The words most Americans think were written in 1865 were written seventy-eight years earlier, for a territory. This page follows them from there to the ballot box, with the document at every step.
"A Southern chain gang," about 1903. Sold as a stereograph. By then the exception was 116 years old and the lease was the South's public works department.
Detroit Publishing Co. Library of Congress. Public domain.
Did you know
What the textbooks leave out.
Twelve facts about abolition and the exception clause, each read from the document linked beneath it.
78
years older than the amendment.
The exception's words were written in 1787 for the Northwest Territory. The Thirteenth Amendment copied them in 1865.
In 1866 the United States wrote the exception into treaties with the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations. The Cherokee had abolished slavery themselves in 1863.
The United States accepted a definition of slavery.
Slavery is a status, defined by the powers of ownership exercised over a person. The definition has been binding on the United States for ninety-seven years.
It is a federal crime to ship goods made by prisoners across state lines. Penalty: up to two years. The law exempts farm goods, goods made for government use, and other listed cases.
No plea form the network has audited tells the defendant that conviction suspends the protection against slavery. New Jersey's lists a thirty-dollar fee instead.
The exception is written, seventy-eight years before the amendment. Source text
The Confederation Congress organized the territory north of the Ohio River. Article 6 of the Northwest Ordinance carried both the ban and the exception, in the words the Thirteenth Amendment would repeat. The free states carved from the territory copied it into their constitutions.
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
Rhode Island writes seven words and no exception. Source text
Rhode Island's constitution of 1843 prohibits slavery outright. The sentence has not changed. It is the only state constitution in the enforcement group that never carried the exception.
The Supreme Court rules that a Black person has no rights a white man is bound to respect. Established holding
Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Court treated a human being as property under the Constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment answered the case eight years later.
The enrolled act, April 16, 1862. National Archives.1862
Emancipation in the District of Columbia keeps the exception, and pays the owners. Source text
On April 16, 1862, Congress freed every person held in the District and let loyal owners petition commissioners for compensation. The same act wrote the exception into the District's law three years before the amendment.
neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for crime, whereof the party shall be duly convicted, shall hereafter exist in said District
Section 1 abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States with one exception. Section 2 gives Congress the power to enforce it.
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.
Ratified Indian Treaty 358, Cherokee, July 19, 1866. National Archives.1866
The United States writes the same exception into treaties with five Native nations. Source text
In one year, the Reconstruction treaties with the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, and Seminole nations each installed the exception in nearly identical words. The Cherokee treaty recites that the Cherokee had already abolished slavery by their own national council in February 1863, and then installs the exception anyway.
never hereafter shall either slavery or involuntary servitude exist in their nation otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted
Congress passes a separate law to abolish peonage. Source text
Two years after the amendment, Congress found it necessary to declare peonage unlawful in New Mexico "and other parts of the United States" by statute. The amendment alone had not ended it.
An Act to abolish and forever prohibit the System of Peonage in the Territory of New Mexico and other Parts of the United States
A state supreme court calls a convicted person "the slave of the State." Established holding
Ruffin v. Commonwealth, Virginia. The court said what the exception means in plain words. The phrase is still quoted because no court has taken it back in those terms.
He is for the time being the slave of the State. He is civiliter mortuus; and his estate, if he has any, is administered like that of a dead man.
The Supreme Court says the amendment reaches the "badges and incidents of slavery." Established holding
In the Civil Rights Cases the Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, but it accepted that Congress may legislate against the badges and incidents of slavery. That phrase is the basis of the network's badges audit.
Alabama's convict department pays forty percent of the state's general fund. Source text
The State's own archives compiled the figures for the Legislature in 2021. In the peak year of 1918 the Convict Department transferred $2,115,019 to the treasury, 40.4 percent of the general fund. Most of the profit came from men leased to mines. Alabama did not end the lease until 1928.
Slavery gets a legal definition. The United States accepts it in 1929. Source text
The Slavery Convention defines slavery as a status or condition, by the powers of ownership exercised over a person. The United States adhered on March 21, 1929, and acceded to the 1956 Supplementary Convention in 1967. It has never withdrawn from either.
the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised
The federal government catalogues every state's prison labor laws. Source text
The Department of Labor published Bulletin 596, Laws Relating to Prison Labor in the United States as of July 1, 1933, 150 pages, state by state. The map has been known to the federal government for ninety-three years.
Puerto Rico's Convention votes a phrase down. The enrolled text carries it. Source text
The Constitutional Convention approved a Section 12 whose exception attached only to labor. The enrolled text, the one that took effect on July 25, 1952, carries an exception that reaches the whole prohibition. Two texts are in the record. They are not the same text.
Colorado's voters say yes. The first removal by vote. Source text
Amendment A passed on November 6, 2018. Nebraska and Utah followed in 2020; Alabama, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont in 2022; Nevada in 2024. Voters in Louisiana in 2022 and California in 2024 rejected the questions put to them.
Where we stand, with every state page and the official ballot documents.
2026
A court gives a removal operational force. Established holding
Mortis v. Polis, Denver District Court, February 13, 2026. The first ruling to give a removal operational force. On September 15, 2026 the federal Abolition Amendment was introduced in the House with 59 original cosponsors.
Every document above is in the Research Library, with its citation. The full argument, with the five frontiers on which the clause was installed, is in The White Pages. The definition's own history is on The Centennial.
Cite this page. Abolish Slavery National Network, “History of the Punishment Exception, 1787 to Today,” https://abolishslavery.us/history.html.
