Providence: Abraham Lincoln’s use of religious references

Elsie G. Holzwarth

Chicago Literary Club

April 30, 2012

The single sheet of paper, handwritten, undated and untitled, reads:

The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to

act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one

must be wrong. God can not be for, and against the same thing

at the same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible

that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of

either party – and yet the human instrumentalities, working

just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect His purpose.

I am almost ready to say this is probably true – that God wills

this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere quiet

power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either

saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest – Yet

the contest began – And having begun He could give the final

victory to either side any day – Yet the contest proceeds –

This manuscript was written by Abraham Lincoln and found after his death.

It now resides at the John Hay Library of Brown University. Hay was an alumnus

of Brown and one of the secretaries to Abraham Lincoln in the White House. The

document is now referred to as “Meditation on the Divine Will.” The date of its

writing is still debated. But, one might also ask, why did he write it and what did

he intend?

Lincoln’s parents, during his childhood, belonged to what was called the

Separatist Baptists. They were constant Bible readers, fatalists who believed that

all is predetermined by God, and they were anti-slavery. Young Lincoln, however,

would give mock sermons to an audience of children from atop a tree stump. The

skeptical Lincoln is said to have written a paper in his New Salem days entitled

“ Infidelity.” Later, in his first great speech, to the Young Men’s Lyceum of

Springfield, Illinois in 1838, he establishes themes that run through his writings:

references to the laws and founding documents of the country on the one hand, and

religious references on the other hand. “[G]eneral intelligence, sound morality,

and, in particular, a reverence for the Constitution and laws . . . Upon these let the

proud fabric of freedom rest, as the rock of its basis; and as truly as has been said

of the only greater institution, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [1] This

last is a New Testament quote and Lincoln is alluding to the “church” founded

upon a “rock” as that so-called greater institution than freedom. Thus began

Lincoln’s use of religious references in important public discourse.

Lincoln was in the Illinois legislature and practiced law in Springfield. But

he was a melancholy man, subject to bouts of depression. In the summer of 1841

he traveled to Kentucky where the mother of his good friend Joshua Speed gave

him a Bible. In a letter to Speed’s sister he wrote, “Tell your mother that . . . I

intend to read it regularly when I return home. I doubt not that it is really, as she

says, the best cure for the ‘Blues’ could one but take it according to the truth.” [2]

Here was his private thinking. Ambitious to get to Congress, Lincoln resorted to

publishing a handbill directed to the voters in 1846 replying to charges of

infidelity. “That I am not a member of any Christian church is true; but I have

never denied the truth of the Scripture, and I have never spoken with intentional

disrespect of religion in general or of any denomination of Christians in

particular.” [3] This is cleverly worded, indeed: not denying the Scripture doesn’t

mean accepting the Scripture, and not intentionally disrespecting religion does not

rule out disrespecting religion in a way one might claim to be un-intentional.

After one term in Congress Lincoln returned to Springfield. In an

autobiographical sketch he writes: “From 1849 to 1854, both inclusive, [as a

lawyer would say], practiced law more assiduously than ever before. . . I was

losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused

me again.” [4] Remember, that 1820 compromise allowed Missouri to become one

of the United States as a slave state, but all states and territories north of a line

extended west from Missouri’s southern boundary would thereafter be free. The

Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, championed by Illinois Senator Stephen A.

Douglas, would overturn this scheme and leave the question of slavery to popular

vote. Kansas and Nebraska, it should be noted, were not official states at the time,

but larger territories.

“Repeal the Missouri Compromise; repeal all compromises; repeal the

Declaration of Independence; repeal all past history, – you still cannot repeal

human nature. It still will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension

is wrong, and out of the abundance of his heart his mouth will continue to speak.

[a biblical quote] [5] Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men

are created equal [a Declaration of Independence quote]; but now from that

beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for some men to enslave

others is a sacred right of self-government. These principles cannot stand together.

They are as opposite as God and Mammon; and whoever holds to the one must

despise the other. [another biblical reference] [6] Here is Lincoln in his first

important anti-slavery speech, on October 16, 1854 in Peoria, Illinois. Slavery

is not to be decided by popular vote, especially considering who could, and who

could not, vote.

And yet Lincoln also recognizes in this speech that, although there can be no

moral right in connection with one man making a slave of another, there existed

at the time legal rights which allowed it, in the U.S. Constitution and in legislation.

These Lincoln felt bound to respect. So, it was to the extension of slavery, only,

that he so vehemently objected. In 1857 the United States Supreme Court weighed

in on the subject in the Dred Scott decision, holding that no slave could be a citizen

so as to claim benefits under the Constitution, and further stating, subject to the

Constitution, neither Congress nor territorial legislatures could exclude slavery

from territories. In 1858, nominated to run against Douglas for U.S. Senator from

Illinois, Lincoln gave his “House Divided” Speech using another biblical verse.

“ ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ [7] I believe this government cannot

endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be

dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be

divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of

slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind

shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates

will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well

as new – North as well as South. ” Lincoln links stopping the extension of slavery

with its “ultimate extinction.” But he doesn’t say how this is to be accomplished.

Will it be the outcome of economic forces or, perhaps, the addition of enough

free states to the Union will bring about the ratification of an anti-slavery

amendment to the U.S. Constitution ?

Lincoln and Douglas engaged in a series of debates and Lincoln continued

his pairing of the Declaration of Independence with the Bible. Lincoln proclaimed,

“ I should like to know – taking this old Declaration of Independence, which

declares that all men are equal, upon principle, and making exceptions to it –

where will it stop? If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another

say it does not mean some other man? . . . My friend [Douglas] has said to me I

am a poor hand to quote Scripture. I will try it again, however. It is said in one of

the admonitions of the Lord, ‘As your Father in Heaven is perfect, be ye also

perfect.’ [8] The Savior, I suppose, did not expect that any human creature could be

perfect as the Father in Heaven; but He said, ‘As your Father in Heaven is perfect,

be ye also perfect.’ He set that up as a standard, and he who did most towards

reaching that standard, attained the highest degree of moral perfection. So I say in

relation to the principle that all men are created equal, let it be as nearly reached as

we can. If we cannot give freedom to every creature, let us do nothing that will

impose slavery upon any other creature.” Again he distinguishes between the

existence of slavery and the extension of slavery; the one accepted, the other not.

In a previous speech on the Dred Scott decision Lincoln had explained what

he thought the authors of the Declaration of Independence meant. “[T]hey did not

intend to declare all men equal in all respects. They did not mean to say that all

were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They

defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men

created equal – equal with ‘certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness. ’ ”

Lincoln lost the Senate election to Douglas, but won the Presidency two

years later. He was 51 years old. He had been using the Bible, apparently not only

for public purposes, but for private communications. He had commiserated with

his friend Joshua Speed when they both faced impending marriages. On July 4,

1842 he wrote to Speed, now three months married. “I believe God made me one

of the instruments of bringing your Fanny and you together, which union, I have

no doubt He had fore-ordained. Whatever he designs, he will do for me yet. ‘Stand

still and see the salvation of the Lord’ [a biblical quote] [9] is my text just now.” [10]

Speed was a skeptic like Lincoln, but Fanny was quite religious. Was Lincoln

merely writing what he hoped would endear him to one of his readers; or was he

meditating on a “divine will?” Three months later Lincoln went on to marry Mary

Todd and they had four sons. In 1850 their son Eddie died at age 4 and the

following year Lincoln’s estranged illiterate father died. Lincoln wrote a letter to

be read to the dying man. “[T]ell him to remember to call upon, and confide in,

our great, and merciful Maker; who will not turn away from him in any extremity.

He notes the fall of a sparrow, and the numbers the hairs of our heads; [a biblical

quote] [11] and He will not forget the dying man, who puts his trust in Him.” [12] Were

these religious references used only because their audience might appreciate them?

Now in 1861 he was off to Washington, D.C. with a task, as he called it,

“greater than that which rested upon [George] Washington.” From the train

which was to take him across the country he remarked to the people of

Springfield, “Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him

[Washington], I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in

Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let

us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I

hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”

But all was not to be well. Seven states had already attempted to secede

when Lincoln gave his First Inaugural Address March 4, 1861. (There would

finally be eleven in the Confederacy.) He assures that he has “no lawful right” to

“interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists”; he supports

compliance with the Constitution, the laws and Supreme Court decisions, at least

until they are repealed or overturned, explicitly including the Fugitive Slave

provisions of the Constitution authorizing the return of escaped slaves; he states

that under the Constitution no state can get out of the Union. And he concludes:

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never

yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our

present difficulty. In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in

mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you.

