The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in the United States

On December 6, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, formally abolishing slavery throughout the United States. Passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, it needed approval from three-fourths of the states to take effect.

That threshold was reached when Georgia became the 27th and deciding state to ratify, sealing the amendment’s adoption. Its language was stark and sweeping:

“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.”

Where President Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation had freed enslaved people only in Confederate-held territory as a wartime measure, the amendment was permanent and national, written directly into the Constitution.

It was the first of three Reconstruction Amendments. The Fourteenth and Fifteenth would soon follow, together reshaping citizenship and voting rights, though the struggle to realize those guarantees stretched on for a century and beyond.