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Changing the Constitution
successes, on January 1, 1863, President Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation as an emergency measure, setting free all slaves within the
‘‘rebellious’’ states—that is, the Confederacy. This was a wartime device
to damage the South’s economy and produce disorder there. The Proclamation did not emancipate slaves in the ‘‘loyal slave states’’—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri—nor did it guarantee that slavery
might not be restored after the end of the war. Besides, many men in Congress believed the Emancipation Proclamation to be unconstitutional.
So a year later, in January 1864, there was introduced in Congress a
proposal for a constitutional amendment that would forbid slavery anywhere in the Union. This joint resolution was passed by the Senate in
April, but rejected by the House in June. Not until January 1865 did the
House of Representatives approve the proposed amendment—and then
by a narrow margin and after much persuasion. By that time the Confederacy clearly was losing the war. On December 18, 1865, enough States
had ratified this new Thirteenth Amendment, and it became part of the
Constitution—the first amendment since 1804.
In Section 2, we encounter for the first time in the Constitution an odd
provision that will be repeated in the Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and later
amendments. This is the Enforcement Clause, which seemingly confers a
non-legislative power on Congress to enforce the Thirteenth Amendment
by appropriate legislation.
d . a m e n d m e n t x i v (1868)
section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in
each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United
States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a