The Daily Dispatch: December 20, 1865., [Electronic resource]

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Official announcement — the constitutional amendment Duly ratified.

--The following official announcement has been promulgated from the State Department:

‘ To all to whom these presents may come, greeting: Know ye, that whereas the Congress of the Master a resolution which is in the words following, namely: "A resolution submitting to the Legislatures of the several States a proposition to amend the Constitution of the United States."

’ Resolved. By the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, two-thirds of both Houses concurring, that the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when ratified by three-fourths of said Legislatures, shall be valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the said Constitution, namely:

Article 13, section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

And whereas it appears from official documents, on file in this Department, that the amendment to the Constitution of the United States, proposed as aforesaid, has been ratified by the Legislatures of the the States of Illinois. Rhode Island, Michigan, Maryland, New York, West Virginia, Maine, Kansas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Nevada, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Vermont, Tennessee, Arkansas, Connecticut, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia; in all, twenty-seven States;

And whereas the whole number of States in the United States is thirty-six; and whereas the before specially-named States whose Legislatures have ratified the said proposed amendment, constitute three-fourths of the whole number of States in the United States;

Now, therefore, be it known that I, William H. Seward, Secretary of State of the United States, by virtue and in pursuance of the second section of the act of Congress approved the 20th of April, 1818, entitled "an act to provide for the publication of the laws of the United States, and for other purposes," do hereby certify that the amendment aforesaid has become valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States.

In testimony whereof I have herewith set my hand and caused the seal of the Department of State to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this eighteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the ninetieth.