13th Amendment Abolishing Slavery In The United States

In the wake of the Civil War, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were ratified which abolished slavery and in theory granted people of all races the citizenship rights, equal protection, and suffrage that society owes them. However, that did not stop a wave of backlash policies from passing especially in Southern states that felt their way of life was threatened by the newfound independence of black Americans. These laws served to perpetuate racism and white privilege, and further divide the racist,

In January 1st, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves in all states. Two years later the thirteenth Amendment was added to the constitution which abolished slavery in the United States in December 6. It initially met with some resistance by some Southern states making it hard for black people to live and work it was overcome a year later but was not the end of turmoil. 1868 July 9th, The 14th amendment was added which granted African Americans equal protection under the law. The 15th Amendment was added to the constitution on February 3rd, 1870, granting all African American males the right to vote. The third Civil rights act was passed due to many white business owners refusing service to African Americans.

The Thirteenth Amendment of 1865 abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868 granted African Americans citizenship and equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment of 1870 granted African Americans the right to vote. These amendments were passed in an effort to combat racism and reshape public perception of blacks, however, these laws were hard to enforce and Southern states developed their own laws like the Black Codes to control the newly freed slaves. Jim Crow-era laws in the South like the poll tax and literacy tests prevented many blacks in the South from voting. Anyone who tried to break Southern traditions was subject to violence and intimidation from the Ku Klux Klan.

It also allowed black men to join the Union Army and Navy, “enabling the liberated to become liberators.” (The Emancipation Proclamation) The big change in slavery and the fight for equality did not come until the Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress on January 31, 1865 and ratified by the states on December 6, 1865. With this event, it was declared that “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.” (13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution) Although this Amendment did give slaves their freedom, it did not guarantee them the same rights nor the same treatment that other citizens of the United States had and took for granted. This was especially seen in the states that “enacted ‘black codes’ that were intended to limit the civil rights of the newly free slaves.” (Civil Rights) These “black codes” and the obvious difference in treatment were a large issue, and they were later addressed in the Constitution with the introduction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868 and it made large changes for black individuals. This Amendment “granted citizenship to ‘all persons born or naturalized in the United States,’ which included former slaves recently freed.” (14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) It also “forbids states from denying

In 1865, the 13th amendment outlawed slavery in America, setting free thousands of African Americas confined by the vigorous hands of enslavement; however, many people are unaware that there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in history. In fact, slavery still exists in not only America but in 136 other countries, as well. Over 15 thousand women and children in the United States, alone, are currently being held as slaves to physical exploitation. Albeit, many people, including myself, are determined to end the repugnant pain and suffering many women and children are being forced into just miles from our homes and work places.

Though many people believed that slavery and bondage was completely abolished by the 13th Amendment, somehow there was a way around the statement of this constitutional Amendment. What was stated that gave rise to the extension of slavery in America’s Southern states. The 13th Amendment ruled that slavery, could still be legitimate if used as a punishment for crime. This continuation of slavery was said to be a form of punishment for crimes that were committed. The only thing the states in the south had to do was to come up with something that would cause the former slaves to be arrested, and from that point they could officially place them right back into slavery. In order to do this, the politicians of the south came up with a strings of laws they named the “black codes” and this would allow them to place black people under arrest for just about anything they could think of.

Modern Slavery involves all sort of ancient slavery acts including people being kidnapped from their families and homes, losing their identities and freedom, and being forced to work against their will with no pay under the threat of continuous beatings and sufferings which eventually led to the early death. The most common form of Slavery in the 21st century is the human trafficking, in which human beings are exploited for the purpose of forced labor, sex, forced children begging circle and the removal of their organs. Although being the first-tier country in the United States’ Trafficking in Person Report of 2017, an annual report issued by the US State Department to monitor and combat trafficking

This act occurred during the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were the constitutional amendments that gave African Americans a new start in life. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery; the 14th amendment gave former slaves rights of citizenship and equal protection under the U.S. Constitution, and the 15th amendment gave former slaves the right to vote. (Slavery in America, 2012) It would not be for another hundred years after the Civil War until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights of 1965 was passed by the U.S. Congress. These two laws were a direct response to the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and early 1960s. “Such movements have not only secured citizenship right’s for blacks but have also redefined prevailing conceptions of the nature of civil rights and the role of government in protecting these rights. (Civil Rights Movement, 2012) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did more for minorities and women by providing them a voice against discrimination.

