Recognizing 155th Anniversary of 13th Amendment
Floor Speech
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Bass), the distinguished chair of the Congressional Black Caucus.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Bass very much for those very kind words, and I thank her for her friendship and for her leadership over the last 2 years as she has led the 55 men and women of the Congressional Black Caucus. I certainly know from past experience that it is a daunting challenge to lead such a caucus. But I thank her so much for her leadership, and I look forward to the future leadership of our new chair, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty.
Today, the Congressional Black Caucus is convening to present a Special Order, recognizing the 155th anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment. General Leave
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I have said for years that the passage and ratification of the 13th Amendment is one of the most significant pieces of legislation ever considered by this body. Had Congress and the States failed to eliminate the despicable institution of slavery, the American experiment would have failed and failed miserably.
This afternoon, the Congressional Black Caucus lifts up this American history for the American people to see and understand.
In the year 1860, the Republican candidate for President was Abraham Lincoln. Three candidates opposed Lincoln: Stephen Douglas from Illinois, representing the Northern wing of the Democratic Party; John Breckinridge from Kentucky, representing the Southern wing of the Democratic Party; and John Bell from Tennessee, representing the Constitutional Union Party.
During this election, Mr. Speaker, the Southern States, the slaveholding Southern States, were very fearful that, if elected, Abraham Lincoln would find a way to end slavery and deprive them of their slaves.
Over a period of 240 years, southern plantation owners had purchased African citizens who had been transshipped to the United States from the continent of Africa.
The original Constitution, which was effective March 4, 1789, addressed the issue of slavery. It contained a provision that would maintain the slave trade for at least 20 years after the ratification of the Constitution, until January 1, 1809. Though the legal end of the slave trade occurred in 1809, slave trafficking continued, to be sure.
Slave women were impregnated by males of both races and encouraged to bear large numbers of children. By 1860, Mr. Speaker, there were nearly 4 million slaves in the United States, mostly in Southern States. The border States of Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and West Virginia also had a large number of slaves.
On November 6, 1860, Mr. Speaker, it was the Presidential election. The American voters spoke, and did they speak loudly. Abraham Lincoln became the 16th President of the United States of America, winning a very large number of electoral votes.
Immediately following his election, Southern States, 11 Southern States began seceding from the Union, and that is the map I have here to my left.
The first State to secede was South Carolina, right away, on December 20; Mississippi, January 9; followed by Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.
Then after those seven States had seceded from the Union, Abraham Lincoln takes the oath of office and becomes the 16th President of the United States. The oath of office took place on March 3. Today, as we all know, it is January 20, but during those times it was March 3.
After Lincoln was installed and inaugurated as President, four more States seceded from the Union. They were Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the United States is faced with a constitutional crisis of monumental proportions. Eleven States, these 11 Southern States, are now considering themselves a separate nation. They refer to themselves as the Confederate States of America.
The so-called Confederate States were formally created on March 11, a mere 8 days following Lincoln's inauguration. The Confederate States of America adopted a constitution. They created a currency, elected its political leaders, stood up a military, adopted a flag, and attempted to do everything a developing nation would do.
Great tension now existed between the 23 Union States and the 11 Confederate States. So, Mr. Speaker, we all know what happened then. On April 12, 1861, at 4:30 in the morning, Confederate soldiers opened fired upon Union soldiers at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, in the city of Charleston, and the Civil War begins.
It was a brutal war. Southern States had declared war on the Union. Thousands of soldiers lost their lives on both sides of the battle lines.
President Lincoln, Mr. Speaker, became very weary. The war was taking its toll on him. It was taking its toll on the democracy. So on September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued what we now know as the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, announcing that, if the rebels did not end the fighting and rejoin the Union by January 1, 1863, 100 days later, all slaves in the rebellious States would be free.
On January 1, 1863, Lincoln did what he threatened he would do. President Lincoln, using his power as Commander in Chief of the military, issued an executive order. That order is referred to as the historic Emancipation Proclamation.
Mr. Speaker, that proclamation is often recited, and I will recite it here today.
It reads as follows. This is the Emancipation Proclamation. It says:
``On the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred sixty-three, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and the naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.''
A very powerful executive order by President Lincoln.
