The Thirteenth Amendment, if ratified, would not touch “the laws respecting free people of color” that predated the war and were “presumed to have lost none of their vitality.” A statewide Black convention that met in August 1865 in Alexandria, Virginia, urged Congress to continue military occupation “until you have so amended the Federal Constitution that it will prohibit the States from making any distinction between citizens on account of race or color,” including in the right to vote. A South Carolina group protested to Congress “against any code of black laws the Legislature of this State
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