Why did President Lincoln and his Republican allies push for the Thirteenth Amendment?
About this video
With Southern representatives gone during the Civil War, Republicans controlled Congress, abolished slavery in the territories and the District of Columbia, and Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure. Because it was unclear whether people freed by the proclamation would stay free after the war, Republicans passed the 13th Amendment to end slavery permanently, using language taken from the Northwest Ordinance.
You'll be able to
- explain why Republicans controlled Congress during the Civil War.
- explain why the Emancipation Proclamation was not enough to end slavery permanently.
- describe what the 13th Amendment says and where its language came from.
Key words
- Emancipation Proclamation
- Lincoln's wartime order freeing enslaved people in enemy (Confederate) territory.
- 13th Amendment
- The 1865 amendment that ended slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.
- Involuntary servitude
- Being forced to work for someone against your will.
- War powers
- Authority the President has as commander in chief during war.
Transcript
[MUSIC] During the Civil war, all of the Southern representatives in Congress. They all have seats in Congress. You have the big Chambers in the House of Representatives and the big Chamber in the Senate. During the Civil War, all the representatives from the Southern states left. All those seats remained empty throughout the Civil War. It was mainly only Republicans that remained in the House and the Senate, and now that they were in charge of the federal government, they not only were prosecuting a war against the South, they immediately abolished slavery in the territories and they abolished slavery in the District of Columbia, and then eventually Abraham Lincoln issues the emancipation proclamation. The emancipation proclamation freed all slaves in enemy territory. He used it as part of his war power that slaves were being used to advance the confederacy cause,
and so therefore, as Commander in Chief, he could demand an end to that use of enslaved labor, but as the war began to move towards an end, it wasn't clear whether or not all of those who had been freed under the emancipation proclamation would remain free after the end of the Civil War. There was a chance that all of those Black Americans who had been freed by Lincoln's proclamation would have to go back to their owners under the original constitutional agreement that Southern States could allow slavery. Republicans decided to end slavery once and for all. They debated and they passed the following amendment to the Constitution. Section I, 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, and Section II, Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
That's the language of the 13th Amendment, and it's taken straight from Jefferson's language in the Northwest ordinance. They chose language that reflected their belief that the country had been tilted towards freedom from the very beginning. [MUSIC]
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