But, Mr. Speaker, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was monumental. It proclaimed that slaves residing in the States that were in armed rebellion against the Union were free. Union military forces descended upon Southern States to quiet the rebellion and to bring freedom to the slaves.
But, Mr. Speaker, there was great dispute--great dispute--among the legal scholars of that day as to the legal effect of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lincoln took the position that, as Commander in Chief, he possessed the authority to enter orders that would deprive the enemy of any instruments that would aid them in winning the war. The slaves were a major asset to the slaveholders who were in rebellion. So Lincoln took the position that he possessed the power, the absolute power as Commander in Chief, to free the slaves.
But some scholars argued that the legal effect of the proclamation was doubtful. It was a singular act of the President, they said, without congressional approval or popular vote. There was some question whether the effect of the proclamation would cease at the end of the war, some question how the Supreme Court would rule if the President's order was eventually judicially reviewed.
On April 8, 1864, right in the middle of the war, Mr. Speaker, just before the Presidential election, the United States Senate passed a 13th Amendment to the Constitution, and it needed the approval of this body, the House of Representatives, for it to become law. But House approval was uncertain.
So, 7 months later, after it had passed the Senate, 7 months later, on November 8, 1864, Lincoln was then reelected. Lincoln was determined now to take ownership of this legislation to abolish slavery. Lincoln demanded that this body, the House of Representatives, pass the legislation that had been passed by the Senate.
Lincoln's election platform had promised that slavery would be abolished by amendment. Lincoln demanded action. White Northern abolitionists, Black abolitionists, demanded action. The war was now at a fever's pitch. Abolition, Mr. Speaker, had to happen.
On January 31, 1865, finally, the House of Representatives, this body, finally took up the question of passage of the 13th Amendment. When the vote was taken that day, the 13th Amendment passed by a two- vote margin, a two-vote margin above the needed two-thirds majority. The vote was 119-56.
History reports, Mr. Speaker, that the galleries in this Chamber, the galleries which I see at this moment, the galleries were boisterous. There was applause. Women and men cried. They waived their handkerchiefs as the House of Representatives passed the 13th Amendment. It was a grand, grand event.
Mr. Speaker, in the final vote, all 86 House Republicans voted in favor of the 13th Amendment, along with 15 Democrats, 14 unconditional Unionists, and 4 Union men. The opposition came from 50 Democrats and 6 Union men.
To amend the Constitution, not only does an amendment need to pass both Houses of Congress, but it must be ratified by three-fourths of the States.
After the passage by the Senate and the House, the ratification process begins. On February 1, 1865, the very, very next day, the following day, though not required, President Lincoln signed the 13th Amendment, beginning ratification. It had to be ratified by 27 States.
Ratification is now underway. The first State, as you can image, Mr. Speaker, was Lincoln's home State of Illinois, the very next day, February 1, 1865, followed by Michigan, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Missouri, Maine, Kansas, Massachusetts, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Nevada, Louisiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
And later that day, Arkansas, which is Mr. Davis' home State--I saw Mr. Davis walk on the floor a moment ago. Arkansas ratified the amendment on April 14, 1865.
And later that day, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated here in Washington, D.C. But ratification continued, and they had needed six more States.
On May 4, 1865, it was Connecticut, followed by New Hampshire, followed by South Carolina, followed by Alabama and then my home State of North Carolina on December 4, 1865. And then, finally, Mr. Speaker, on December 6 of 1865, the final State of Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment.
When the State of Georgia ratified the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, 245 years of slavery legally ended. Four million slaves are free. The former slaves now begin a long and difficult period of reconstruction.
In 1868, the former slaves became citizens, with the 14th Amendment. They obtained the right to vote in 1870 under the 15th Amendment.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, December 6 is Abolition Day in America, and we should observe it and recognize this history. As elected Members of Congress, Black and White, Democrat and Republican, we must rededicate ourselves to the complete elimination of intentional and systemic racism in America. Mr. Speaker, this is our challenge.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).
Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the period during which slavery legally existed represents the most horrific and most sordid period in the history of the United States; therefore, I commend and thank Representative G.K. Butterfield for facilitating and anchoring this Special Order highlighting the importance and relevance and impact of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments on changing America.
