Constitution

The Thirteenth Amendment: The Abolition of Slavery

The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, and gave Congress power to enforce it.

4Conservative Editors · Published November 8, 2026

The text

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.

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.

Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.

In plain English

Section 1. Slavery and involuntary servitude are abolished throughout the United States and "any place subject to their jurisdiction." The one exception is "as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." The Amendment applies to private actors as well as to governments, the only part of the Constitution besides the ban on titles of nobility to do so.

Section 2. Congress has power to enforce the Amendment "by appropriate legislation."

The Amendment ended an institution that the original Constitution had accommodated, in the three-fifths clause, the slave-trade clause and the fugitive slave clause. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 had freed enslaved people in areas in rebellion, but it did not end slavery everywhere. The Thirteenth Amendment did.

It was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments, together with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth.

What the Founders said

The Founders' generation was divided on slavery. The Declaration of Independence asserted that "all men are created equal," and many Founders condemned slavery while owning slaves. The Constitution never used the word "slave," a point Madison noted, though its text protected the institution in several places.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had banned slavery in the Northwest Territory. Lincoln, who cited the Declaration constantly, argued that the Founders put slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction" by banning its spread and the slave trade. The Amendment fulfilled that reasoning.

The Senate passed the Amendment in April 1864 and the House, after a first failure, passed it on January 31, 1865. It was ratified on December 6, 1865.

How the courts have read it

  • The Slaughter-House Cases (1873): the Court said the Thirteenth Amendment's purpose was to abolish slavery of the African race, though its language was broader.
  • Civil Rights Cases (1883): the Amendment did not authorize Congress to ban racial discrimination in public accommodations.
  • Plessy v. Ferguson (1896): the Court held that segregation did not impose a badge of servitude. Justice Harlan dissented.
  • Bailey v. Alabama (1911): a state law criminalizing breach of a labor contract was involuntary servitude.
  • Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968): Congress's power under Section 2 includes power to eliminate the "badges and incidents" of slavery, including private housing discrimination.
  • United States v. Kozminski (1988): involuntary servitude covers compulsion by physical or legal coercion.

Why it matters now

The Thirteenth Amendment answers a question that every honest reader of the founding era must face. The Constitution as ratified compromised with slavery, and the Amendment corrected it. A conservative view of the Constitution does not require pretending that the original text was without fault; it requires respecting the means by which the people repaired it.

The Amendment also illustrates the principle that rights are secured by amendment and law, not only by judicial innovation. It was the people, through Congress and the states, who ended slavery as a constitutional matter, and it took a war and years of struggle.

Section 2 gave Congress a new kind of power, to reach private conduct, and the Court has used it to support legislation on peonage, human trafficking and some civil rights laws. The "exception clause" for punishment of crime remains a subject of debate in discussions of prison labor.

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