Article XIII of The Constitution of the United States of America
Regarding Titles of Nobility

The legislative history of the original 13^th Amendment regarding Titles of Nobility has had a long and sometimes obscure run since 1789. We won't attempt to lay out the entire history of the period in this document. That will be contained in other reports more suited to the purpose. Instead, we will pay attention to some of the more unusual facts embedded in the legislative history which are not apparent through a chronological reading. We will attempt to avoid non-legislative matter, to the extent that this can be done and still make a full disclosure of the facts in their logical order. 

At various points in time, there were what we can only describe as anomalies in the notifications, acknowledgements, and announcements concerning this constitutional amendment. We use the term anomaly as meaning, "not fitting into an apparent pattern", rather than as necessarily implying any kind of incorrect behavior by the offices involved, or damage to the validity of the legitimate legislative actions taken.

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Every state went through an internal ratification process of its own devising. This was expectable, since the states retained the right to form their own internal governments in whatever way might suit them, within constitutional bounds. Quite naturally following that fact, the states then also proceeded to deliver notifications concerning the amendment's ratification by whatever means seemed most obvious to them. In most cases, the notifications were delivered from the governor by order of the state's legislature. Exactly to whom or to what office the notification was sent was yet another matter. Sometimes, the legislature would formally direct the governors to send notification to specific federal offices right in the text of the resolution. In other cases, no instruction was given and the notification was sent according to whatever the governor's office thought most fitting. Once arrived at its chosen destination, the notice might or might not be formally announced to the Congress. Newspapers and other publications might, or might not, make public notices of the amendment's status. In many cases, the recorded resolution lying in the state house was all the announcement the public ever received. In yet other cases, an official announcement was made, but might well be misleading in its wording or outright wrong in its content, in that the person or office making the announcement was not cognizant of the exact status of the amendment at that point in time., 2000

Then, too, we have to take notice of the War of 1812. While the War has a legislative history of its own, war, by its very nature, impinged on the natural legislative process of many other issues. At the war's outbreak, the states were rapidly considering and voting on the amendment discussed here. However, that consideration was almost entirely halted for a time by the necessities of carrying on a defensive war on American soil. At the time Congress passed its Resolution proposing the 13^th Amendment of 1809, there were 17 states in the union. Ratification by a total of 13 states was required to pass the amendment into law. By the start of the war, 10 states had ratified. By the end of the war, 1 additional state had ratified, and 1 state had rejected the amendment. This left 5 states still unanswered, any 2 of which could pass the amendment into law regardless of what the other 3 might choose to do (see Table of Ratifications).

During that 2-year break from business as usual, some legislators left office, and new ones were elected. It is not too surprising that certain states which had not yet ratified or rejected the amendment were faced with the necessity of conducting formal reviews of their own pending legislation prior to outbreak of the war, in order to know exactly where they had left off.² In certain distinct cases, it was clear that normal legislative sessions actually took several years to settle into their former routines. With the war's onset, the amendatory legislation had been left pending at the outset of the war, and remained in that undetermined state until January of 1818, when President James Monroe asked Secretary of State John Quincy Adams to make inquiries of the states not yet accounted for. In South Carolina, the process of ratification or rejection was never completed at all.³

This may seem like a surprising lag, given that the war itself had only lasted for 2 years. However, perusal of the various legislative journals and newspapers of the day reveals that other events had swept public attention toward various financial matters such as the re-charter of the Second Bank of the United States and all its attendant debate, threatening military problems with Algiers, and other topics. There were other factors more closely associated with the amendment itself which delayed its proper treatment in some of the states. The Congressionally sponsored 1815 Bioren and Duane publication of the Statutes at Large already included the 13^th Amendment.⁴ In some cases, the states had already begun publishing the amendment as ratified (see Table of Publications). Accurate announcements of the amendment's status were sporadic and sometimes faulty, and the general public had long since willingly begun abiding by the prohibition against titles of nobility, etc. placed within the main body of the Constitution. The ratification was to some degree already publicly accepted as having been accomplished. Had Representative Weldon Nathaniel Edwards of North Carolina not raised the question on the last day of 1817 on the floor of that House and had the House not resolved to have the question formally asked and answered, the amendment likely would have suffered even more unintended and prolonged legislative neglect than it did. This was not because it was disliked or abandoned, but rather because its adoption had already been assumed by many.⁵

A table has been assembled showing which states used which type of endorsements and certifications, methods of transmittal, and the federal office to which the notices were delivered (see Table of Notifications). Within that table, we also find a note as to whether Congress was formally noticed by the Secretary of State (according to both his own records and the records of Congress), and as to whether the state had accepted or rejected the amendment. The entire contents of that table need not be described here, as the table is itself obvious as to those particular facts. As with other public offices and legislative bodies, normal congressional activities had also been interrupted by the war. Congress had gone in and out of session, and various elected and appointed officials had been replaced during that 10-year period.00

In total, it can be said that each State and the Congress took this ratification process quite seriously, and performed its duties in that regard according to its best sense of what should properly be done, even though human events had gained tremendous dominance over legislative concerns for a time.

The most interesting anomalies in this legislative history have to do with New York, Delaware, Connecticut, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia, and the notations and various announcements made by the Secretary of State. But it is within the records of the Congress and the State Department itself that we find out how a simple lack of understanding or clarity of language could have a profound effect on the perception of others both inside and outside those offices. In the case of the Secretary, here again we find no exact prescription in the laws of the day as to how, when, or even whether, the Secretary should announce the status of a pending constitutional amendment, especially during the ratification period itself. Certainly, those announcements, themselves, had nothing to do with the actual legal status of the amendment. Only the States themselves could determine whether the amendment passed or failed, and then only within that one State. (see US const., art.v) The Secretary, acting quite properly as a kind of communications intermediary between the office of the President and the Congress, might be asked by either to deliver certain announcements or documents. As far as can be determined, this was done - within the Secretary's knowledge and understanding of what was accurate at the time. However - Congress and the public did not generally make a practice of travelling to the Secretary's office and personally examining the certified copies for themselves. They relied upon the Secretary to simply announce what was so. Should the Secretary create some misperception for any reason at all, then Congress was not likely to know it and neither would the general public - unless there was some grossly evident error or obvious misstatement of fact. And herein lies the tangle.

To understand the Secretary's interactions with the states and the congress, we first have to know the situations in the states themselves. This is where the actual law-making was taking place. We will return to the State Department later.

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