Of course, we know that the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th Amendment gave Blacks and former slaves citizenship, and the 15th Amendment gave newly freed slaves the right to vote.
The period preceding, during, and after the Civil War, known as Reconstruction, is not only one of the most sordid, but the most violent and most repressive periods in our history.
The most interesting part of all of this, though, is not yesterday. The most interesting part is that there are individuals and groups in our country today who are attempting to take us back to that period, and we can never let that happen.
In U.S. News Today, there is an article defining how some historians, some boards of education, some school boards have attempted to rewrite and teach a history that is very different than the real history.
When you consider the number of individuals who are part of the mass incarceration system who are forced to work for nothing and whose rights are suspended, that takes us back a ways. And when you consider efforts to prevent and make it difficult or basically impossible for people to vote, that nullifies the 15th Amendment.
So you see, Brother Butterfield, when you consider the times that we are in, one would have to conclude that the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments are all under serious attack, and we must glory in the fact that we have overcome some of the obstacles, but we also must be vigilant, vigilant to the extent of never going back to that period.
We must be able to say even as a 12-year old girl said when she wrote a little poem that said: No chains on my hands, no chains on my feet, but the chains on my mind are keeping me from being free.
So I thank you again for anchoring this Special Order, and I thank you for reminding us that freedom is a hard-won thing. Each generation has to win it and win it again.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Thank you, Congressman Davis, for your passionate leadership. You will recall, Congressman, that 5 years ago, President Obama graced us with his presence when we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the 13th Amendment, and your eloquence this afternoon really adds to that history.
Jackson Lee).
Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I also thank the gentleman for bringing us together on such an important moment, and of course, as he reflected on the fact that I think we were together just a few years ago in the National Archives commemorating the importance of these amendments, but also the Emancipation Proclamation.
And for those of us in Texas or in places past the Mississippi, if I might start with the question of freedom, we did not get the full impact of freedom until 1865. Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the slaves free with his pronouncement in 1863, and then it took General Granger 2 years to come and present that to those of us west of the Mississippi.
This is why I think this moment on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker and Mr. Butterfield, is a sacred and somber moment. We can declare this a normal course of business, Mr. Mfume, that we are on the floor debating, as we usually do, but I really call this a sacred moment because it is a moment to educate the American people. It is a moment to go full circle, if you will, to all of the social justice advocacies that we have done, all of the issues that pretended to divide us.
I think the reason is that, does anyone understand the legacy of those who are descendants of enslaved Africans?
That we had to wait for an amendment to give us the fullness of a human being. We were not counted as human beings fully when the Constitution was written.
Just imagine coming from a legacy where you were not counted as one, you were counted less than one. And until this amendment, the idea of slavery of which we had been property, counted as property. So I think it is important to read the 13th Amendment: ``Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been fully convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.''
Think of that. Even indentured servants had a different status than anyone who was a descendent of enslaved Africans who came to this country in 1619 and a little bit before. That is what we discuss today. That is the issue of the 13th Amendment. And it is important to realize that the Framers never used the words slave, shareholder, master, or slavery anywhere in the Constitution. That is almost to say that we had no valid space even in a negative connotation.
So to actually realize why this is so sacred, let me give you some of history. By 1861, when the Civil War broke out, more than four million people--nearly all of them African decent--were enslaved in 15 Southern and border States. By 1862, President Abraham Lincoln came to believe firmly that emancipating enslaved people in the South would help the Union crush the Confederate rebellion and win the Civil War. We became a practical part of saving the Union. We became the cornerstone, the descendents of enslaved Africans.
The question of slavery was not based upon the brutality of the separation of families, the beating that was suffered, the sheer brutality of it. No, it was not that. I do not find fault for that era, but people need to understand that it was not because someone bowed their heads--they were the abolitionists--and said, Oh, how sad it is that human beings are being held in bondage. We became a calculating force.
But look at the numbers. Four million enslaved. One would wonder why this is a sacred moment on the floor of the House.
So Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the States--then in rebellion against the United States--shall be then there forward and forever free.
But the Emancipation Proclamation itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate States then at war against the Union.
Remember, we became the practical cornerstone of trying to end the war, to stop the rebellion, and to preserve the Union. I am glad the Union was preserved. I am glad we are the United States of America.
Yet it is so crucial in the understanding of even this year of 2020, even understanding the horrors of George Floyd's death, what his family still suffers, and why there was such a rage of young people and why the words ``Black Lives Matter'' came because of the brutality of our history, and here, in the 21st century, we are still suffering from the inequities of those that did not understand not only the question of justice, but also the question of the brutality and the history of slavery.
Maybe there would have been a better understanding if a little history was woven into where we are today. As I indicated, the Emancipation Proclamation did not do it because, as it said, it did not deal with States like Massachusetts and Ohio, to my understanding. It did not deal with those States.
In April 1864, the United States Senate passed a proposed amendment banning slavery with the necessary two-thirds majority, but it faulted in the House of Representatives as more and more Democrats refused to support it. So it was not an easy journey.
When Congress reconvened in December 1864, the emboldened Republicans put the proposed amendment up for a vote again, and Lincoln threw himself in the legislative process, something that gives leadership and substance to the idea of freeing slaves, freeing human beings.
The Constitution now is a stronger document because, as he put himself into this, Lincoln and his allies see what is before you to focus on the most important thing that this amendment protects the slaves now born and in the United States, but also the millions yet to be born. He was committed to the passage of the 13th Amendment. He authorizes allies to entice House members with plum positions and other inducements, reportedly telling them: I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done, but remember that I am President of the United States, cloaked with immense power, and I expect you to procure the votes.
The whip is on the floor, Mr. Clyburn. I am all the sudden elevated in my capacity as a whip because this President Lincoln was determined to have his agents on the floor use that authority to get what needed to be done. On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, with the required two- thirds majority.
Mr. Speaker, I started out by saying this is a sacred moment. I hope the people at home and our colleagues can see what slavery represented, the brutality of the back of this slave. It didn't take much to be whipped, whipped, and whipped. So scarred, so brutalized that you were almost to death. Or to see a family so like chattel, so like property, so demeaned. Families separated, babies separated. Children becoming more valuable than mom and dad; dad becoming more valuable.
And I remember reading the Slave Narratives, and they said that a woman told her slave husband to come home quick from where he was working in another plantation because they are getting ready to sell their children in one place and her in another. We need you home, she said.
Who would imagine that human beings would have collars around their necks, slavery so brutal that it was unspeakable and could not be heard?
So today, as we commemorate the 155th anniversary of this important step, realizing that it had to go through as an amendment to all of the States, what a journey it was.
I think the words of Sojourner Truth are telling, and that is why we fought to have her busts, her statue here when she was at an abolitionist meeting and someone said, Yes, sir, what do you want? And she said, Ain't I a woman? I born 13 children and I have seen most all of them sold into slavery.
That is why we are on the floor today. We are on the floor today because of the continued misunderstanding of race in this Nation.
We are on the floor today because more of us need to understand what H.R. 40 is all about. It is a magnificent piece of legislation that deals with the questions of the commission to study and develop reparation proposals. It is a reflection of the history of African Americans in this country. It is a simple process of getting a commission that dignifies what happened to us and looks for reconciliation and restoration and proposal to deal systemically with the ongoing disasters that we see in our respective communities, from disparities in healthcare, COVID-19, housing, the criminal justice system, education. That is why we stand here today.
So I thank Mr. Butterfield for yielding, and I thank this body for understanding this is a sacred moment.
Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of this body and the Committee on the Judiciary, I am pleased to join my colleagues in this Special Order marking the anniversary of the passage on December 6, 1865 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and celebrating the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Civil Rights Amendments.
I thank my colleague, Congressman Butterfield, for anchoring this important Special Order and am remembering our late colleague, John Lewis, a great and beloved man, who risked and gave his life to make real the promise of those amendments.
The 13th Amendment, the first of the three great Civil War Amendments, was passed in 1865 and abolished slavery.
The 14th Amendment conferred citizenship on the newly emancipated slaves, and the 1st Amendment prohibited abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Taken together, these amendments were intended and have the effect of making former slaves, and their descendants, full and equal members of the political community known as the United States of America.
By 1861, when the Civil War broke out, more than 4 million people (nearly all of them of African descent) were enslaved in 15 southern and border states.
By 1862, President Abraham Lincoln came to believe firmly that emancipating enslaved people in the South would help the Union crush the Confederate rebellion and win the Civil War.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the states ``then in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.''
But the Emancipation Proclamation itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate states then at war against the Union, and only to the portion of those states not already under Union control.
To make emancipation permanent would take a constitutional amendment abolishing the institution of slavery itself.
In April 1864, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed amendment banning slavery with the necessary two-thirds majority but it faltered in the House of Representatives, as more and more Democrats refused to support it.
When Congress reconvened in December 1864, the emboldened Republicans put the proposed amendment up for vote again and Lincoln threw himself in the legislative process, inviting individual representatives to his office to discuss the amendment and putting pressure on border-state Unionists (who had previously opposed it) to change their position.
Lincoln was committed to the passage of the 13th Amendment, telling his allies to ``see what is before you, to focus on the most important thing; that this Amendment protects the slaves now born and in the United States, but settles the question for all time for the millions yet to be born.''
He authorized his allies to entice House members with plum positions and other inducements, reportedly telling them: ``I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done; but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes.''
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, just over the required two-thirds majority, and the following day, Lincoln approved a joint resolution of Congress submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification.
Mr. Speaker, the United States is the world's only superpower and boasts the largest economy in the history of the world and for many years was the world's indispensable nation and the example that all aspiring democracies wished to emulate.
But at the same time, this nation has also been home to many searing instances of social unrest resulting from racial injustices, as we witnessed this year on the streets of big cities and small towns in urban and rural communities.
We saw Americans, by the millions across the country, coming from all races and ages, engaging in what the late John Lewis called ``good trouble'' by protesting and demanding an end to the systemic racial inequality in our criminal justice system that too often victimizes and disproportionately treats black Americans worse, ceteris paribus, when it comes to suspicion, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial, sentencing, and incarceration.
While the brutal deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breanna Taylor in Louisville shocked the conscience of the nation, most black Americans will tell you what they experienced is not new, but has been occurring for generations, if not centuries.
What is critically important to understand is that the instances of brutal and unfair treatment the nation has witnessed this year cannot be attributed to the proverbial few ``bad apples in the bushel'' but is instead the foreseeable consequence of systemic racism and racial inequality in the system.
Not just the criminal justice system, but the health care system, the economic system, and the educational system to name the most glaring examples.
To find our way out of this dark time, we need to understand how it came to be.
That is why in January 2019, I introduced H.R. 40, which establishes a commission to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.
Among other requirements, the commission shall identify (1) the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery; (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants; and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African-Americans and society.
Official slavery ended with the Civil War and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
But unofficial slavery was continued with the new institution of sharecrop farming, a criminal justice system that would press convicts into work once done by slaves, and labor policies that dictated income for work done based upon skin color.
And, of course, all of this was reinforced by the systematic disenfranchisement of black Americans, the ``discrete and insular minority'' excluded from ``those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect'' them, to quote Chief Justice Hughes' famous Carolene Products Footnote 4.
For these reasons, the history of the United States is intertwined with the history of enslaved Africans in the Americas.
There is blood and there are tears, but there is also redemption and reconciliation. But to get there, we must have the complete truth and lay our history bare.
It is the light that sheds the way to the more perfect union all Americans want .
The Commission created and empowered by H.R. 40 is a necessary first step in that effort to get to truth and reconciliation about the Original Sin of American Slavery that is necessary to light the way to the beloved community we all seek.
Finally, I join all my colleagues in pointing out that the most fitting and proper means of paying tribute to the beloved John Lewis's extraordinary life is for the Senate to immediately take up and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, landmark legislation to protect the precious right to vote for all persons and to ensure that our democracy has the tools needed to remain strong.
Mr. Speaker, as a senior member of this body and the Committee on the Judiciary, I am pleased to join my colleagues in this Special Order marking the anniversary of the passage on December 6, 1865 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution and celebrating the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, known as the Civil Rights Amendments.
I thank my colleague, Congressman Butterfield, for anchoring this important Special Order and am remembering our late colleague, John Lewis, a great and beloved man, who risked and gave his life to make real the promise of those amendments.
