Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 13th Amendment (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. The American Civil War wasn't just a military conflict. There was also a major political and legal struggle that took place alongside the military campaigns. In the last few months of the war, President Abraham Lincoln knew that if the war was truly to be the end of this conflict, it was necessary to ban slavery once and for all. And that would require changing the Constitution. Learn more about the 13th Amendment and the battle for its ratification on this episode. episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:35 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. If you remember back to my episode on the election of 1864, there was no guarantee. that Lincoln was going to win. The Civil War was extremely unpopular in some circles in the North,

Starting point is 00:01:25 and many of the Union's early setbacks were placed squarely at the feet of the President. However, nothing is more popular than winning, and success on the battlefield led to an overwhelming victory for Lincoln. In fact, by late 1864, it became obvious to many people that the North was going to win. General William Tecumse's Sherman marched to the sea, devastated southern logistics and supplies. The Emancipation Proclamation, which went into a fact of the United States, effect on January 1, 1863, ensured that wherever the Union Army went, slaves would be freed, and, in fact, slaves would go out of their way to flee to Union lines to seek their freedom. This rendered every slave-owning farm and plantation wherever the Union Army went on economical,

Starting point is 00:02:06 as they would lose their entire supply of forced labor. The Emancipation Proclamation, however, was not a law. It was a military order issued by Lincoln in his position as Commander-in-Chief, and it only applied to states that were in rebeck. Many people don't realize that there were slave states that were still in the Union. In particular, in Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky, slavery was still legal. Once the war ended and the southern states were admitted back into the Union, the Emancipation Proclamation would become null and void, and slavery would once again become legal. Lincoln realized that if slavery wasn't ended once and for all, the country could go back to war over the same issue within a generation. You might be

Starting point is 00:02:48 wondering, why not just pass a law banning slavery? The reason had to do with how the Constitution was interpreted in the 19th century. The Constitution enumerates specific powers to the federal government. At the time, the general consensus was that the federal government couldn't do anything, not explicitly granted to them in the Constitution. And this was the genesis behind the whole issue of state's rights. Furthermore, even if Congress did pass a law banning slavery, the law could easily be overturned in the future. The solution had to be a constitutional amendment. Legally, the U.S. Constitution trumps everything else at the state and federal levels. Moreover, while passing a constitutional amendment is much more difficult, overturning it would be just as hard.

Starting point is 00:03:33 You might think that after several years of a bloody war which had slavery as its root cause, abolishing slavery would have been easy. But this was not the case. Passing a constitutional amendment required two-thirds, of both houses of Congress to support the amendment. Then, once it passes Congress, it has to be approved by three-fourths of all the states. Lincoln's Republicans were staunchly abolitionist by this point. They held the majority of seats in the 37th Congress in both the House and the Senate. The Democrats, however, were not so keen on a formal abolition of slavery. Their primary concern was the restoration of the Union at any cost. In particular, they were willing to accept a negotiated compromised with the South to end the war. They felt that if the Constitution formally abolished

Starting point is 00:04:18 slavery, then the South would have no incentive to come to the negotiating table, and the war would drag on even longer. An amendment was first proposed in the Senate in April of 1964. It easily blew through the Senate with a vote of 38 to 6, with only two Democrats voting in favor of the amendment. In June, the amendment was sent to the House, where it failed to get the two-thirds approval by only 13 votes. Congress adjourned in July with the amendment hanging over the country during the election. Once the election of 1864 was over and Lincoln won with a resounding victory, with 70% of the vote from the active military, might I add, he had the mandate he needed to pursue an amendment to abolish slavery. This became his top legislative priority. Congress reconvened in December in the first

Starting point is 00:05:04 order of business for the majority Republicans was passing the constitutional amendment. The goal was only 13 votes away. If they could close that gap, then they could get the amendment to the states. Debate in the House was fierce, but there was surprisingly no longer any attempt to justify slavery on moral grounds. With the southern contingent absent, the argument shifted exclusively to state's rights and the merits of allowing freed slaves to become citizens. Lincoln, however, knew that the amendment wouldn't pass by debate and changing minds. He pulled out all the stops and ordered his Secretary of State William Seward to get the votes by any means necessary. He was reported to have told his allies in Congress, quote,

Starting point is 00:05:46 I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done. But remember that I am the President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes, end quote. Thankfully, this was a lame duck session of Congress. The election had already taken place, and the new Congress wouldn't be sitting until March. This left many members of Congress without job prospects once this session was over if they hadn't run or if they had been voted out of office. Seward offered plum civil service jobs to Democratic members of Congress if they would change their vote. They provided campaign contributions, and they also resorted to flat-out cash bribes.

