《美利堅合眾國憲法》第十三修正案(英語:Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution)簡稱「第十三修正案」(Amendment XIII),旨在廢除奴隸制和強制勞役(英語:involuntary servitude),除非是「依法判罪的人的犯罪的懲罰」。該修正案於1864年4月8日在聯邦參議院以三分之二多數通過,再於1865年1月31日在聯邦眾議院通過,1865年12月6日獲得憲法第五條所規定的四分之三多數州批准生效。1865年12月18日,國務卿威廉·H·西華德正式宣佈修正案通過,成為南北戰爭結束後通過的三條重建修正案的第一條。
Section 1. 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. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.[1]
林肯指示國務卿威廉·H·西華德和聯邦眾議員約翰·B·埃利(英語:John B. Alley)等人使用任何必要的手段來確保修正案通過,這些手段包括承諾政府公職、政治捐款及傳出民主黨議員有意改變投票立場的消息等[8]:312-313[13]:687。西華德有大筆資金直接進行賄賂。重新在眾議院提出修正案的阿什利也成功遊說了多位民主黨議員轉為支持[13]:687-689。眾議員賽迪斯·史蒂文斯之後對此評價道:「19世紀最偉大的舉措是在美國最純潔的人的協助和教唆下,利用腐敗才通過的。」不過,林肯在這場交易中所扮演的確切角色仍然不明[37]。
由於有民意上的支持,共和黨人在1864年的國會兩院換屆選舉中再度獲勝,修正案通過的勝算因此進一步加大,議員們聲稱這毫無疑問是人民的意旨[38]。反對派則是由1864年民主黨副總統候選人,聯邦眾議員喬治·H·彭德爾頓(英語:George H. Pendleton)帶隊[13]:688。共和黨則將其要求平等的激烈用詞淡化,以求獲得更多人的支持[39]。為了安撫一些批評人士對修正案會造成現有社會結構分裂的擔憂,一些共和黨人還明確承諾修正案不會對父權體制構成任何不利影響[40]。
隨着第39屆國會(英語:39th United States Congress)即將召開,西華德繼續向其它尚未批准的州施壓[15]:232。南卡羅萊納州、阿拉巴馬州、北卡羅萊納州和佐治亞州先後於1865年11和12月批准了修正案,達到內戰前已有36個州的四分之三多數標準。所有州批准的具體日期如下[58]:
俄勒岡州和加利福尼亞州於1865年12月中旬批准修正案,佛羅里達州於1865年12月28日批准[60],愛荷華州和新澤西州於1866年1月批准[62],德薩斯州於1870年批准[60],特拉華州1901年批准[63],肯塔基州在1976年批准[63],密西西比州議會一直到1995年才批准修正案,並且遲至2013年2月才正式告知聯邦註冊辦公室(英語:Office of the Federal Register),完成該州批准修正案的法律程序[64]。
正式的解放並沒有改變留在南方大多數黑人的經濟狀況。[75]由於修正案仍然允許用強制勞役來懲罰犯罪行為,南方各州於是開始制訂一系列環環相扣的法律來讓黑人淪為刑事罪犯[76]:53。這些在黑人獲得解放後通過或更新的法律被統稱為黑人法令[70]:111。密西西比州是第一個通過這類法令的州,這項1865年通過的法律題為《賦予自由民公民權利的法案》(An Act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen)[77],要求黑人工人在每年1月1日與白人農場主簽訂合同,否則將面臨流浪罪的懲罰[76]:53。黑人如果犯下輕盜竊罪、講粗話或是在日落後出售棉花,都會被判處強制勞役[76]:100。各州通過了新的,更嚴格的流浪法,選擇性地針對那些沒有白人保護的黑人[76]:53[17]:51-52,被定罪的黑人將被賣到農場、工廠、伐木營地、採石場和礦山[76]:6。
1870至1871年的執法法和1875年民權法案旨在打擊白人至上主義者對黑人的暴力和恐嚇行為,同時也部分起到了結束南方黑人奴隸處境的作用[17]:66-67。不過,這些法律的效果由於政治意願的減弱和聯邦政府在南部失去了權威而削弱,特別是在共和黨人為保住總統席位而達成1877年妥協(英語:Compromise of 1877)結束重建以後[86]。
1947年,聯邦司法部成功檢控伊利沙伯·英格爾斯(Elizabeth Ingalls)奴役家僕多拉·L·瓊斯(Dora L. Jones)。法院認為瓊斯「是一個完全受被告意志操控的人,她沒有行動自由,完全是在被告的控制之下進行服務,並且她對被告的服務是被強迫的。」[87]:1668第十三修正案在這一期間受到了的關注大幅增加,但從1954年的布朗訴托皮卡教育局案到1968年的瓊斯訴阿爾弗雷德H·梅耶公司案(英語:Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.),修正案的風頭都遠遠不及第十四修正案[87]:1680-1683。
勞役償債制指一個人因為債務支付問題而在非自願情況下通過勞役來清償債務的情況。強制勞役指一個人被他人以武力脅迫或是以武力相要脅,亦或被威脅受法律強制手段打擊而被迫作他人的奴隸,或是被迫勞役和提供服務。這其中還包括他人使用武力或威脅使用武力亦或威脅通過法律強制手段而造成的「恐懼氣氛」下被迫工作。[92]在1911年的貝利訴阿拉巴馬州案(英語:Bailey v. Alabama)中,聯邦最高法院裁定債役法(指強制他人參加勞役來償還債務的法律)違反了第十三修正案中禁止強制勞役的規定[93]。
