Book Review

Canada and the United States

Historians have given surprisingly little attention to the intense debate over the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. Too often, the Thirteenth Amendment is presented as an inevitable follow-up to the Emancipation Proclamation. In this well-researched volume, Michael Vorenberg traces the fortuitous events that led to the freedom amendment. Although there was growing emancipation sentiment in the North by 1863, there was no agreement as to how slavery should be eliminated. Moreover, as Vorenberg points out, the abolition of bondage did not necessarily confer any rights on freedpersons or establish racial equality. Even those who favored the amendment had diverse views about what further rights, if any, freedom entailed.

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In recounting the Thirteenth Amendment's adoption, Vorenberg skillfully weaves a fascinating tapestry of legal theory, raw politics, racial prejudice, and concerns for the balance of federal-state power. He also shows how deliberation took place against a changing backdrop of military events, hopes for sectional reconciliation, and emerging Reconstruction policy. Both political parties were badly split over the amendment. Radical Republicans wanted explicit guarantees of equality. Many Republicans, however, appeared lukewarm toward the amendment and tended to stress its conservative character as a means to preserve the Union. Most Democrats, citing states' rights ideology and racial issues, were opposed, but some supported the amendment as an implicit slap at President Abraham Lincoln and the dubious constitutionality of his Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln himself offered little public support for the amendment. It is sobering to recall that in June of 1864, the House of Representatives could not muster the necessary two-thirds vote to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment, and that the amendment virtually disappeared as an issue during the ensuing presidential campaign.

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