You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no

oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most

solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.

A month later the war began. Little did anyone know it would last four

more years. Just earlier this month [April, 2012] new estimates of the Civil War

death toll were publicized. The figure had long stood at 618,222. Using “newly

digitized census data from the 19^th century” researchers have increased it to

750,000: 716,000 white and 36,000 black war dead. “The new estimate suggests

that 1 in 10 men of military age died because of the war.” (This is an overall

percentage; in the South it might have been close to 20%.) According to one

historian, “It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a

dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It

helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population,

what a devastating experience this was.” [13] National Geographic printed a

Supplement showing battle sites from Missouri to Pennsylvania, Louisiana to

Florida, and all parts in between. The red dots for land battles are so numerous

they look like a violent attack of the measles. Of these battles, the magazine lists

148 “as decisive to the course of the war.” [14]

On December 3, 1861 Lincoln gave his First Annual Message to Congress.

“It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war

upon the first principle of popular government – the rights of the people. . . The

struggle of today, is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also. With a

reliance on Providence, all the more firm and earnest, let us proceed in the great

task which events have devolved upon us.” Providence is the will of God, or God

working in the world. Events somehow happened to us. Of course, one could ask

whether those events were pre-ordained by the same Providence upon which one

must now rely in the great task of war. But, as one editor of Civil War documents

notes, as the war continued Lincoln’s proclamations of thanksgiving to God for

even modest Union victories show “not only his growing reliance on divine

guidance, but also his canny gift for linking the Union cause with God’s will.’’ [15]

This year we had two extra days to file our income tax returns because

April 15 was a Sunday and April 16 was an official holiday in Washington, D.C.

commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the emancipation of the slaves there,

for the sum of $ 300 per slave paid to owners. In May, 1862 Lincoln issued a

proclamation proposing to the slave holding States and “the people of those states”

that they accept the resolution of Congress of “pecuniary aid” to any State which

adopts gradual abolishment of slavery. “Will you not embrace it? So much good

has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of God, it is

now your high privilege to do.” But they did not see Providence in the same way.

Two months later Lincoln began his first draft of the Emancipation

Proclamation. He also instructed military and naval commanders to seize

necessary property and to employ as laborers “persons of African descent” “within

and from” the slave states, paying them “reasonable wages”, thereby essentially

allowing the seizing and emancipating of slaves, but as laborers, not combatants.

In September, 1862, after the three day Battle of Antietam at a cost of over 23,000

killed, Robert E. Lee’s army had retreated from Maryland and now Lincoln wrote a

second draft of the Emancipation Proclamation. A member of his Cabinet writes

in his diary, “Lincoln remarked that he had made a vow, a covenant, that if God

gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of

Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation.

. . . God had decided this question of favor of the slaves.” [16] A Preliminary

Proclamation was issued giving Confederate slave owners 100 days to lay down

their arms and return to the Union or lose their “property.” However, they

appear to have concluded God had decided otherwise.

John Hay guessed it was about this time, September, 1862, that Lincoln

penned the page now called “Meditation on the Divine Will.” A delegation of

Chicago Christians had visited him with a petition claiming total emancipation of

all slaves was the will of God. Lincoln replied, “I hope it will not be irreverent

for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a

point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it

directly to me . . . And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however

the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a

direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is

possible and learn what appears to be wise and right.” He said he held “the matter

under advisement” and concluded that “whatever shall appear to be God’s will I

will do.” [17] Ever lawyerly, his choice of words was crafty: whatever shall appear

to be God’s will.

A month later Lincoln participated in a White House Quaker prayer service

and remarked to Eliza P. Gurney. “In the very responsible position in which I

happen to be placed, being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly

Father, as I am, and as we all are, to work out his great purposes, I have desired

that all my works and acts be according to his will, and that it might be so, I have

sought his aid – but if after endeavoring to do my best in the light which he affords

me, I find my efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me, He

wills it otherwise.” Some historians attribute these comments to have inspired

the “Meditation.” We will hear again of God’s unknown purposes of his own.

