Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the required 27 of the then 36 states on the 6th of December 1865, and proclaimed on the 18th of December 1865. Illinois was the first state to ratify, on the 1st of February 1865. Mississippi was the last, ratifying in 1995 with certification following in 2013.
Section 1 states: "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." Section 2 grants Congress the power to enforce the amendment by appropriate legislation.
The House had rejected the amendment in June 1864 by thirteen votes. After Lincoln made it his top legislative priority following his 1864 reelection, Secretary of State William H. Seward and others secured the needed votes by offering government posts and campaign contributions to outgoing Democrats. On the 31st of January 1865, the amendment passed 119 to 56, with fourteen Democrats joining all Republicans and Unionists in support.
The drafters based the amendment's language on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which contained an identical exception. Thomas Jefferson authored an early version of that clause, influenced by Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria's argument that forced labor was an acceptable substitute for capital punishment. The exception was treated as noncontroversial during drafting; almost no congressional debate on it was recorded.
The amendment's proclamation on the 18th of December 1865 legally freed between 65,000 and 100,000 people still held in Kentucky and approximately 900 people in Delaware, where most had already escaped. In the South, however, Black Codes, peonage systems, and convict labor allowed forms of coerced work to continue. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote in 1935 that slavery was not abolished even after the amendment's passage.
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968) established that Congress may rationally determine what constitutes a badge or incident of slavery and legislate against it, covering private actors as well as government. That precedent has been used to justify laws protecting migrant workers and targeting sex trafficking. The amendment has also been used to strike down peonage and some race-based discrimination.