在1883年的一組民權案件(英語:Civil Rights Cases)中,最高法院把5個有關1875年民權法案(英語:Civil Rights Act of 1875)的案件合併審查,該法禁止在「旅館、地面或水域的公共交通工具、劇院和其它公共娛樂場所」的種族歧視行為。法院認為第十三修正案對大部分非政府行為的種族歧視行徑沒有約束力。[69]:122大法官布拉德利在多數意見中認為,第十三修正案賦予國會取締奴隸制的權力,但這種權力對個人行為無效,他還認為第十三修正案中保護的公民基本權力與人們在社會中生活的社會權利有所區別[17]:70。多數意見認為,1875年民權法案將導致有關奴隸制的爭論深入到現實生活中的每一個角落,但人們有時候會因為個人生計、工作、業務等方面的需要來作出一些可能會被認為存在歧視的行為,據此而以法律加以限制和懲罰是不妥當的[103]。肯塔基州律師出身的大法官約翰·馬歇爾·哈倫在目睹了有組織的種族暴力活動後改變了自己對民權法案的看法,他在法院唯一的反對意見中稱,這種由團體或個人在行使公共或准公共職能時表現出的歧視是一種代表性的奴役制度,國會應當對其加以取締。[17]:73[104]
在1906年的霍奇斯訴美國案(英語:Hodges v. United States)中,法院推翻了一條聯邦法規,該法規中對任何兩個或更多數目的人陰謀損害、欺壓、威脅或恐嚇任何人自由行使或享受憲法和美國法律保障的權利或特權的行為提供了懲罰依據。在該案中,阿肯色州的一組白人密謀以暴力手段阻止8名黑人到一家木材廠工作,這些白人被聯邦大陪審員定罪。最高法院判決該聯邦法規沒有第十三修正案的授權。認為這不過是個人行為,不受憲法修正案的限制。哈倫再次寫下反對意見,堅持自己有關第十三修正案的保護應當不只是「人身自由」而已。[106][17]:79-80法院又在1922年的柯瑞根訴巴克利案判決中再次重申了霍奇斯案的意見,稱第十三修正案對地役權不適用[107]。
法律史將1968年的瓊斯訴艾爾弗雷德·H·邁耶公司案(英語:Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.)視為第十三修正案判例法的一個轉折點[110][27]:2。最高法院在該案判決認為國會可以「合理」地對個人的種族歧視和強制勞役行為作出限制[110]。瓊斯夫婦居住在密蘇里州的聖路易斯縣,他們起訴的是當地一家拒絕賣房子給他們的房地產公司。法院的判決是以7比2的投票結果作出的。判決書中稱內戰結束後用來限制黑人自由行使權利的黑人法令是奴役系統的替代品,將黑人排除在白人社會以外。這種因他人膚色而拒絕其購買房產意向的做法無疑也是奴隸制的遺留。判決書中還表示,無論北方還是南方的黑人公民,都視第十三修正案為自由的保證,這些自由包括他們的來去自由和買賣自由。如果國會連黑人用同樣的錢買到和白人同樣東西,住在白人能住的房裏這樣的權利都不能保證,那麼修正案也就成了一張白紙。如果國會連做為一個自由公民的這一點權利都保護不了,那麼第十三修正案就做出了一個這個國家無法遵守的承諾。[111]這一案件的裁決也就將美國當代社會中的種族主義問題與歷史上的奴隸制問題聯繫了起來[27]:3-4。
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 14. ISBN 0814782760. Nineteenth century apologists for the expansion of slavery developed a political philosophy that placed property at the pinnacle of personal interests and regarded its protection to be the government's chief purpose. The Fifth Amendment's Just Compensation clause provided the proslavery camp with a bastion for fortifying the peculiar institution against congressional restrictions to its spread westward. Based on this property-rights centered argument, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, in Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857), found the Missouri Compromise unconstitutionally violated due process.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 18-23. ISBN 0814782760. Constitutional protections of slavery coexisted with an entire culture of oppression. The peculiar institution reached many private aspects of human life, for both whites and blacks. [...] Even free Southern blacks lived in a world so legally constricted by racial domination that it offered only a deceptive shadow of freedom.
Amy Dru Stanley. Instead of Waiting for the Thirteenth Amendment: The War Power, Slave Marriage, and Inviolate Human Rights. American Historical Review. 2010-06, 115 (3).