The 13th Amendment, the first of the three great Civil War Amendments, was passed in 1865 and abolished slavery.
The 14th Amendment conferred citizenship on the newly emancipated slaves, and the 15th Amendment prohibited abridging the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Taken together, these amendments were intended and have the effect of making former slaves, and their descendants, full and equal members of the political community known as the United States of America.
Section 2 of the 14th Amendment is noteworthy because it did two important things.
First, it repealed Article I, Section 2, which counted slaves as 3/5 of a person for purposes of taxation and apportionment of seats in the House of Representatives.
Second, it punished states that denied the right to vote to any male citizen over the age of 21 (who was neither a felon nor had fought on the side of the Confederacy during the Civil War) by reducing their population for purposes of representation in Congress.
The Framers knew then, and everyone knows now, that the male citizens over the age of 21 who were being denied the right to vote were the former slaves.
The Framers of the 14th Amendment also knew which states were denying these citizens the right to vote.
The Framers could have identified those states by name but elected not to do so.
They chose not to do so because that would have required them to despoil the sanctity and revolutionary character of the Constitution by having to acknowledge explicitly that slavery had existed legally in a country founded on the ``self-evident truth'' that ``all men are created equal.''
It is for this reason that the Framers never used the words ``slave,'' ``slaveholder,'' ``master,'' or ``slavery'' anywhere in the original Constitution.
The single reference in the Amendments is the declaration in the 13th Amendment 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.''
The reason this is important is because it shows that when it comes to matters of race and politics in America, the Framers and Congress have always been masters of writing in code so as not to bruise the feelings or upset the tender sensibilities of their fellow citizens in the Southern states.
The Framers and Congress were practiced in the art of expressing their true views and achieving their objectives without enshrining in the Constitution or laws the fact that certain of their countrymen trafficked in racism.
By 1861, when the Civil War broke out, more than 4 million people (nearly all of them of African descent) were enslaved in 15 southern and border states.
By 1862, President Abraham Lincoln came to believe firmly that emancipating enslaved people in the South would help the Union crush the Confederate rebellion and win the Civil War.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the states ``then in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.''
But the Emancipation Proclamation itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate states then at war against the Union, and only to the portion of those states not already under Union control.
To make emancipation permanent would take a constitutional amendment abolishing the institution of slavery itself.
In April 1864, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed amendment banning slavery with the necessary two-thirds majority but it faltered in the House of Representatives, as more and more Democrats refused to support it.
When Congress reconvened in December 1864, the emboldened Republicans put the proposed amendment up for vote again and Lincoln threw himself in the legislative process, inviting individual representatives to his office to discuss the amendment and putting pressure on border-state Unionists (who had previously opposed it) to change their position.
Lincoln was committed to the passage of the 13th Amendment, telling his allies to ``see what is before you, to focus on the most important thing; that this Amendment protects the slaves now born and in the United States, but also the millions yet to be born.''
He authorized his allies to entice House members with plum positions and other inducements, reportedly telling them: ``I leave it to you to determine how it shall be done; but remember that I am President of the United States, clothed with immense power, and I expect you to procure those votes.''
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, just over the required two-thirds majority, and the following day, Lincoln approved a joint resolution of Congress submitting it to the state legislatures for ratification.
Mr. Speaker, let me recite the opening sentence of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment: ``All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.''
This text was and is a clear repudiation of the infamous Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott, in which Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that a black man, was so inferior to the white man that he had no rights the white man was bound to respect, and could never, even if born free, claim rights of citizenship under the federal constitution.
The next clause in Section 1 states: ``No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.''
This greatly expanded the civil and legal rights of all American citizens by protecting them from infringement by the states as well as by the federal government.
The third clause, ``nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,'' expanded the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to apply to the states as well as the federal government.
Over time, this clause has been interpreted to guarantee a wide array of rights against infringement by the states, including those enumerated in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, right to bear arms, etc.) as well as the right to privacy and other fundamental rights not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution.
Finally, the ``equal protection clause'' (``nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws'') was clearly intended to stop state governments from discriminating against black Americans, and over the years would play a key role in many landmark civil rights cases.