As one commentator noted, “Lincoln was turning the war to save the

Union into a war to save the slaves.” [18] The lack of Union victory, and Lincoln’s

Preliminary Proclamation possibly freeing slaves in the Confederacy to come into

the rest of the country, stirred up such voter frustration that Democrats won in the

mid-term elections and Lincoln’s Republican Party barely controlled Congress.

In his December, 1862 Annual Address to Congress Lincoln proposed an

amendment to the Constitution. It would have the government provide funds

to any state abolishing slavery before 1900, guarantee freedom for slaves liberated

during “the rebellion” [as he called it], compensate their owners “who shall not

have been disloyal,” and authorize Congressional appropriation “for colonizing

free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the

United States.” This plan “would shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure

of money and of blood. . . Other means may succeed, this could not fail. The way

is plain, peaceful, generous, and just – a way which, if followed, the world will

forever applaud, and God must forever bless,” he exhorted Congress.

Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation following the New Year’s

Day, 1863 reception at the White House. All slaves within a designated area of the

Confederacy were now free. They could also “be received into the armed services

of the United States.” Lincoln concludes, “And upon this act sincerely believed to

be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I

invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty

God.” While Lincoln had his eye on the Supreme Court, lest the proclamation be

found unconstitutional, he was also appealing to an even higher authority.

The New Year’s Day reception was the first attended by Mary Lincoln after

the death of their son Willie at age 11 in February, 1862. The Lincolns were

devastated by this loss. The news from the battlefield in the first five months of

1863 was also discouraging. Mrs. Lincoln’s dressmaker and confidante, Elizabeth

Keckley, was a former slave who had been able to purchase her freedom. In her

memoir she relates that Lincoln came into the room where she was “fitting a dress

for Mrs. Lincoln. His step was slow and heavy, and his face sad. Like a tired child

he threw himself upon a sofa, and shaded his eyes with his hands. He was a

complete picture of dejection.” To Mrs. Lincoln’s inquiry he replied, “ ‘[P]lenty

of news, but no good news. It is dark, dark everywhere.’ He reached forth one of

his long arms, and took a small Bible from a stand near the head of the sofa,

opened the pages and soon was absorbed in reading them. A quarter of an hour

passed, and on glancing at the sofa, the face of the president seemed more cheerful.

The dejected look was gone; in fact, the countenance was lighted up with new

resolution and hope. The change was so marked that I could not but wonder at it,

and wonder led to the desire to know what book of the Bible afforded so much

comfort. Making the search for a missing article an excuse, I walked gently around

the sofa, and looking into the open book, I discovered that Mr. Lincoln was reading

that divine comforter, Job.” [19] Now we have heard the cliché “the patience of Job.”

It is not only Job’s endurance, however, which is significant in the biblical story.

It is also Job’s resignation and acceptance that he cannot understand the ways of

God. According to the Bible this is what leads Job, who had lost all he had, to

being ultimately doubly rewarded.

On August 26, 1863 Lincoln wrote to James C. Conkling, “You say you

will not fight to free negroes. Some of them seem willing to fight for you; but,

no matter. Fight you, then, exclusively to save the Union.” Former slaves were

now fighting as soldiers. Writes Lincoln, “But negroes, like other people, act upon

motives. Why should they do any thing for us, if we will do nothing for them? If

they stake their lives for us, they must be prompted by the strongest motive – even

the promise of freedom. And the promise being made, must be kept.” With Union

victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg and the opening of the Mississippi River,

Lincoln could write, “Peace does not appear so distant as it did. . . Still let us not

be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us

diligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time,

will give us the rightful result.”

On November 19, 1863 in the Gettysburg Address dedicating the burial

ground of 51,000, dead in three days, Lincoln again turned to the Declaration of

Independence. Lincoln, the lawyer, knew it was not actually a legal document; that

is, determinative of legal issues. But he could not rely on the Constitution which in

three provisions supported slavery without ever using the word. Lincoln, the

orator, knew the Declaration was a document of sentiment. It brought forth a birth

of freedom with its “self-evident truths”: (1) “that all men are created equal”, and

(2) “that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that

among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The Declaration refers

to God; the Constitution, of course, does not. It states the “laws of nature and

nature’s God” entitle us to declare ourselves independent. The last paragraph

appeals to the “Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” It

concludes, “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the

protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our

fortunes and our sacred honor.” At Gettysburg Lincoln reiterated the pledge: “that

these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a

new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth.”