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 52–53 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). Sumner made his intentions clearer on February 8, when he introduced his constitutional amendment to the Senate and asked that it be referred to his new committee. So desperate was he to make his amendment the final version that he challenged the well-accepted custom of sending proposed amendments to the Judiciary Committee. His Republican colleagues would hear nothing of it.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 53 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). It was no coincidence that Trumbull's announcement came only two days after Sumner had proposed his amendment making all persons 'equal before the law.' The Massachusetts senator had spurred the committee into final action.
McAward, Jennifer Mason. McCulloch and the Thirteenth Amendment(PDF). Columbia Law Review. 2012, 112: 1786. (原始內容(PDF)存檔於2016-01-21). There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 54 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). Although it made Henderson's amendment the foundation of the final amendment, the committee rejected an article in Henderson's version that allowed the amendment to be adopted by the approval of only a simple majority in Congress and the ratification of only two-thirds of the states.
Benedict, Michael Les. Constitutional Politics, Constitutional Law, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Maryland Law Review. 2012-10-31, 71 (1): 179–180 [2013-09-26]. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-28). (Benedict quotes Sen. Garrett Davis:) there is a boundary between the power of revolution and the power of amendment, which the latter, as established in our Constitution, cannot pass; and that if the proposed change is revolutionary it would be null and void, notwithstanding it might be formally adopted.Full text of Davis's speech, with comments from others can be found in Great Debates in American History (頁面存檔備份,存於互聯網檔案館) (1918), ed. Marion Mills Miller.
TenBroek, Jacobus. Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: Consummation to Abolition and Key to the Fourteenth Amendment. California Law Review. 1951-06, 39 (2): 180. It would make it possible for white citizens to exercise their constitutional right under the comity clause to reside in Southern states regardless of their opinions. It would carry out the constitutional declaration "that each citizen of the United States shall have equal privileges in every other state." It would protect citizens in their rights under the First Amendment and comity clause to freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of religion and freedom of assembly.
Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. New York: Harper & Row. 1971: xvii. Negroes wanted the same freedom that white men enjoyed, with equal prerogatives and opportunities. The educated black minority emphasized civil and political rights more than the masses, who called most of all for land and schools. In an agrarian society, the only kind most of them knew, landownership was associated with freedom, respectability, and the good life. It was almost universally desired by Southern blacks, as it was by landless peasants the world over. Give us our land and we can take care of ourselves, said a group of South Carolina Negroes to a Northern journalist in 1865; without land the old masters can hire us or starve us as they please.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 73 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). The first notable convert was Representative James Brooks of New York, who, on the floor of Congress on February 18, 1864, declared that slavery was dying if not already dead, and that his party should stop defending the institution.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 48 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). The president worried that an abolition amendment might foul the political waters. The amendments he had recommended in December 1862 had gone nowhere, mainly because they reflected an outdated program of gradual emancipation, which included compensation and colonization. Moreover, Lincoln knew that he did not have to propose amendments because others more devoted to abolition would, especially if he pointed out the vulnerability of existing emancipation legislation. He was also concerned about negative reactions from conservatives, particularly potential new recruits from the Democrats.
Willis, John C. Republican Party Platform, 1864. University of the South. [2013-09-26]. (原始內容存檔於2013-03-29). Resolved, That as slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength of this Rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of Republican Government, justice and the National safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defense, has aimed a deathblow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of Slavery within the limits of the jurisdiction of the United States.
1864: The Civil War Election. Get Out the Vote. Cornell University. 2004 [2013-09-26]. (原始內容存檔於2013-06-07). Despite internal Party conflicts, Republicans rallied around a platform that supported restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery.
Donald, David Herbert. Lincoln. Simon & Schuster. 1996: 554 [2013-09-26]. ISBN 978-0-684-82535-9. (原始內容存檔於2013-10-09). the greatest measure of the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 187 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). But the clearest sign of the people's voice against slavery, argued amendment supporters, was the recent election. Following Lincoln's lead, Republican representatives like Godlove S. Orth of Indiana claimed that the vote represented a 'popular verdict . . . in unmistakable language' in favor of the amendment.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 191 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). The necessity of keeping support for the amendment broad enough to secure its passage created a strange situation. At the moment that Republicans were promoting new, far-reaching legislation for African Americans, they had to keep this legislation detached from the first constitutional amendment dealing exclusively with African American freedom. Republicans thus gave freedom under the antislavery amendment a vague construction: freedom was something more than the absence of chattel slavery but less than absolute equality.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 191–192 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). One of the most effective methods used by amendment supporters to convey the measure's conservative character was to proclaim the permanence of patriarchal power within the American family in the face of this or any textual change to the Constitution. In response to Democrats who charged that the antislavery was but the first step in a Republican design to dissolve all of society's foundations, including the hierarchical structure of the family, the Iowa Republican John A. Kasson denied any desire to interfere with 'the rights of a husband to a wife' or 'the right of [a] father to his child.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 198 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). It was at this point that the president wheeled into action on behalf of the Amendment […] Now he became more forceful. To one representative whose brother had died in the war, Lincoln said, 'your brother died to save the Republic from death by the slaveholders' rebellion. I wish you could see it to be your duty to vote for the Constitutional amendment ending slavery.
Harrison, John. The Lawfulness of the Reconstruction Amendments. University of Chicago Law Review. Spring 2001, 68 (2): 389 [2013-09-26]. For reasons that have never been entirely clear, the amendment was presented to the President pursuant to Article I, Section 7, of the Constitution, and signed.
Thorpe, Francis Newton. The Constitutional History of the United States, vol. 3: 1861 – 1895. Chicago: Callaghan. 1901: 154 [2013-09-26]. (原始內容存檔於2016-04-01). The President signed the joint resolution on the first of February. Somewhat curiously the signing has only one precedent, and that was in spirit and purpose the complete antithesis of the present act. President Buchanan had signed the proposed Amendment of 1861, which would make slavery national and perpetual.
