sorry, some of this is not in my own words, but here is the first paragraph.
Explanation:
The 13th Amendment was necessary because the Emancipation Proclamation, issued by President Abraham Lincoln in January of 1863, did not end slavery entirely; those enslaved in border states had not been freed. However, it ended slavery and began the long-term goal of achieving equality for all Americans. Despite the long history of slavery in the British colonies in North America and the continued existence of slavery in America until 1865, the amendment was the first explicit mention of the institution of slavery in the U.S. Constitution. While America’s founding fathers enshrined the importance of liberty and equality in the nation’s founding documents—including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—they conspicuously failed to mention slavery, which was legal in all 13 colonies in 1776