Thirteenth Amendment as the Culmination of Emancipation Research Paper

Intoduction

The popular belief within the general public is that the abolition of slavery in the United States was the result of the adoption of the Emancipation Proclamation and then the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Berlin expresses the view that “freedom’s arrival was the product not of a moment or a man,” but was a natural consequence of the many historical preconditions and actions of many people involved (2015, p. 8). Indeed, even the most prominent supporters of the slave liberation, such as Abraham Lincoln, did not come to this idea at once and were not always convinced of the reasonableness of such a measure. Moreover, the emancipation process began long before the civil war in the United States and did not end with the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. This paper is intended to demonstrate that the Thirteenth Amendment was the formal culmination of the emancipation process, but the abolition of slavery itself had begun long before and continued thereafter.

Historical Background of Slavery in the U.S.

Slavery in the Atlantic World was a complex system with several variations and conditional differences. According to Roberts, enslavement could occur as a result of being taken as a captive, debt non-payment, or punishment for crime, and could be permanent or temporary (2016, para. 2). Racialized plantation slavery developed as a result of the conquests of colonial empires and the trade gain promised by the sale of raw materials extracted in the Americas to the Old World. The plantations were large enterprises with a vast territory, which constantly needed a self-renewable workforce. The primary income of the plantation economy depended on the slave labor required to collect the raw materials supplied to foreign markets. Roberts state that plantation owners have used extremely violent methods and punishments to maintain control over enslaved African populations, limiting “their workers’ mobility and dehumanizing them to a status nearly akin to livestock” (2016, para. 3). It stands to reason that the justification for such cruel measures required specific ideological and legal frameworks.

The regulatory basis for this was the slave codes, which formalized and institutionalized racism and slave labor rules. These codes regulated the conditions and procedures of work on the plantations, methods of punishment, and condemnation of slaves. However, most importantly, they confirmed “that Africans would normally be lifetime slaves” (Roberts, 2016, para. 32). The theories and ideologies of racial inequality were the ideological foundations of slavery. The doctrine of physiological and mental disparities between Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans was very widespread and was actively supported by the wealthy groups of the population.

Slavery existed in the United States from the beginning of the 17th century until the middle of the 19th century. Most significantly, over time, it has acquired legal and theoretical support. According to Wiecek, “Americans, for better or worse, are a peculiarly legalistic people” (2018, p. 20). This means that the moral considerations and actions of the abolitionist movement, which had arisen in America by the 19th century, were not enough to transform the attitudes and beliefs of the broader population. This required significant legal changes at the federal and state levels. Nevertheless, even before these changes, many Americans were already aware of the moral unacceptability of slavery and the inadequacy of the theories of racial superiority. This, along with the growing desire of the African population for freedom, has led to the practice of exiting slavery, which began to take shape a long time before the American Civil War.

Slavery Abolishment and Thirteenth Amendment

It should be noted that some Africans have avoided enslavement when arriving in North America. They lived on an equal basis with the white population and, although subjected to racial prejudice, were free people. This meant that there was a realistic possibility that all races could exist equally among Americans. Researchers also note that there were both cases of the legal and illegal exodus from slavery at the time (Berlin, 2015, p. 13). Successful escape was illegitimate and prosecuted according to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, but self-purchases and freedom suits were completely legal options for liberation from slavery. Moreover, there have been cases of state-sponsored emancipations and releases of slaves by individual owners. According to Berlin, major slave emancipation took place “through a glacially slow process known as ‘post-nati emancipation,’ whereby the children born to enslaved women would be free after a specified date” (2015, p. 14). This liberation took place in the second half of the 18th century, several decades after the American Revolution. Thus, it stands to conclude that the practice of slavery abolition existed long before significant legal changes.

Furthermore, the first juridical prerequisites for slave emancipation appeared in advance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Wiecek states that the principal legal considerations for the revision of slave ownership policies were “the Declaration of Independence, the constitutive documents of the American states and nation, and Somerset v. Stewart (1772)” (2018, p. 20). The Declaration of Independence expressly declares that all men are created equal, and one of the inalienable human rights is the right to liberty. This ideal is an apparent and obvious contradiction to the practice of slavery, which inspired many abolitionists to fight slavery. The Somerset v. Stewart is a principal court judgment of the Court of King’s Bench, which stated that the common law of England does not support the recognition of slaves as property. Despite the fact that this decision was made within the jurisdiction of the British Empire, it had a profound impact on American abolitionists and provided ideological support to that movement.

Thus, the Emancipation Proclamation was adopted during the Civil War in September 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, who was not a convinced abolitionist in the fullest sense of the word. Spaulding provides information according to which Lincoln already in August 1862 told African-American leaders that there is a significant difference between the races, and they are better to be separated (2016, p. 324). Nevertheless, Lincoln condemned slavery and considered it necessary to abolish it. According to Barnett, the Proclamation “only applied to slaves in rebel states outside of Union control and those who could make it to union lines and exempted slaves in loyal states” (2017, p. 1). The main incompleteness was that the Proclamation left the legal framework of slavery in force until the final decisions on the outcome of the war were made (Spaulding, 2016, p. 324). Eventually, at the end of the war, the Thirteenth Amendment to the American Constitution was adopted.

Application and Consequences

The Thirteenth Amendment formally abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except in cases of sanctions for the commission of an offense, throughout the United States. All methods of enslavement and persecution of free Afro-American citizens have now been removed from the legal framework. Nevertheless, according to Spaulding, there has been a serious “southern resistance to the Thirteenth Amendment and to the 1866 Civil Rights Act designed to enforce it surged” (2016, p. 327). It has resulted in the adoption of Black Codes that severely restricted the civil rights of colored populations, and in cases of terrorism against former slaves, which were often sponsored by southern state authorities (Spaulding, 2016, p. 327). Thus, the fight against slavery traditions and norms, which still guided the former owners, continued.

It bears mentioning that the attempts to restore slavery have sometimes been very creative. As previously stated, the Thirteenth Amendment permitted forced labor if it was a punishment for the crime. As a result, many southern states have adopted the convict lease system, which involved the use of forced labor of prisoners. Researchers note that “just 15 years after the Civil War, African-Americans were imprisoned at a rate more than 12 times that of whites” (Muller, 2018, p. 368). Thus, the conviction of African-Americans for the crime and the use of their labor within the convict lease system has become a new working enslavement scheme for the Southern State authorities. The system continued until the first quarter of the 20th century and became a matter of struggle for the rights of African-Americans at that time.

Conclusion

Slavery in North America began to take shape at the beginning of the 17th century due to the profitability of forced labor use on large plantations. The first cases of the slave liberation, as well as the serious legal basis for the abolition of slavery, had emerged long before the adoption of the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Though, these legislative provisions were the culmination of abolitionism, which formalized the illegality of slavery. Southern states resisted these regulations and continued, on the one hand, to suppress and persecute former slaves and, on the other, to invent legal forms of slavery. Thus, the process of slavery abolishment, which began in advance of the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, continued afterward.

References

Barnett, R. E. (2017). The continuing relevance of the original meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment. Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy, 15 (1), 1-12.

Berlin, I. (2015). The long emancipation: The demise of slavery in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Muller, C. (2018). Freedom and convict leasing in the postbellum South. American Journal of Sociology, 124 (2), 367-405.

Roberts, J. (2016). Race and the origins of plantation slavery. Oxford Research Encyclopedias. Web.

Spaulding, N. W. (2016). Paradoxes of constitutional faith: Federalism, emancipation, and the original Thirteenth Amendment. Critical Analysis of Law, 3 (2), 306-334.

Wiecek, W. M. (2018). The sources of anti-slavery constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.