Had it actually been the case that Virginia had eventually decided not to ratify the amendment, then the question of South Carolina's still undecided position would have remained open to further pursuit. If Adams either did not understand or announce South Carolina's status quite correctly, it was still known within that state, as the record had just been researched and answered as having no decision in February of 1818.⁸⁰ As it happened, South Carolina took no further action, having been preempted by Virginia's ratification. But in no case could it have gone long unnoticed that either a final ratification or rejection by the States had been completed. It was known by some that South Carolina had not completed the process, but known by a great many that Virginia had entirely relieved South Carolina of that necessity. Had this not been the case, then both Virginia and South Carolina would have been still open to the question, and in their former relative positions - with either capable of completing the ratification process and negating any opposing opinion by the other.

As it turns out, March 12, 1819, the date of Virginia's official enactment publishing The Revised Codes, is the date of ratification [Dillon v. Gloss, 256 U.S. 368, 41 S. Ct. 510 (1921)]. The several States continued to publish the original 13^th Amendment for some 56 years (see table 2). The original 13^th Amendment's eventual disappearance was very gradual, and its replacement by a different amendment altogether remains incredulously unexplained, until we also examine the legislative history of the publication of the United States Statutes At Large.

In 1828, Nine years after Virginia had ratified the 13^th Amendment, Justice Joseph Story wrote his Commentaries on the Constitution, distinctly claiming that the amendment had never been passed.⁸¹ This fact would fall entirely outside the scope of any legislative history, but for the fact that, like Virginia, the United States had not published its Statutes for many years, and the courts took to relying on Story as the authoritative work on constitutional law.⁸² As a professor at Harvard's School of Law until his death, Story's opinion was highly respected in most legal circles. Whether Justice Story got his information on the 13^th Amendment from the Congressional records, the newspapers, or the State Department's records themselves, he could easily disregard Virginia's ratification himself, as it was nowhere mentioned in those sources. Justice Story himself was not slated to receive a personal copy of Virginia's Revised Codes, as he was never a resident of Virginia. Had he received a copy, as did every federal judge resident in that state, then he would have been hard pressed to explain how he could casually dispute the state's legitimate legislation. This would have won him no friends in the Virginia legislature, which was already famous for publicly repudiating through Resolution those who ran afoul of its august sense of itself.

At the last printing of the Statutes by Bioren and Duane, the 13^th Amendment had been included, but separated by many pages and noted as being expected to be ratified momentarily.⁸³ Justice Story's Commentaries, while authoritative and scholarly, did contain much reference to political matters and histories of the individual states, and was not at all constrained to mere case law. In fact, Justice Story never had a case before him which relied on the 13^th Amendment in any way, and he was not bound to any judicial review of the official record in his capacity as a private citizen publishing his own personal opinions. His opinion on this particular subject was made in reliance on what we now know was faulty information. Whether Justice Story ever examined the Index to the Virginia Law Authorities, reported by fellow Justice Bushrod Washington, is never revealed in Story's work.

The effect of the shortage of a current reference to the United States Statutes was already so profound by 1833, that when Congress did finally publish the Statutes at Large in 1845, the publisher did so with documented approval by the justices of many courts, who had long since been sent a prospectus promising Story's continuing help and the publisher's own careful reference to the records in the State Department. The prospectus promised that the volumes would be arranged in such a way as to index the 1815 Bioren and Duane Statutes. to the Story Commentaries of 1833, to the volumes which they were about to publish.⁸⁴ Richard Peters, the editor of the Statutes, wrote a letter printed at the front of the first volume dedicating the entire work to Mr. Justice Story:

 

….In other relations to you, I ask leave to declare my grateful feelings for your kind and affectionate friendship, and for the esteem with which you have always been pleased to regard me.

This work is indebted to you for its existence. It has been prepared according to a plan suggested by you; and in your approbation of the manner in which it has been edited by me, there is a perfect assurance that it will receive the sanction and support of all…

The first volume then goes on to include a page titled Advertisement, which goes on for many pages, being comprised of a series of letters solicited well in advance by the publishers from a rather stellar selection of jurists, including Chief Justice Taney. We cannot escape noting here that Little and Brown was also the publisher of Story's Commentaries on the Constitution. In fact, it was Justice Story's personal suggestion and recommendations to the publishers which prompted them to consider printing the edition in the first place. In the prospectus, sent out during 1843, the work was already referred to by the name Statutes at Large, though there was no certainty yet that the volumes would ever officially supplant the Bioren and Duane Statutes. If they had any question whatsoever as to constitutional law, then Justice Story was readily consulted, and this is confirmed in several of the letters already mentioned, including one from Mr. Justice Story himself.⁸⁵ Within those letters, we also find suggestions from Story himself (and others) that the publishers ask Congress to pay for the printing of the Statutes At Large. Originally, the publishers had intended to undertake the venture privately on speculation that the legal community's dire need would bring them a profit, and this is also mentioned in several of the letters.⁸⁶ So, in 1845, Little and Brown, with the direct assistance of Mr. Justice Story and his admiring editor Richard Peters, simply dispensed with the 13^th Amendment altogether.