Starting point is 00:06:23 Lincoln was truly willing to do anything to get this passed. Going into January, the estimated vote totals were starting to get really close. While all this politicking was happening behind the scenes, something happened that upset the process. The winter was not going well for the Confederacy. Word had spread that a delegation from the South was on its way to Washington to discuss terms of a peace treaty. This is exactly what the Democrats had been hoping for, and it was an excuse for them to continue to hold out as the amendment would nix any hopes of a negotiated peace. Lincoln personally inserted himself into the affair and assured them that there was no Confederate delegation in Washington, which was technically true. More on that in a bit. On January 31, 1865, the United States House of Representatives approved the 13th Amendment to the Constitution with a vote of 119 to 56. Just one vote more than what was needed.

Starting point is 00:07:21 On February 1st, Lincoln himself signed the document, even though the president had to be a vote. has nothing to do with the passage of a constitutional amendment. Representative Thaddeus Stevens, the leading abolitionist in the House of Representatives, and the man who probably pushed harder for the passage of the amendment than anyone else, said afterwards, quote, The greatest measure of the 19th century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America. End quote.

Starting point is 00:07:48 The text of the amendment was short and simple. It said as follows, quote, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction. While Lincoln said that no Confederate delegates were in Washington, he wasn't lying. However, he also wasn't exactly telling the truth. Just days after the vote in the House of Representatives, Lincoln and Seward met with representatives of the Confederacy, including the Confederate Vice President Alexander Stevens, on a stevens. on a steamboat in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The meeting was short and lasted less than five hours. The Confederacy at this point was nearing collapse,

Starting point is 00:08:30 which is why they wanted to talk in the first place. The union was in a position of strength and had no reason to make any concessions. The only thing that Lincoln offered was unconditional surrender. The passage of the 13th Amendment by Congress proved that slavery was no longer an issue for negotiation. On February 1st, the amendment went out to the states. There were 36 states at the time, including the states in rebellion, and 27 were required for ratification. By the end of the month, 18 states ratified the amendment, including the former Confederate states of Louisiana and Virginia, which Reconstructionist governments now ran. Lincoln, of course, never lived to see the final ratification of the 13th Amendment.

Starting point is 00:09:09 He was killed in April of 1865, just days after the end of the war on April 9th. There was a great deal of debate as to if the governments in former Confederate states were valid governments, for the purpose of ratification, and there was never any definitive answer to the question. Ratification of the amendment was held over the heads of the southern states as a condition of rejoining the union in full. Knowing that the war had been lost, the efforts of southern politicians were now ensuring that the Constitution didn't prevent the federal government from regulating how they treated freed slaves. In other words, they just didn't want them to be able to vote. By the end of the summer of 1865, 23 states had ratified the amendment, including Arkansas and Tennessee.

Starting point is 00:09:49 In November it was ratified by South Carolina, and then in the first week of December, it was ratified by Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia. Georgia was the 27th state, and on December 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment became part of the U.S. Constitution. Six more states formally ratified the amendment in the 19th century, and in the 20th century, Delaware, Kentucky, and Mississippi all did as well, overturning their initial rejection. In some ways, the 13th Amendment can be seen. as the fulfillment of the Civil War. After all of the fighting and death,

Starting point is 00:10:23 it was this short piece of law that ended the practice of slavery in the United States. To be sure, the 13th Amendment did not solve all of the problems that slavery caused. The nation has struggled with those problems for over 150 years, and they are still echoing throughout history to the present day. Nonetheless, the 13th Amendment stands as one of the most important acts ever passed in the history of the United States. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer.

Starting point is 00:10:57 I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon. Your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in Everything Everywhere Daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified of future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes. Thank you.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 13th Amendment (Encore)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.