In December of 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment officially banned slavery throughout the United States of America. After multiple centuries of chattel slavery, predominately in the American South, African-Americans were finally set free from bondage. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments quickly followed, granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” and granting African American men the right to vote, respectively. Naturally, Americans denoted these momentous legislative feats, collectively packaged as the Reconstruction Amendments, as a means of celebration for African-Americans. However, in order to rectify the extensive damage that the American Civil War caused on the South’s infrastructure, labor systems, and economy, white Americans went to extreme lengths via the legal system in order to mimic the antebellum practices of slavery in the South. As newly freed African-Americans sought to exercise their nascent constitutional rights, they were constantly slammed with new, legally permissible practices of exploitation and segregation.

Many believe that the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but on the other hand, human trafficking is now the modern day slavery and is a serious problem in the world. Human trafficking is the third largest international crime industry behind illegal drugs and arms trafficking, generating a profit of $32 billion every year in countries from The United States to Thailand (“11 facts”). In today's world, there are many types of human trafficking. Victims may be held against their will as hard labor workers, working for free with no pay, and with no other way to find other employment because of the status of their citizenship. Other victims may be forced into prostitution and are isolated from people who could provide a means of escape.

Fifty years ago, the abomination of slavery seemed like a thing of the past. But history has a way of repeating itself. Today, we find that human slavery is once again a sickening reality. At this moment, men, women and children are being trafficked and exploited all over the world. The Thirteenth Amendment did not abolish slavery completely, in fact, human trafficking is now the modern day slavery and is a problem in countries all over the world. Sex trafficking, illegal child labor, and illegal immigrant trafficking are all examples of human trafficking. A global underground problem, it is not only happening in the third world countries but civilized countries as well. Very seldom do victims of trafficking ever escape the vicious crime and

The highest court in the United States (the Supreme Court) made a ruling in 1857 that Africans (blacks) had no rights, could not become U.S citizens, and that Congress had no powers to abolish slavery. The aftermath of the ruling saw the United States suffer one of the bloodiest wars in world history – the Civil War. In less than ten years since the ruling was made, Congress together with the Northern states addressed the biases in the ruling. The biases were addressed through the amendment of the constitution and the civil rights statute. Through the 13th Amendment, slavery was abolished in all parts of the United States. The 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 guaranteed citizenship for all qualified, natural-born, and naturalized Americans, inclusive of former slaves and free blacks. The civil rights statute, in addition, authorized the transfer of cases from state to federal courts in cases where citizens’ rights could not be enforced through state systems of justice. The 14th Amendment also prohibited states from infringing the rights enjoyed by American citizens, as well as, ensuring every citizen had the right to due process and equal protection of the law (Kaczorowski, 1987, p. 45).

“From their arrival around 1619, African people had illegally resisted legal slavery. Thus they had been stamped from the beginning as criminals.” (Kendi, 69). Although it was the white man who stole African people and brought them to America and forced them into slavery, somehow white people write it off as black people’s fault. That black people are to blame for being different than the white default that they love so much. “In all of the fifty suspected or actual slave revolts reported in newspapers during the American colonial era, resisting Africans were nearly always cast as violent criminals, not people reacting to enslavers’ regular brutality, or pressing for the most basic human freedom.” (Kendi, 69). Anything that went wrong was put

The American civil war was one of the most transformative events in this nations history. It was the war were the most Americans died, more than all other conflicts combined , the latest war fought in the US mainland, and was the resolution to the only secession from the United States in history. The time period after the Civil War, known as the reconstruction era, was just as important. The most important element of the reconstruction era was ratification of the reconstruction amendments. Without the passing of the reconstruction amendments, all of the changes of the Civil War would not be as permanent or impactful as they are today.

During the period after the Civil War, in the Reconstruction era, the United States adopted three amendments. These three amendments are the 13th, 14th, and 15th. In 1865, the ratification of the 13th amendment abolished slavery (Berlin). The 14th amendment protects “privileges and immunities" from abridgement, assures "due process of law" prior to deprivations of life, liberty, or property, and prohibits denials of "equal protection of the laws” (Steiker). The 15th amendment granted African American men the right to vote. All three of these amendments, known as the Civil Rights amendments, gave rights and ensured equality to recently emancipated slaves. The law granted rights to African Americans and protected them from “explicitly race-based capital codes” (Steiker). African Americans, although had more rights at this point, were still treated with extreme racial hostility, especially in the Southern states. The law was complicit, as it still allowed for discriminatory behavior. In “The American Death Penalty and the (In)Visibility of Race,” Carol Steiker writes, “Race continued to influence the application of facially neutral capital statutes through prosecutorial discretion, all-white sentencing juries, and the practice of extrajudicial execution by lynch mobs.” What this means is that laws were being created in ways that African Americans would still not receive equal treatment. In certain circumstances law enforcement officers even handed over blacks to lynch mobs.