Whatever Mr. Peters may have found in the State Department, there is hardly any doubt that he did not find the Revised Codes of Virginia - or at least, he had no idea what was actually contained within that work, if he did find it there. We know that the status of the 13^th Amendment was examined, to some degree or other by him, and that the State Department was the claimed source. We have no way of objectively knowing whether Peters' admitted adoration of Mr. Justice Story's opinion, or his faith in the accuracy of the State Department's record-keeping abilities may have dulled his critical edge in making his examinations. It's entirely possible that the location and presentation of the Virginia decision was simply so non-obvious to him that he never looked for it. As the Little and Brown Statutes eventually replaced Bioren and Duane and (partially) eclipsed Story, becoming the required citation in the courts, it also became the ultimate authority for all questions legal where federal law is concerned. With annual supplements subscribed to cover all the additional laws passed each year, "Little & Brown" only grew year by year. To all intents and purposes, the 13^th Amendment was all but forgotten by the federal government and the courts. 2000

And in this tedious and tortuous manner, the opinion of South Carolina was misreported, the right of Virginia was disregarded, the rights of the several States all together were abridged, and the Will of The People was forsaken. The Statutes no longer accurately reflected the law of the land. Story's Commentaries, still in use throughout the Courts and law libraries of the country, and the Little and Brown Statutes being the required citation by the federal bench, the courts no longer knew the law.⁸⁷ By this time, some 36 years of legislative history has passed, and in that time Constitutional Law was subverted, however unintentionally, by the office of the Secretary of State, a Justice of the Supreme Court, a newspaper reporter, and a government contractor. This is how the personal opinion of a single man in a position of some considerable power became the (perceived) law of the land, despite every conceivable effort and safeguard to see that such a thing would never happen. The error carried into the Statutes At Large in 1845 still exists today, and has been carried forward ever since.⁸⁸ Any study of the State Department record alone to this day will still make this appear to be correct. However, errors in later publications do not unmake the law.

The Court's divergence at this point from what the States generally believed to be the law is both marked and entirely worthy of both historical and legal note. It has never been unusual for the general public to be filled with various misconceptions as to the meaning and operation of this law or that. However - these series of events mark a time when the view of the federal government parts ways in an insidious manner from the view of the populace and the several States it was built to serve. There is no particular evidence of anything more devious than an error, on the part of Secretary Adams, and then an opinion on the part of Mr. Justice Story, which caused all this to happen. The changes in both the publication and the public perception occurred slowly enough, so that, rather than the fairly quick changes in elected officials which occurred during the ratification period, enough time had passed for those holding various offices to have been born and died. More than 3 decades had passed from the time the amendment was first proposed until it was expunged from the Statutes, and 3 more decades would pass before the States themselves finally succumbed to the assumed federal wisdom that the amendment had never existed. The answer was lost in obscurity. Opinion has varied widely over the years as to whether the amendment itself was useful or desirable, running at times to either extreme. However, this does not lessen the gravity of the situation, as the document that was abridged is none other than that founding document upon which all these others depend for their very existence.

In 1894, 76 years after President Monroe's' last announcement on the subject and 75 years after Virginia published its Revised Codes containing the finally ratified 13^th Amendment, the Department of State published the Documentary History of the Constitution of United States, many times referenced here, and in which the various anomalies and discrepancies are readily noticeable. By this late date, whole generations had passed, leaving no one alive who had participated in the original activity related to this amendment. In the intervening years, some of the participating 17 states from the original process had operated for several years under an altogether separate body of law altogether, i.e., as members of the Confederate States of America. We note that, while the body of the State Department book contains the same documents reported as having been received by the State Department in 1818, that by the time this book was published, knowledge of the 13^th Amendment had become purely academic. The first-hand participants had all died, and the states themselves had finally ceased all publication of it.

In 1911, some 93 years after President Monroe's last announcement on the subject, and 92 years after Virginia published its Revised Codes containing its ratification, a Checklist of U.S. Public Documents was published under the supervision of the Superintendent of Documents. The following description is made on page 964:

 

Classification | S7. LAWS OF UNITED STATES--Continued no.

