The Thirteenth Amendment was the first to expand federal power over states’ domestic relations

Evidence

Opponents also argued that the Thirteenth Amendment, if ratified, “would fundamentally alter the balance of power between the states and the federal government, so much so that the amendment itself was unconstitutional.” For example, Rep. William Holman (D-IN) regarded the amendment as “fatal to the fundamental principles of the Republic, the right, the irrepressible right of the states to domestic government.” That argument, however, crystallizes an important feature of the amendment: “unlike any previous amendment, it expanded federal power at the expense of the states, injecting the federal government into the regulation of ‘domestic relationships’ like that between master and slave.’ ” For the first time, the federal government was telling states what they could or could not do when it came to slavery. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 255

Categorization

• XREF: This constitutional-power shift from states to federal government connects to the reparations-accounting frame — federal power created and could unmake the racial order — and to the arch of later Civil War amendments narrowing state sovereignty.