Thorpe, Francis Newton. The Constitutional History of the United States, vol. 3: 1861 – 1895. Chicago: Callaghan. 1901: 154 [2013-09-26]. (原始內容存檔於2016-04-01). But many held that the President's signature was not essential to an act of this kind, and, on the fourth of February, Senator Trumbull offered a resolution, which was agreed to three days later, that the approval was not required by the Constitution; "that it was contrary to the early decision of the Senate and of the Supreme Court; and that the negative of the President applying only to the ordinary cases of legislation, he had nothing to do with propositions to amend the Constitution.
Harrison, John. The Lawfulness of the Reconstruction Amendments. University of Chicago Law Review. Spring 2001, 68 (2): 390 [2013-09-26]. Those ratifications raised some tricky questions. Four of them came from organizations purporting to be the legislatures of Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas. What about them? How many states were there, how many of them had legally valid legislatures, and if there were fewer legislatures than states, did Article V require ratification by three-fourths of the states or three-fourths of the legally valid state legislatures?
Harrison, John. The Lawfulness of the Reconstruction Amendments. University of Chicago Law Review. Spring 2001, 68 (2): 394–397 [2013-09-26]. Then came the kicker: The President decided who was loyal, prescribing suffrage qualifications for electing the convention. [...] Pursuant to Johnson's proclamations, the provisional governors organized elections for conventions. Six met in 1865, while Texas's convention did not organize until March 1866. Three leading issues came before the convention: secession itself, the abolition of slavery, and the Confederate war debt.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 227–228 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). If, by the time Congress convened in December, the amendment had been ratified with the help of southern states, Johnson's Republican opponents might think twice about denying the southern states their place in the Union. Excluding these states might come at the embarrassing price of nullifying constitutional emancipation.
DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Russell & Russell. 1935: 208. Charles Sumner and others declared that [the enforcement clause] gave Congress power to enfranchise Negroes if such a step was necessary to their freedom. The South took cognizance of this argument.
McAward, Jennifer Mason. McCulloch and the Thirteenth Amendment(PDF). Columbia Law Review. 2012, 112: 1786–1787. (原始內容(PDF)存檔於2016-01-21). any attempt by Congress toward legislating upon the political status of former slaves, or their civil relations, would be contrary to the Constitution of the United States.
DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Russell & Russell. 1935: 208. (Alabama's exception:) That this amendment to the Constitution of the United States is adopted by the Legislature of Alabama with the understanding that it does not confer upon Congress the power to legislate upon the political status of freedmen in this state.
Harrison, John. The Lawfulness of the Reconstruction Amendments. University of Chicago Law Review. Spring 2001, 68 (2): 398 [2013-09-26]. [Seward] counted thirty-six states in all, thus rejecting the possibility that any had left the Union or been destroyed. With Georgia's action on December 6, he counted twenty-seven ratifications. So on December 18, 1865, in keeping with a duty imposed on the Secretary of State by a statute from 1818, he issued a certificate stating that Congress had proposed a constitutional amendment by the requisite two-thirds vote, that twenty-seven states had ratified, that the whole number of states in the Union was thirty-six, that twenty-seven was the requisite three-fourths majority, and that the amendment had 'be[come] valid, to all intents and purposes, as a part of the Constitution of the United States.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 17, 34. ISBN 0814782760. It rendered all clauses directly dealing with slavery null and altered the meaning of other clauses that had originally been designed to protect the institution of slavery.
Stromberg, Joseph R. A Plain Folk Perspective on Reconstruction, State-Building, Ideology, and Economic Spoils. Journal of Libertarian Studies. Spring 2002.
DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Russell & Russell. 1935: 140. There is a kind of innate feeling, a lingering hope among many in the South that slavery will be regalvanized in some shape or other. They tried by their laws to make a worse slavery than there was before, for the freedman has not the protection which the master from interest gave him before.