|S7.8: | Bioren and Duane Edition
| [Apr. 18, 1814, President Madison approved an act looking to the
| issue of a more complete and satisfactory edition of the laws.
| It provided for a Government subscription to 1,000 sets of a
| new edition to be edited and compiled upon a plan presented by
| the Secretary of State and the Attorney-General, the editor to be
| selected by the Secretary; also that the succeeding laws be
| published in the same form and distributed in the same manner.
| Richard Rush, Attorney-General, under date of June 10, 1814,
| sent to James Monroe, Secretary of State, a long statement of
| his plan of publication, which the Secretary at once concurred
| in. In this statement it was said that "the want of a full and
| complete edition of the laws of Congress has long been felt."
| The new plan required that all laws, though obsolete, repealed,
| or private, be printed; but laws relating solely to the District of
| Columbia were necessarily excluded, because that requirement
| had been embodied in the law authorizing the publication.
| By this plan it was also required that every act published
| should be compared to the originals; that all important acts,
| ordinances, or resolutions of the "old Congress" (Continental
| Congress) be included; full marginal notes to be given; the
| "common figure" (Arabic) to be used for all numbers and dates;
| each volume to have an index; the last volume to have a very
| full general index to the whole; treaties, Constitution, and histor-
| ical documents to be indexed as well as the laws; "it would be
| better to put the same thing down more than once in the index."
| said Mr. Rush, "than indulge too freely the practice of referring
| from one head to another." Secretary Monroe appointed John
| B. Colvin as editor. Under his editorship the "Bioren edition,"
| 5 v., was published, 1815, by John Bioren and W. John Duane,
| Philadelphia, and R. C. Weightman, Washington City.

…

| In his first volume Mr. Colvin made a somewhat serious
| error by adding to his print of the Constitution a 13th
| amendment which was then pending, but had not been
| ratified by a sufficient number of States, and has not been
| so ratified to this day. Mr. Colvin admitted in his preface
| that he did not know that the amendment had been ratified,
| but he knew that it had been ratified by 12 States, and evi-
| dently he thought that at least one of the five yet unheard
| from would also ratify the amendment. The proposed 13th
| amendments submitted to the States by the 11th Congress at
| its 2d session (May 1, 1810), and it was not until 1818 that
| it was ascertained that it had not been ratified. There
| were then 17 States, and the affirmative action of 13 were
| required. Twelve ratified promptly, four rejected, and
| Virginia was never heard from. In South Carolina the
| senate approved, and if the house had concurred the
| amendment would have been ratified. It was in fact for
| many years the popular belief that it had been ratified. As
| lately as 1843 it so appeared in various histories. This
| popular misconception is no doubt largely due to the error
| in the first volume of the accepted and official edition of the
| laws. The proposed amendment was to deprive of citizen-
| ship any citizen who should accept a title or any form of
| emolument from a foreign power without the consent of
| Congress… [emphasis added]

The Other "13^th" Amendments

In closing this report, we must still briefly address the matter of two later amendments, both also referred to as Article XIII, and both proposed during the period of the War Between the States.^89,90 One could easily conclude that the numbering of the amendments was somehow the key to their individual legal identities, but this is not really the case. In general, amendments have usually been given some short title for identification during the ratification period, just as acts of Congress are given short titles for easier identification and indexing. If there are - and there have been at times - multiple proposed amendments in motion at any given time, then their numbering could not possibly be settled until the amendments were either fully ratified or finally rejected. No one could guarantee in advance where in the order the proposed amendment might finally appear, if at all. In the case of the original 13^th Amendment, we continue to refer to it by its number because it was popularly known that way for many years before any other supplanted it. Historically, that is both its correct place in the ordering, and is the actual order given to it in the many states that subsequently published it. However, in the Resolution by the Eleventh Congress proposing the original amendment, no number is given - only the resolving language and the text of the amendment itself.⁹¹ The amendment was, and has been for some time, also known legislatively as the proposed amendment "Respecting Titles of Nobility", or TONA for "Titles of Nobility Amendment". In the State Department's Documentary History of the Constitution of the United States, however, we find the major title as "Resolution of Congress Proposing Thirteenth Amendment, Respecting Titles of Nobility".⁹²

Following the federal government's failure to include Virginia's ratification in its records held at the State Department, it would have appeared later that there were, to date, only twelve Amendments. That error has been propagated to this day, as every subsequent amendment has relied on that same faulty numbering. In the case of the next amendment proposed in Congress, which did not come for another 42 years, it would have appeared that the next available number was still 13. By this time, the State Department records, Justice Story's Commentaries (still in use), and the United States Statutes At Large would all be in concert in showing that the 13^th Amendment had simply never existed. The Resolution proposing the 1860 amendment actually numbers the amendment in its body, but there was only one amendment in motion at the time. And that Amendment, having been ratified only in Illinois, was later replaced in 1866 with yet another "13^th" Amendment, again with the number specified in the body of the Resolution proposing it. (The 1860 amendment had no time limit on it for ratification, but the mutually exclusive nature of the 1860 and 1865 amendments made the existence of both, or the political possibility of the earlier one later superceding the latter other all but impossible at the time.)

During all of this period, however, the States themselves and various municipal and private bodies continued to publish the original 13^th Amendment, and the Table of Publications shows some of those publications. Having already covered the legislative history of the original 13^th amendment up to and past the point of its actual ratification, we will not attempt to study the various ways in which the states handled the numbering problems. Though interesting, they have no bearing on the validity of the law itself, and cannot fall within the scope of this report. 

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