TNDICKSO-L Archives

From: "Cher" <>
Subject: [TNDICKSO] Dec 6m 1865
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 19:03:40 -0500

This was posted on DC, and I thought you might enjoy the good read with
me...
Cher


This Day in History: 6 December 1865

"Neither Slavery, nor involuntary servitude,
except as punishment for crime whereof the party
shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States, or any place subject to
their jurisdiction."


Legalists, politicians and historians may parse this sentence to
discover the full meaning of its words. How the last phrase was meant
to specifically cover the states of the late Confederacy, which still
had not been welcomed back into full fellowship among the other
United States. How the third phrase was meant to disallow appeals by
convicted criminals on the basis of this amendment. Or how the whole
of it had been forced upon rebellious factions by the late President
Abraham Lincoln in his Proclamation emancipating slaves almost three
full years earlier (1 January 1863).

Whatever the intricacies of its wording may mean to scholars, to
millions of slaves and former slaves its ratification by Congress one
hundred thirty-four years ago today meant they could begin to
consider themselves legally free in the United States. For some the
thirteenth amendment to the constitution was the last step, openly
and irrevocably recognizing the freedom they had grasped for
themselves by fleeing from their former masters to the Northern
States or to Canada. For others it was merely the first step away
from generations of being considered mere property toward a life on
equal legal footing with their former tormentors.

Along the way the records applying to slaves and former slaves
changed as well. Before freedom their lives could be glimpsed in
property transfers and probate documents, or as the subjects of
newspaper advertisements for slave sales or runaways. Slaves were
left off of many censuses, and few of their marriages were recognized
on paper.

After the amendment there were no legal slave sales, nor were their
masters allowed to hunt them and drag them back to enforced
servitude. Marriages, legal apprenticeships, bank records and other
accounts were maintained for years by the federal Bureau of Refugees,
Freedmen and Abandonded Lands. Censuses routinely noted them by name.
Appearances in land records came as buyers or sellers rather than
bought and sold. When they appeared in court it was under their own
names and their own legal standing rather than as a "boy" or "girl"
claimed as someone else's property.

Ratification of the thirteenth amendment did not immediately halt all
slavery in the United States. It took years, and in some cases
decades, to eradicate the practice. But ratification laid the
groundwork for the truly free nation envisioned eighty-nine years
before in the Declaration of Independence.

Resources:

The Constitution of the United States of America
http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/toc.html

The Declaration of Independence
http://www.nara.gov/exhall/charters/declaration/decmain.html

The Freedmen's Savings and Trust Company and African American
Genealogical Research
http://www.nara.gov/publications/prologue/freedman.html


Copyright 1999, Everton Publishers
All rights reserved
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• [TNDICKSO] Dec 6m 1865 by "Cher" <>