DuBois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Russell & Russell. 1935: 188. Slavery was not abolished even after the Thirteenth Amendment. There were four million freedmen and most of them on the same plantation, doing the same work that they did before emancipation, except as their work had been interrupted and changed by the upheaval of war. Moreover, they were getting about the same wages and apparently were going to be subject to slave codes modified only in name. There were among them thousands of fugitives in the camps of the soldiers or on the streets of the cities, homeless, sick, and impoverished. They had been freed practically with no land nor money, and, save in exceptional cases, without legal status, and without protection.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 244 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). Slavery was not abolished even after the Thirteenth Amendment. There were four million freedmen and most of them on the same plantation, doing the same work that they did before emancipation, except as their work had been interrupted and changed by the upheaval of war. Moreover, they were getting about the same wages and apparently were going to be subject to slave codes modified only in name. There were among them thousands of fugitives in the camps of the soldiers or on the streets of the cities, homeless, sick, and impoverished. They had been freed practically with no land nor money, and, save in exceptional cases, without legal status, and without protection.
Trelease, Allen W. White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction. New York: Harper & Row. 1971: xviii. The truth seems to be that, after a brief exulation with the idea of freedom, Negroes realized that their position was hardly changed; they continued to live and work much as they had before.
Vorenberg, Michael. Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. Cambridge University Press. 2001: 230–231 [2013-09-25]. ISBN 9781139428002. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-29). The black codes were a violation of freedom of contract, one of the civil rights that Republicans expected to flow from the amendment. Because South Carolina and other states anticipated that congressional Republicans would try to use the Thirteenth Amendment to outlaw the codes, they made the preemptive strike of declaring in their ratification resolutions that Congress could not use the amendment's second clause to legislate on freed people's civil rights.
Wolff, Tobias Barrington. The Thirteenth Amendment and Slavery in the Global Economy. Columbia Law Review. 2002-05, 102 (4): 981 [2013-09-27]. Peonage was a system of forced labor that depended upon the indebtedness of a worker, rather than an actual property right in a slave, as the means of compelling work. A prospective employer would offer a laborer a "loan" or "advance" on his wages, typically as a condition of employment, and then use the newly created debt to compel the worker to remain on the job for as long as the employer wished.
Wolff, Tobias Barrington. The Thirteenth Amendment and Slavery in the Global Economy. Columbia Law Review. 2002-05, 102 (4): 982 [2013-09-27]. Not surprisingly, employers used peonage arrangements primarily in industries that involved hazardous working conditions and very low pay. While black workers were not the exclusive victims of peonage arrangements in America, they suffered under its yoke in vastly disproportionate numbers. Along with Jim Crow laws that segregated transportation and public facilities, these laws helped to restrict the movement of freed black workers and thereby keep them in a state of poverty and vulnerability.
Wolff, Tobias Barrington. The Thirteenth Amendment and Slavery in the Global Economy. Columbia Law Review. 2002-05, 102 (4): 982 [2013-09-27]. Legally sanctioned peonage arrangements blossomed in the South following the Civil War and continued into the twentieth century. According to the Professor Jacqueline Jones, 'perhaps as many as one-third of all [sharecropping farmers] in Alabama, Mississippi, and George were being held against their will in 1900.
