<P> Section 1 . 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 . </P> <P> Section 2 . Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation . </P> <P> The institution of slavery existed in all of the original thirteen British North American colonies . Prior to the Thirteenth Amendment, the United States Constitution (adopted in 1789) did not expressly use the words slave or slavery but included several provisions about unfree persons . The Three - Fifths Compromise (in Article I, Section 2, Clause 3) allocated Congressional representation based "on the whole Number of free Persons" and "three fifths of all other Persons". This clause was a compromise between Southerners who wished slaves to be counted as' persons' for congressional representation and northerners rejecting these out of concern of too much power for the South, because representation in the new Congress would be based on population in contrast to the one - vote - for - one - state principle in the earlier Continental Congress . Under the Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3), "No person held to Service or Labour in one State" would be freed by escaping to another . Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 allowed Congress to pass legislation outlawing the "Importation of Persons", but not until 1808 . However, for purposes of the Fifth Amendment--which states that, "No person shall...be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"--slaves were understood as property . Although abolitionists used the Fifth Amendment to argue against slavery, it became part of the legal basis in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) for treating slaves as property . </P> <P> Stimulated by the philosophy of the Declaration of Independence between 1777 and 1804, every Northern state provided for the immediate or gradual abolition of slavery . Most of the slaves involved were household servants . No Southern state did so, and the slave population of the South continued to grow, peaking at almost 4 million people in 1861 . An abolitionist movement headed by such figures as William Lloyd Garrison grew in strength in the North, calling for the end of slavery nationwide and exacerbating tensions between North and South . The American Colonization Society, an alliance between abolitionists who felt the races should be kept separated and slaveholders who feared the presence of freed blacks would encourage slave rebellions, called for the emigration and colonization of both free blacks and slaves to Africa . Its views were endorsed by politicians such as Henry Clay, who feared that the main abolitionist movement would provoke a civil war . Proposals to eliminate slavery by constitutional amendment were introduced by Representative Arthur Livermore in 1818 and by John Quincy Adams in 1839, but failed to gain significant traction . </P>

Who wrote the 13th amendment to the constitution