louisiana and Virginia that were under Union control.
3. A court could undo it. A proclamation can be challenged. A statute can be repealed. Only a constitutional amendment could settle the question for good.

Keep those three problems in mind. Each date below is a step toward solving one of them.

1862: from the District of Columbia to Antietam

April 16, 1862: slavery ends in the District of Columbia. Congress passed, and Lincoln signed, a law ending slavery in the nation's capital, with compensation to owners. Why it mattered: it was the first time in the Republican era that Congress used its undisputed power over federal territory to abolish slavery outright. Nobody could argue it overstepped a state's rights, because the District belongs to Congress.

June 19, 1862: slavery is banned in the federal territories. Congress, with Republican majorities and the Southern members gone, passed the law the party had been promising since 1854. Why it mattered: it delivered the founding promise of the party. It also removed the question that had broken the Whigs and the Missouri Compromise, and you can read how that began in How the Kansas-Nebraska Act Killed the Whigs and Gave Birth to a New Party.

September 17, 1862: Antietam. The bloodiest single day of the war ended with the Confederate army forced out of Maryland. Why it mattered: Lincoln had waited for a victory before announcing emancipation, so that the policy would not look like a cry for help from a losing side. Antietam gave him the opening.

September 22, 1862: the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln announced that on January 1, 1863, all enslaved people in any state or part of a state still in rebellion would be "then, thenceforward, and forever free." Why it mattered: it was a warning with a deadline. Any state that returned to the Union before the date could avoid it. None did.

1863: the final proclamation and the first Black regiments

January 1, 1863: the final Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln signed the order, designating the states and parts of states in rebellion. It excluded the loyal border states and several Union-held areas. It also said that freed men of suitable condition would be received into the armed forces of the United States. Why it mattered: it changed the war. From that day on, the Union army was an army of liberation as well as an army of preservation, and every advance meant more people free.

July 18, 1863: the 54th Massachusetts at Fort Wagner. One of the first Black regiments raised in the North led an assault on a Confederate fort in South Carolina. Why it mattered: Black soldiers answered the argument that they could not or would not fight for the Union. Frederick Douglass, who recruited for the regiments, argued that a Black man with a gun and a uniform would have a hard time being denied citizenship. His lifelong Republican loyalty is explained in Frederick Douglass stayed a Republican all his life and told people why.

1864: the amendment moves, stalls and becomes a campaign promise

April 8, 1864: the Senate passes the amendment. The Senate approved a proposed constitutional amendment banning slavery by more than the two-thirds required. Why it mattered: it was the first time either chamber had cleared the amendment, and it showed that the Republican majority, with help from a few Democrats, could carry it.

June 7 to 8, 1864: the Republican platform. The party met in Baltimore under the name National Union Party, a label meant to welcome War Democrats, and it put the amendment in its platform, calling for a constitutional amendment to end slavery. It nominated Lincoln for President and, for Vice President, Andrew Johnson, a Tennessee Democrat who had stayed loyal to the Union. Why it mattered: the platform turned a congressional project into a promise to the voters. Slavery's end was now on the ballot.

June 15, 1864: the House defeats the amendment. The House voted, and the amendment fell short of the two-thirds majority it needed. Most Democrats voted no. Why it mattered: this is the step people forget. The amendment lost. A bill that fails in June can be passed in January, but only if the voters send a different House or change enough minds, and that is exactly what the election was for.

August 1864: the Democratic platform. At their convention in Chicago, the Democrats adopted a platform that called the war a failure and urged a cessation of hostilities. Why it mattered: it drew the line for the voters. One party said finish the war and end slavery. The other said stop.

November 8, 1864: Lincoln is re-elected. He won a clear victory, and Republicans gained seats in Congress. Why it mattered: the voters had been asked directly and had said yes to the amendment. Many Democrats in the outgoing House, no longer facing the voters, began to reconsider.

December 6, 1864: Lincoln's annual message. The President urged the House to take up the amendment again, saying the voters had settled the question. Why it mattered: it gave Democrats who wanted to vote for it a respectable reason. They could say they were respecting the election.

1865: passage, ratification and the long-delayed freedom

January 31, 1865: the House passes the amendment. After weeks of lobbying, the House voted again, and this time the amendment cleared the two-thirds bar, with votes from a number of Democrats and a number of abstentions that lowered the threshold. The galleries cheered and members wept. Why it mattered: it sent the amendment to the states. It also showed that opposition can crumble once the voters have spoken.

February 1, 1865: Lincoln signs the resolution, and Illinois ratifies. The President has no formal role in the amendment process, but Lincoln signed the joint resolution as a gesture of approval. Illinois, his home state, ratified the amendment that same day. Why it mattered: it began the count that would reach three-fourths of the states.

June 19, 1865: Juneteenth. General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, and announced to the people there that all enslaved people were free. Why it mattered: it was the day the news finally reached the last large pocket of slavery in the Confederacy, two and a half months after Appomattox. It is the origin of the holiday now celebrated across the country.