It should be noted also, Mr. Speaker, that Section 2 of the 14th Amendment authorized the federal government to punish states that violated or abridged their citizens' right to vote by proportionally reducing the states' representation in Congress, and mandated that anyone who ``engaged in insurrection'' against the United States could not hold civil, military, or elected office (without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate).
And Section 5 of the 14th Amendment gave Congress ``the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.''
In giving Congress power to pass laws to safeguard the sweeping provisions of Section 1, in particular, the 14th Amendment effectively altered the balance of power between the federal and state governments in the United States.
Nearly a century later, Congress would use this authority to pass landmark civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
The 15th Amendment granting African-American men the right to vote was adopted into the U.S. Constitution in 1870.
The 15th Amendment states: ``The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.''
Despite the amendment, by the late 1870s discriminatory practices were used to prevent blacks from exercising their right to vote, especially in the South.
It wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that legal barriers were outlawed at the state and local levels if they denied African- Americans their right to vote under the 15th Amendment.
Mr. Speaker, the United States is the world's only superpower and boasts the largest economy in the history of the world and for many years was the world's indispensable nation and the example that all aspiring democracies wished to emulate.
But at the same time, this nation has also been home to many searing instances of social unrest resulting from racial injustices, as we witnessed this year on the streets of big cities and small towns in urban and rural communities.
We saw Americans, by the millions across the country, coming from all races and ages, engaging in what the late John Lewis called ``good trouble'' by protesting and demanding an end to the systemic racial inequality in our criminal justice system that too often victimizes and disproportionately treats black Americans worse, ceteris paribus, when it comes to suspicion, apprehension, arrest, detention, trial, sentencing, and incarceration.
While the brutal deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breanna Taylor in Louisville shocked the conscience of the nation, most black Americans will tell you what they experienced is not new, but has been occurring for generations, if not centuries.
What is critically important to understand is that the instances of brutal and unfair treatment the nation has witnessed this year cannot be attributed to the proverbial few ``bad apples in the bushel'' but is instead the foreseeable consequence of systemic racism and racial inequality in the system.
Not just the criminal justice system, but the health care system, the economic system, and the educational system to name the most glaring examples.
To find our way out of this dark time, we need to understand how it came to be.
That is why in January 2019, I introduced H.R. 40, which establishes a commission to examine slavery and discrimination in the colonies and the United States from 1619 to the present and recommend appropriate remedies.
Among other requirements, the commission shall identify (1) the role of federal and state governments in supporting the institution of slavery; (2) forms of discrimination in the public and private sectors against freed slaves and their descendants; and (3) lingering negative effects of slavery on living African-Americans and society.
Official slavery ended with the Civil War and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
But unofficial slavery was continued with the new institution of sharecrop farming, a criminal justice system that would press convicts into work once done by slaves, and labor policies that dictated income for work done based upon skin color.
And, of course, all of this was reinforced by the systematic disenfranchisement of black Americans, the ``discrete and insular minority'' excluded from ``those political processes ordinarily to be relied upon to protect'' them, to quote Chief Justice Hughes' famous Carolene Products Footnote 4.
For these reasons, the history of the United States is intertwined with the history of enslaved Africans in the Americas.
There is blood and there are tears, but there is also redemption and reconciliation.
But to get there, we must have the complete truth and lay our history bare.
It is the light that sheds the way to the more perfect union all Americans want.
The Commission created and empowered by H.R. 40 is a necessary first step in that effort to get to truth and reconciliation about the Original Sin of American Slavery that is necessary to light the way to the beloved community we all seek.
Finally, I join all my colleagues in pointing out that the most fitting and proper means of paying tribute to the beloved John Lewis's extraordinary life is for the Senate to immediately take up and pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, landmark legislation to protect the precious right to vote for all persons and to ensure that our democracy has the tools needed to remain strong.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for delineating the important difference between the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. The Proclamation was a heroic action of President Lincoln; the 13th amendment was a historic action of this Congress.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Clyburn very much for his comments tonight.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I have 12 minutes remaining and I have four speakers. I will try to divide it up 3 minutes each.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.
Waters), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Financial Services.
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. How much time remains, Mr. Speaker?
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Mr. BUTTERFIELD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her very powerful words.
At this time, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Mfume).
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