Wolff, Tobias Barrington. The Thirteenth Amendment and Slavery in the Global Economy. Columbia Law Review. 2002-05, 102 (4): 982 [2013-09-27]. It did not recognize a property right in a human being (a peon could not be sold in the manner of a slave); and the condition of peonage did not work 'corruption of blood' and travel to the children of the worker. Peonage, in short, was not chattel slavery. Yet the practice unquestionably reproduced many of the immediate practical realities of slavery—a vast underclass of laborers, held to their jobs by force of law and threat of imprisonment, with few if any opportunities for escape.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 50-51. ISBN 0814782760. Blacks applied to local provost marshalls and Freedmen's Bureau for help against these child abductions, particularly in those cases where children were taken from living parents. Jack Prince asked for help when a woman bound his maternal niece. Sally Hunter requested assistance to obtain the release of her two nieces. Bureau officials finally put an end to the system of indenture in 1867.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 56-57, 60-61. ISBN 0814782760. If the Republicans had hoped to gradually use section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment to pass Reconstruction legislation, they would soon learn that President Johnson, using his veto power, would make increasingly more difficult the passage of any measure augmenting the power of the national government. Further, with time, even leading antislavery Republicans would become less adamant and more willing to reconcile with the South than protect the rights of the newly freed. This was clear by the time Horace Greely accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 1872 and even more when President Rutherford B. Hayes entered the Compromise of 1877, agreeing to withdraw federal troops from the South.
18 U.S.C. § 241: US Code – Section 241: Conspiracy against rights. Codes.lp.findlaw.com. [2013-09-27]. (原始內容存檔於2013-06-20). If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured - They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
18 U.S.C. § 242: US Code – Section 242: Deprivation of rights under color of law. Codes.lp.findlaw.com. [2013-09-27]. (原始內容存檔於2013-06-20). Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
According to the Dept. of Justice, "Congress enacted § 1589 in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Kozminski, 487(英語:List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 487)U.S.931 (1988), which interpreted § 1584 to require the use or threatened use of physical or legal coercion. Section 1589 broadens the definition of the kinds of coercion that might result in forced labor."
Waskey, Andrew J. John Marshall Harlan. Wilson, Steven Harmon (編). The U.S. Justice System: An Encyclopedia: An Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO: 547. ISBN 978-1-59884-305-7.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 3. ISBN 0814782760. After Reconstruction, however, a series of Supreme Court decisions substantially diminished the amendment's significance in achieving genuine liberation. The Court did not revisit the amendment's meaning until 1968, during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement. In Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, the Court found that the Thirteenth Amendment not only ended unrecompensed, forced labor but that its second section also empowered Congress to develop legislation that is 'rationally' related to ending any remaining 'badges and incidents of servitude'.
Alison Shay. Remembering Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.. Publishing the Long Civil Rights Movement. 2012-06-17 [2013-09-28]. (原始內容存檔於2013-09-28). ...Just as the Black Codes, enacted after the Civil War to restrict the free exercise of those rights, were substitutes for the slave system, so the exclusion of Negroes from white communities became a substitute for the Black Codes. And when racial discrimination herds men into ghettos and makes their ability to buy property turn on the color of their skin, then it too is a relic of slavery. Negro citizens, North and South, who saw in the Thirteenth Amendment a promise of freedom—freedom to 「go and come at pleasure」 and to 「buy and sell when they please」—would be left with 「a mere paper guarantee」 if Congress were powerless to assure that a dollar in the hands of a Negro will purchase the same thing as a dollar in the hands of a white man. At the very least, the freedom that Congress is empowered to secure under the Thirteenth Amendment includes the freedom to buy whatever a white man can buy, the right to live wherever a white man can live. If Congress cannot say that being a free man means at least this much, then the Thirteenth Amendment made a promise the Nation cannot keep.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 3. ISBN 0814782760. The Court's holding in Jones enables Congress to pass statutes against present-day human rights violations, such as the trafficking of foreign workers as sex slaves and the exploitation of migrant agricultural workers as peons.
Tsesis, Alexander. The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History. New York: New York University Press. 2004: 112-113. ISBN 0814782760. ... the Thirteenth Amendment remains the principal constitutional source requiring the federal government to protect individual liberties against arbitrary private and public infringements that resemble the incidents of involuntary servitude. Moreover, the Thirteenth Amendment is a positive injunction requiring Congress to pass laws to that end, while the Fourteenth Amendment is 'responsive' to 'unconstitutional behavior.'
Mark W. Podvia. Titles of Nobility. David Andrew Schultz (編). Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution. Infobase: 738–739. 2009 [2013-09-28]. (原始內容存檔於2013-10-11).