The Thirteenth Amendment

Section 1. 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.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

 The Thirteenth Amendment officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. President Lincoln was concerned that the Emancipation Proclamation, which outlawed slavery in ten Confederate states still in rebellion in 1863, would be seen as a temporary war measure, since it was based on his war powers and did not abolish slavery in the border states

 

The 13^th amendment finally put an end to slavery and gave congress the power to break the chains that allowed slavery to remain the lifeblood of the southern economy. Though the chains and institution of slavery is one that does not hold a physical presence within today's society, the social ramifications of such are still questionable

Daily TWiP – Mississippi ratifies the 13th Amendment (which abolishes slavery) today in 1995
Tuesday, March 16, 2010 11:51AM
Teresa Santoski 

Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays, historical observances, etc., we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview.With all the paperwork that accumulates during the legislative process – petitions and bills and whatnot – it seems inevitable that a few things might get overlooked. That appears to have been the case when Mississippi finally ratified the 13th Amendment today (March 16th) in 1995. The 13th Amendment was proposed Jan. 31, 1865, and abolished slavery and involuntary servitude (except as a criminal punishment) and also empowered Congress to pass legislation to enforce the amendment. Like other states whose economies were rooted in slavery, Mississippi was not keen on ratifying an amendment that would take away a sizable chunk of its workforce, not to mention the effects the amendment would have on its society and culture.Three-fourths of the states needed to ratify the amendment before it could become part of the US Constitution, and that percentage was achieved without Mississippi’s assistance. Once Georgia’s legislature said “yea” on Dec. 6, 1865, the 13th Amendment was official. During the hustle and bustle of Reconstruction (and indeed, most of the 20th century), the fact that Mississippi had yet to ratify the 13th Amendment seems to have been put on the political back burner. In 1994, Gregory Watson, a clerk in the Texas legislature, discovered while researching other projects that Mississippi still hadn’t ratified the 13th Amendment. He mailed letters stating as much to all of the African-American members of the Mississippi legislature, along with a draft of a resolution that Mississippi could adopt in order to rectify the situation. This time around, the only opposition the ratification encountered was from legislators who considered the action unnecessary because it was already part of the US Constitution. On March 16, 1995, 130 years after it was initially proposed, Mississippi happily ratified the 13th Amendment, becoming the final state to do so. Daily TWiP appears Monday through Friday courtesy of The Week in Preview. Check out The Week in Preview online in our Columnists section or read it in print on Mondays in our Nashua and Region section.

 Thanks to the 13^th amendment, congress had the power to enforce the ratification of the amendment. So, even though Mississippi did not ratify the amendment until 1995, congress stillhad to power to enforce its abolition of the institution of slavery 

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http://thegodmurders.com/Leviticus.html
http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/674558-196/daily-twip--mississippi-ratifies-the-13th.html