THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. JOINT RESOLUTION OF THE THIRTY EIGHTH CONGRESS ... PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION ... ABOLISHING SLAVERY. RESOLVED

Chicago: Western Bank Note & Engraving Co., 1868. First Edition. Document. Recently backed with thin paper with several professional repairs of chips and tears. Very Good . Large folio (16-1/4" x 21-3/4") finely engraved and printed on good quality paper with elaborate decorative borders with a "US" monogram to upper corners, a bold calligraphic heading with "ABOLISHING SLAVERY" in prominent decorated letters; at top center is a small vignette of the pyramid and all-seeing eye above an oval vignette of a slave family with child mourning over a cameo portrait of Lincoln. This is followed by the engraved signatures of President Lincoln, Vice President Hamlin, Schuyler Colfax and J. W. Forney (Speaker and Secretary of the Senate), and 164 Senators and Congressmen. An exceedingly rare and beautiful printing of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude ... Shall exist within the United States...." This elaborately engraved Reconstruction-era broadside, is based on the special "souvenir" copies on parchment signed by Lincoln and the others, of which only a handful are known to have been made. The Thirteenth Amendment represents the first substantive change to how America interpreted those liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights since its ratification in 1791. The Emancipation Proclamation only freed the slaves in the openly rebellious states. The Amendment effectively put an end to slavery once and for all upon its passage on 1 February 1865.