13th Amendment Quotes
The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by the commander in chief as a wartime necessity. Any future President could undo that proclamation. However, the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery forever regardless of the desires of the Congress, Presidents, or State governments.
The 13th Amendment prohibited slavery, and she argues that if pimps who force prostitutes to work for them were arrested and prosecuted for slavery, a much more serious crime, it would discourage the pimps and in her view greatly reduce prostitution. Critics argue that other mechanism for the commercial organization of prostitution would replace the pimps. However, the critics have not been able to refute the notion that pimps were the most socially undesirable and criminal elements of prostitution merchandising, and eliminating pimping would be constructive even if there were no change in the number of prostitutes.
This was the infamous opinion whereby the Supreme Court upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine thereby preserving racial discrimination until the reversal over 50 years later. See the sole dissent of Justice John Marshall Harlan whose views were those that eventually prevailed although at the time all the other justices voted with the majority. See {583706} and {583703}.
President Lincoln and Several of the Commanding Union Generals had declared that black slaves were free during the midst of the Civil War under the legal theory that if the slaves were property of the rebels, then they cold be seized as “contraband” and removed from the control of those who had committed treason. The question was, what would happen to those now free Negroes after the war? Many Negro leaders were anxious that if there were surrender, then the status quo ante might prevail and the Negroes—many have who had fought for the Union might be returned to slavery. This speech by the Secretary of State alarmed them further. This is why the Emancipation Proclamation was so important and even that might have been overturned by a subsequent President. This is why Lincoln, the white radical Republicans and the Black leadership placed so much emphasis on passing the 13th Amendment.