According to one historian, “Lincoln’s preoccupation with the issue of

God’s will and the providential meaning of the nation’s calamitous ordeal is

particularly evident throughout the last year of his life.” [20] He thinks the

“Meditation on Divine Will” is “much closer to, and perhaps even belongs to, the

year 1864.” [21] Lincoln wrote to Albert G. Hodges on April 4, 1864, “I claim not

to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me.

Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation’s condition is not what either

party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is

tending seems plain [toward Union victory]. If God now wills the removal of a

great wrong [slavery], and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the

South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find

therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.” The next

day he replied to a petition from school children to end slavery. “Please tell these

little people I am very glad their young hearts are so full of just and generous

sympathy, and that, while I have not the power to grant all they ask, I trust that

they will remember that God has, and that, as it seems, He wills to do it.” This

note sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2008 for $ 3,400,000.00.

On September 4, 1864 he wrote to Eliza P. Gurney, with whom he had

discussed God’s unknown purposes two years earlier, “ The purposes of the

Almighty are perfect, and must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to

accurately perceive them in advance. We hoped for a happy termination of this

terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise. We

shall yet acknowledge His wisdom and our own error therein. Meanwhile we must

work earnestly in the best light He give us, trusting that so working still conduces

to the great ends He ordains. Surely he intends some great good to follow this

mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.”

These letters were a rehearsal for a speechwriting triumph yet to come. But, at this

point, Sherman had just captured Atlanta. In another proclamation Lincoln now

calls for the country’s “devout acknowledgement to the Supreme Being in whose

hands are the destinies of nations” and he requested that “in all places of public

worship . . . thanksgiving be offered to Him for His mercy. . .”

Joshua Speed, whose mother had given Lincoln a Bible more than twenty

earlier, visited Lincoln when President. “As I entered the room, near night, he was

sitting near a window, reading his Bible. Approaching him I said: ‘I am glad to see

you so profitably engaged.’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am profitably engaged.’ ‘Well,’ said

I, ‘if you have recovered from your skepticism, I am sorry to say that I have not.’

Looking me earnestly in the face and placing his hand upon my shoulder, he said:

‘You are wrong, Speed. Take all of this book upon reason that you can and the

balance on faith, and you will live and die a happier and better man.’ ” [22] Recall,

in 1841 he had written of the Bible, “could one but take it according to the truth.”

In November, 1864 Lincoln was reelected. On November 10 he addressed

a congratulatory crowd from the second floor of the White House. The speech

“was written in great big script so Lincoln could read it by candlelight at arm’s

length,” according to one historian.[23] Said Lincoln, “While I am deeply sensible to

the high compliment of a re-election, and duly grateful, as I trust, to Almighty God

for having directed my countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their own

good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any other man may be disappointed or

pained by the result.” This four-page document sold at a Christie’s auction on the

bicentenary of his birth, February 12, 2009, for $ 3,442,500.00.

His March 4, 1865 Second Inaugural Address is often considered his

greatest speech. Certainly it is the culmination of his ruminations on the Bible and

God’s will, or Providence. Of the parties to the war, he writes, “Both read the

same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in

wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces [a reference to slavery

and to the Bible, namely the punishment of Adam and Eve to labor and sweat for

their own bread]; [24] but let us judge not that we be not judged [a biblical quote]. [25]

The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been fully answered.

The Almighty has his own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of offenses!

For it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence

cometh! ’ [a biblical quote] [26] If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one

of those offences, which in the providence of God, must needs come, but which,

having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that he

gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom

the offence came [that is, everybody is to the blame], shall we discern therein any

departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always

ascribe to Him? [Ever shrewd in his use of words, Lincoln forms a question, not a

bold statement, and confines to “the believers” the ascribing of “divine attributes”

to God.] Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of

war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth

piled by the bondman’s two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk

[meaning any fruits of American slavery destroyed], and until every drop of blood

drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said

three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord, are

true and righteous altogether.” [a biblical quote] [27] Lincoln is using God’s will, or

Providence, both to inspire and to threaten the people of the North and the South.

Within six weeks Lee surrendered at Appomattox and Lincoln was

assassinated. On December 6, 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution

was ratified, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.