Argumentative Essay About The 13th Amendment

In December 1863 Lincoln announced his Reconstruction Plan and decided that any state who seceded could be readmitted to the Union, but only if they accepted Presidential Decisions about slavery and took an oath of loyalty towards the Constitution. He also declared that once one tenth of voters had taken an oath, the state could elect new representatives to the Congress and begin a new government. The Plan was rejected by the Congress. After Lincoln 's death Vice-President Johnson became the President and was in charge of completing reconstruction. Johnson declared in December 1865 that every state whom agreed with the Thirteenth Amendment against slavery could join the Union.

The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified by 27 states by December 1865, represents the beginning of a new constitutional order in the United States (Fletcher 52). The 13th amendment completed what the Emancipation Proclamation began - to abolish slavery. With Civics classes no longer being a requirement in high schools, there are some who make it into adulthood without knowing which amendment freed the slaves. The Thirteenth Amendment not only affected the slaves, it also immensely impacted those slave owners who thrived economically from slave labor. To understand how the 13th amendment sought to fundamentally reshape American society, one must examine the status of African Americans prior to the Civil War.

In the speech, Lincoln never comes out and says an apparent solution to slavery or addresses the abolishment of slavery. However, Lincoln proposed solutions that may have sparked the end of slavery. Lincoln addressed that he wanted the states to agree on the subject of slavery and said, “Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new—North as well as South.” This being said, if the states eventually agreed on the extinction of slavery, even if it took a war, this would have ultimately been a solution to slavery. Lincoln also said, “We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State. To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now before all those who would prevent that consummation.” Lincoln was trying to say that although many states are on their way to abolishment, many states are still allowing slavery, and it is in the hands of the people who are against slavery to take a stand and do something.

One of reasons the confederacy failed was because the U.S. Congress, with Lincoln’s support, proposed the 13th amendment which would abolish slavery in America. Although the confederate peace delegation was unwilling to accept a future without slavery, the radical and moderate Republicans designed a way to takeover the reconstruction program. The Radical Republicans wanted full citizenship rights for African Americans and wanted to implement harsh reconstruction policies toward the south. The radical republican views made up the majority of the Congress and helped to pass the 14th amendment which guaranteed equality under the law for all citizens, and protected freedmen from presidential vetoes, southern state legislatures, and federal court decisions. In 1869, Congress passed the fifteenth amendment stating that no citizen can be denied the right to vote because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” To destroy the confederacy and make the south rejoin the union, extreme legal measures such as passing amendments needed to be taken by the government to affirm Union’s power over the south.

On December 6, 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by Congress. The government created the new amendment to establish all slaves free. As well as, Congress has the authority to adjust and helped inform about the newly established law. When they had this regulation, Congress had better control to protect the people. Every slave free became an American citizen in the county.

They are Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. This war is because of the states' right and the slavery. On April 9th , 1865, the last states of the Confederate States of America had surrendered. In addition, the Civil War had completely ended. All slaves were becoming emancipated.

The Civil War changed the future of the United States. The war began as a struggle to preserve the Union, but not a struggle to free the slaves, and many in the North and South felt that the conflict would decide both issues at last. Many slaves escaped to the North in the early years of the war, and several Union generals established abolitionist policies in the Southern land that they conquered. Congress passed laws permitting the seizure of slaves from the property of rebellious Southerners. On September 22, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln presented the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.

During the Civil War each side had some advantages and disadvantages. Before the Civil War there was the election of 1860, President Lincoln was elected president. The south knew that Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery, so the south seceded from the union. Then there was the attack on Fort Sumter, and the war began. “The war that ensued started at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861, and lasted four years”(Confederate.., pg1).

Guelzo proposes in his essay that Lincoln intended on abolishing slavery and completed this by signing the Emancipation Proclamation, crediting the Emancipation Proclamation as the most revolutionary pronouncement ever signed by an American president. He supports his thesis by compiling different evidence and

In 1861 Abraham Lincoln became president, he was all for abolishing slavery. It began April 12, 1961 with the Battle of Fort Sumter. It ended when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant in 1865. On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln gets assassinated and he didn’t get to see slavery abolished in December 1965, with the 13th Amendment.

In 1827, Texas required that one tenth of any slaves inherited to be freed but also allowed slaves to be sold. Slavery led up to the Civil war many years after the Missouri Compromise and nearly split up the nation. President Abraham Lincoln announced his Emancipation Proclamation, which freed slaves, in 1863. Fortunately, slavery ended in 1865 with the ratification of the 13th

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln on September 1862. It was to free all slaves in places where there was still a rebellion against the Union. In 1864, the amendment to abolish slavery was approved by the United States Senate but was declined in the House of Representative. In the election of 1864, Lincoln was elected again with the majority of Republicans in both houses. The amendment was sent again to the new congress.

A first effect of the Civil war were the new Amendments made in favor of African Americans. The first was the thirteenth Amendment. The emancipation proclamation that Lincoln had put in place only banned slavery out of his jurisdiction. After the Civil war however, the thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude -involuntary slavery- in U.S, except for a crime punishment. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, then by the House on January 31, 1865.

This meant that “all persons held as slaves are and henceforward shall be free” this only took effect for confederate states only. After the civil war ended in in 1865 Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by a man who goes by the name of John Wilkes Booth. This led to congress ratifying the abolishment of slavery

Following the Civil War (1861-1865), a trio of constitutional amendments abolished slavery, making the former slaves citizens and gave all men the right to vote regardless of race. Nonetheless, many states particularly in the South, used poll taxes, literacy tests and other similar measures to keep their Black neighbors practically broke. They also enforced strict segregation through “Jim Crow” laws and condoned violence from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, or national origin. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, it survived strong opposition from southern members of Congress and was then signed into law by Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.