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  1. Overview: United States Thirteenth Amendment 1863-65
  2. Full Record: United States Thirteenth Amendment 1863-65
  3. Committee:The House of Representatives
  4. Session: 1864-02-08 12:00:00
  5. Event type: CREATE

United States Thirteenth Amendment 1863-65

An amendment to the United States Constitution to abolish slavery introduced during the American Civil War.

The House of Representatives

The House of Representatives of the Thirty-Eighth Session of Congress

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Session 8231: 1864-02-08 12:00:00

Mr. Blair submits Resolutions on the Status and Rights of the Rebellious States; the House refuses to lay them on the table; they lie over under the rules.

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Resolutions on the Status and Rights of the Rebellious States

There is 1 proposed amendment related to this document on which a decision has not been taken.

Whereas the present deplorable civil war was inaugurated and is still carried on by a few desperate but daring men who, without any cause whatever, have not only filled the land with widows and orphans and caused almost untold millions of treasure to be spent, but have put in peril the very life of that Government which never deprived them of one solitary right, but which was so mild and beneficent it was only known by the blessings it conferred. And whereas Jefferson Davis, the chief of rebels, is repealed to have said in a speech delivered in Jackson, Mississippi, in December, l862: "My only wonder is that we consented to live so long a time in association with such miscreants (referring to the people of the North) and have loved a Government rotten to the core. Were it ever to be proposed again to enter into a union with such a people I could no more consent to do it than to trust myself in a den of thieves." And whereas this same high official in the great synagogue of rebellion has repeatedly since, in his messages to the rebel congress utterly repudiated the idea of ever ceasing his wicked designs and returning to his allegiance to the Government, whose Constitution and laws he has trampled under foot; and has also declared that no compromise would be entertained by him, or those he represents, that did not secure to the States in rebellion their independence and final separation from the United States. And whereas Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the so-called southern confederacy, is reported to have said in a speech delivered in the month of July, 1863, at Charlotte, North Carolina, "As for reconstruction, such a thing was impossible; such an idea must not be tolerated for an instant. Reconstruction would not end the war, but would produce a more horrible war than that in which we are now engaged. The only terms on which we can obtain permanent peace is final and complete separation from the North. Rather than submit to anything short of that, let us all resolve to die like men worthy of freedom." And whereas John Letcher, in one of his messages to the rebel legislature of the State of Virginia, declared, "The alliance between us is dissolved, (meaning between the United States and the southern States,) never I trust to be renewed, at any time, under any conceivable state of circumstances." And whereas the Richmond Enquirer, one of the organs and advocates of this imaginary southern confederacy, in its issue of January 9, 1863, says, "Separation is inevitable. War has failed to prevent it. Peace cannot stop it. An armistice with propositions for reconstruction by constitutional amendments of conventions of States would very soon reveal the fact that separation was final; and, so far as one generation can speak for its successors, it is eternal." And whereas the Richmond Dispatch of January 10, 1863, another organ of the leaders of this wanton and unprovoked rebellion, said in response to a peace and reunion speech, delivered in New York by the editor of the Express, "That we assure him that the people of the confederate States would infinitely prefer being the vassals of France or England; nay, they would prefer to be serfs of Russia, to becoming in any manner whatever associated politically or otherwise with the Yankee States." And further, "that President Davis expressed the sentiment of the entire confederacy in his speech the other night, (in Richmond,) when he said 'the people would sooner unite with a nation of hyenas than with the detestable Yankee nation. Anything but that—English colonization, French vassalage, Russian serfdom—all, all are preferable to any association with the Yankees.'" And whereas the Richmond Sentinel, still another advocate of this new-fledged confederacy, in its comments on the proceedings of what is known as the Frank Pierce meeting, held at Concord, New Hampshire, on the 4th day of July, 1863, says, "Do the New Hampshire Democrats suppose for one moment that we could so much as think of a reunion with such a people? Rather tell one to be wedded to a corpse; rather join hands with the fiend from the pit. The blood of many thousands of martyrs is between us. A thousand feelings of horror repel the idea of a renewal of affection." And whereas the Richmond Whig, another mouthpiece of treason and of crime, in its issue of the 10th of January, 1863, speaking of those, who are opposed to breaking up the Union bequeathed to them by their fathers, says, "They are by nature menials, and fitted only for menial duties. They are in open and flagrant insurrection against their natural lords and masters, the gentlemen of the South. In the exercise of their assumed privileges they deport themselves with all the extravagant airs, the insolence, the cruelty, the cowardice and love of rapine, which have ever characterized the revolt of slaves. The former leniency of their masters only serves to aggravate the ferocity of their nature. When they are again reduced to subjection, and taught to know their place, we must take care to put such trammels about them that they will never have an opportunity to play their tricks again." It is therefore,

1. Resolved, That any attempt on the part of the Government of the United States to conciliate the leaders of the present rebellion, or compromise the questions involved, would be but an attempt on the one hand to rob the gallows of its own, and on the other to humiliate and bring into utter contempt this Government in the estimation of the civilized world.

2. Resolved, That every State which has ever been is still a State in the Union, and that when this rebellion shall have been put down each of the so-called seceding States will have the same rights, privileges, and immunities under the Constitution as any one of the loyal States, except so far as the holding of African slaves in bondage is affected by the President’s proclamation of the 1st of January, 1863, the action of Congress on the subject, or the events of the war.

3. Resolved, That this House utterly repudiate the doctrine advanced by some, that the so-called seceding States have ceased to be States of and in the Union, and have become Territories thereof, or stand in the relation of foreign Powers at war therewith.

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