US Senate passes the Thirteenth Amendment

The act declared enslaved people held by people engaged in rebellion against the United States to be free and empowered the president to employ Black men in military service. Its reach depended on...

Lincoln announced that enslaved people in areas still rebelling on January 1, 1863 would be declared free. The warning gave Confederate states a period to return to the Union and preserved slavery...

The Emancipation Proclamation declared enslaved people in designated areas in rebellion to be free and authorized Black men to enlist in the Union Army. It did not immediately free everyone, and its...

General Orders No. 143 established a bureau to organize Black regiments in the Union Army. Black men had already pressed to fight, and their military service became a direct struggle for freedom and...

The Dutch emancipation law took effect in Suriname and the Caribbean colonies. Many formerly enslaved people in Suriname were compelled to work under state supervision for another ten years, a measure...

The House passed the amendment abolishing slavery, which was later ratified by the states. Black activists had long demanded abolition and continued to press for equal rights and protection after...

Union troops arrived in Galveston and announced that enslaved people in Texas were free under federal policy. The announcement came more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and...

Black Jamaicans protested land dispossession, unequal justice, and poverty after emancipation. The rebellion and violent colonial response exposed the coercive conditions that survived formal freedom....

The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery except as punishment for crime. Emancipation resulted from generations of resistance, the Civil War, Black military service, and political...

The act recognized national citizenship and declared equal civil rights for people born in the United States, including formerly enslaved people. It answered Black Codes and racial violence that...