When the Thirteenth Amendment was submitted to the states on February 1 , 1865 , it was quickly taken up by several legislatures . By the end of the month , it had been ratified by eighteen states . Among them were the ex-Confederate states of Virginia and Louisiana , where ratifications were submitted by Reconstruction governments . These , along with subsequent ratifications from Arkansas and Tennessee raised the issues of how many seceded states had legally valid legislatures ; and if there were fewer legislatures than states , if Article V required ratification by three-fourths of the states or three-fourths of the legally valid state legislatures . President Lincoln in his last speech , on April 11 , 1865 , called the question about whether the Southern states were in or out of the Union a " pernicious abstraction . " Obviously , he declared , they were not " in their proper practical relation with the Union " ; whence everyone 's object should be to restore that relation . Lincoln was assassinated three days later
was assassinated
Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution