"_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled_, That sections three and four of an act entitled 'An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters,' passed February twelve, seventeen hundred and ninety-three, and an act entitled 'An act to amend, and supplementary to, the act entitled An act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters, passed February twelve, seventeen hundred and ninety-three,' passed September, eighteen hundred and fifty, be and the same are hereby repealed. "Approved, June 28, 1864." The whole structure of statutes, decisions, and judicial machinery which had been erected to compel by national authority the people of free States to share in the responsibility for slavery, was at last overthrown. But the constitutional obligation remained; so long as a slave anywhere existed, the neighboring States were bound to pursue him, if he ran away, and might by statute provide for his return. The final step was therefore to complete the work of legal emancipation by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution. On January 31, 1865, Congress voted to submit the following article to the States for their approval and ratification: "Art. XIII. 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." On December 18, 1865, the Secretary of State proclaimed that the amendment had been approved by twenty-seven of the thirty-six States, and was consequently adopted. =§ 105. Educating effect of the controversy.=--The first act of 1793 was imperfect. It did not provide a national machinery whereby its provisions could be executed, and many of the States by means of the personal liberty laws refused to lend their officers and jails for the work. All efforts to amend the law were unsuccessful until the great compromise of 1850 gave opportunity to pass a second act.