December 6, 1865: ratification. Georgia ratified, becoming the twenty-seventh of thirty-six states, which was the three-fourths needed (three-fourths of 36 is 27). The Secretary of State, William Seward, formally announced the adoption on December 18. The text reads that 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. Why it mattered: it ended slavery in Delaware and Kentucky, which had refused to ratify and which the proclamation had never reached. It also gave Congress, in Section 2, the power to enforce the ban by appropriate legislation.

April 9, 1866: the Civil Rights Act of 1866 becomes law over a veto. Congress used the new enforcement power to define citizenship and guarantee basic rights, passing the bill over President Andrew Johnson's veto. Why it mattered: it was the first step in using the 13th Amendment as a foundation, and the next step was the 14th Amendment, covered in Citizenship, Equal Protection and the Ballot in the 14th and 15th Amendments.

The two sections, read slowly

The amendment is short enough to memorize, and it pays to read it slowly. Section 1 abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States and every place under its jurisdiction. Section 2 gives Congress the power to enforce the ban by appropriate legislation.

Two things in that text are worth a conservative's attention. First, the exception: servitude is allowed "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The words "duly convicted" were chosen to limit the exception to real criminal punishment after real process. Over the following decades, some Southern states abused criminal law to hold Black men in forced labor, and the argument over that clause continues. The lesson for anyone who cares about the rule of law is that a right written in the Constitution still needs honest courts, honest sheriffs and honest prosecutors to mean anything.

Second, the enforcement clause. By giving Congress the power to act, the amendment's authors made the point that rights need protectors. They had seen that a promise on paper was easily broken, and they built the remedy into the text. That same instinct produced Section 5 of the 14th Amendment and Section 2 of the 15th.

Who opposed it, and why

At each step there was opposition, and honest history names it.

• Most Democrats in Congress opposed the amendment through the spring of 1864. Some argued that it was an unconstitutional invasion of the states' control over their own domestic institutions. Others opposed ending slavery itself.
• The border-state legislatures resisted. Kentucky and Delaware did not ratify in 1865, even as the amendment became part of the Constitution without them.
• Some Northerners worried about the timing. They feared that talking about emancipation would prolong the war by hardening the South.
• Even some allies had doubts. Radical Republicans pushed for more, including citizenship and the vote for freed people, and thought the amendment alone was not enough. They were right, which is why the 14th and 15th Amendments followed.

The strongest objection: a President cannot do this alone

Now let me give the conservative objection to the early steps its full due, because it is a good one. It goes: the Emancipation Proclamation was an act of executive power, justified by war, and a President who can free people by order can do many other things by order too. That is a dangerous precedent, and conservatives should be wary of it.

I agree with the principle, and so, I'd argue, did Lincoln. Here is what the record shows.

1. He used the war power narrowly. The proclamation applied only to areas in rebellion, because that is where the military necessity lay.
2. He knew its limits. He did not claim it could reach the loyal states, and he worried it might not survive the peace.
3. He went to Congress and the states. Rather than rest on the proclamation, he pushed for a constitutional amendment, which required two-thirds of Congress and three-fourths of the states. That is the slowest and hardest path the Constitution offers, and he chose it.
4. The lesson is the process. The right way to make a lasting change is Article V, not a pen. If you want to understand how that process works, Article V Explained, and the Amendment That Took More Than 200 Years explains it, and Justice Jackson's Three-Box Test for Presidential Power, Put to Work gives you a tool for judging any claim of executive power.

That is a conservative lesson dressed in Civil War clothes: when you want something to last, make the argument to Congress and the states and win it the hard way.

What to take from the staircase

The 13th Amendment is the proudest achievement of the Republican Party's first decade, and it came the hard way. It came through a defeat in June, a campaign, an election and a revote. At every step it needed Republicans willing to cast hard votes, and a few Democrats willing to cross the aisle. If you want to know more about the men who cast those votes and their successors, A timeline of the Black Republicans who sat in Congress after the Civil War is a good next read.

There is a modern echo, and I'll state it plainly. When a party loses a vote on a principle it believes in, the right response is to go back to the voters and win the argument, not to give up. And the right way to win lasting change is to build majorities, not to rely on a single signature.

The bottom line

• The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 freed people only in areas in rebellion. Permanent, nationwide abolition required the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865.
• The Republican Party carried the amendment through the Senate in April 1864, lost it in the House in June, made it a plank in its 1864 platform, won the election and passed it in the House on January 31, 1865.
• Opposition came mostly from Democrats in Congress and from border-state legislatures. Say so plainly, and be fair about the doubts of some who supported the war.
• Lincoln's decision to seek an amendment, instead of leaning on a wartime order, is a model for how to make a change that lasts: win it through Article V.
• When someone tells you slavery ended on a single day, hand them the dates above. Freedom came in steps, and each step took people willing to vote for it.