The End of Slavery
On this day in 1865, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the 13th constitutional amendment which abolished slavery, and sent it to the states for ratification.
Three-quarters of the states ratified it by the end of the 1865. The Kentucky legislature didn’t vote to ratify until 1976; Mississippi has never done so.
The text: “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.”