The federal constitution as originally adopted recognized the existence of human slavery in providing that " The migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year 1808" (Const. Art. I, § 9, ¶ 1); and further, that "No person held to service or labor in one state under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due" (Const. Art. IV, § 2,¶ 3). In pursuance of the latter of these provisions, the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850 were passed, authorizing the owners of slaves to pursue and retake them in another state. But by the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865 by the legislatures of a sufficient number of the states to make it a part of the constitution, slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, were abolished; and since the adoption of that amendment slavery in any of the United States or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States has ceased to exist as an institution recognized by law, and the questions which had been previously discussed relating to slavery have ceased to be of any practical importance.

Soon after the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, evidently under the supposed authority given by the second section of that amendment, Congress passed a statute (1867) abolishing and prohibiting the holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as "peonage" within any territory or state. As express reference is made in the act to the territory of New Mexico, although the provisions of the statute are not limited to that territory, it is evident that the purpose was to forbid the perpetuation of the system of involuntary service which had existed in that territory since its acquisition from Mexico. But the statute is applicable within the states as well as the territories, and is intended to reach the case of any one who holds another in peonage, notwithstanding he may be claiming the right to do so under state law or municipal ordinance. (Clyatt v. United States.)