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United States ConstitutionThe Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery, and with limited exceptions, such as those convicted of a crime, prohibits involuntary servitude.
At the time of its ratification, slavery remained legal only in Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and New Jersey. Everywhere else in the United States slaves had been freed by state action and the federal government's Emancipation Proclamation.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed to the legislatures of the several states by the Thirty-Eighth United States Congress, on January 31, 1865. The amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865, when Georgia ratified the amendment. It was declared, in a proclamation of Secretary of State William Henry Seward, dated December 18, 1865, to have been ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the then thirty-six states. Although it was ratified by the necessary three-quarters of the states within a year of its proposal, its most recent ratification occurred in 1995 in Mississippi, which was the last of the thirty-six states in existence in 1865 to ratify it. The dates of ratification were[1]
