Ratification and Proclamation
- When
- December 18, 1865
- Where
- State Department
The amendment was ratified by 27 of 36 states on December 6, 1865; Secretary of State Seward certified its validity on December 18, 1865, with the amendment ending slavery in Kentucky and Delaware that December.
The amendment was ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on December 6, 1865. Having been ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, including those that had been in rebellion, Secretary of State Seward on December 18, 1865 certified that the Thirteenth Amendment had become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution. The amendment's December 1865 ratification ended chattel slavery and indentured servitude in Kentucky and Delaware, the final exceptions.
Sources
- Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-02
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.