The Thirteenth Amendment had, of course, for its chief purpose, the abolition of negro slavery. But this was not the sole purpose. Its terms were purposely made broad enough to exclude not only the slavery of any person, whatever his race or color, but his involuntary servitude save as a punishment for crime.31 It has thus become necessary for the courts to pass upon the constitutionality of various forms of compulsory service which, while the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other." "§ 5508. If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen 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 not more than five thousand dollars and imprisoned not more than ten years; and shall, moreover, be thereafter ineligible to any office or place of honor, profit, or trust created by the Constitution or laws of the United States."

30 Justices Harlan and Day dissenting.

31 "Undoubtedly, while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the 13th article, it forbids any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter. If Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may safely be trusted to make it void. And so, if other rights are assailed by the States which properly and necessarily fall within the protection of these articles, that protection will apply though the party interested may not be of African descent." Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36; 21 L. ed. 394.

In the Slaughter House Cases33 it was alleged that the grant of exclusive slaughtering rights to a corporation, and the consequent compulsion upon individuals to resort to that corporation for the slaughtering of live stock, created a state of involuntary servitude. After a review of the circumstances leading up to the adoption of the post bellum amendments the court, while admitting that "the word 'Servitude' is of larger meaning than slavery as the latter is popularly understood in this country," decline to extend that meaning so as to include the obligation of the citizen to conform to a requirement of law which, as the court go on to hold, is a legitimate exercise of the States' police powers.

In the Civil Rights Cases34 it was held that the denial to persons of admission to the accommodations and privileges of an inn, a public conveyance or a theater, does not subject him to involuntary servitude "or tend to fasten upon him any badge of slavery," and that, therefore, Congress had no power under the enforcement clause of the Thirteenth Amendment to provide for the punishment of individuals convicted of this denial. The authority given to Congress by the Thirteenth Amendment was declared to be not the power "to adjust what may be called the social rights of men and races in the community; but only to declare and vindicate those fundamental rights which appertain to the essence of citizenship, and the enjoyment or deprivation of which constitutes the essential distinction between freedom and slavery." "Mere discriminations on, account of race or color were not regarded as the badge of slavery. If, since that time, the enjoyment of equal rights in all these respects has become established by constitutional enactment, it is not by force of the Thirteenth Amendment, which merely abolishes slavery, but by force of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments." 35

32 The holding or returning of persons to peonage has been declared criminal by act of Congress. §§ 269, 270, Act of March 4, 1909.

33 16 Wall. 36; 21 L. ed. 394.

34 109 U. S. 3: 3 Sup. Ct. Rep. 18; 27 L. ed. 835.

35 Justice Harlan dissented. "I do not contend," he says, "that the Thirteenth Amendment invests Congress with authority by legislation, to define In Plessy v. Ferguson36 in which the attempt was made to have declared void as contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment a law of a State requiring separate accommodations for white and colored persons on the railroads, the court say: "That it does not conflict with the Thirteenth Amendment ... is too clear for argument. ... A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white and colored races a distinction which is founded in the color of the two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are distinguished from the other race by color - has no tendency to destroy the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of involuntary servitude. Indeed we do not understand that the Thirteenth Amendment is strenuously relied upon by the plaintiff in error in this connection." 37 and regulate the entire body of the civil rights which citizens enjoy, or may enjoy, in the several States. But I hold that since slavery, as the court has repeatedly declared, was the moving or principal cause of the adoption of that amendment, and since that institution rested wholly upon the inferiority, as a race, of those held in bondage, their freedom necessarily involved immunity from, and protection against them because of their race, in respect of such civil rights as belong to freemen of other races."

36163 U. S. 537; 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1138; 41 L. ed. 256.

37 Notwithstanding the opinion of the majority of the court that the question was one not open to argument, Justice Harlan vigorously dissented and declared that the judgment would in time prove as pernicious as the decision in the Dred Scott Case. The Thirteenth Amendment, he declared, "not only struck down the institution of slavery as previously existing in the United States, but it prevents the imposition of any burdens or disabilities that constitute badges of slavery or servitude." To the argument that the act in question did not discriminate between the races, that what it forbade to the one, it forbade to the other, he said: "But this argument does not meet the difficulty. Every one knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose, not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks, as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons."And he continued: "It is one tiling for railroad carriers to furnish, or to be required by law to furnish, equal accommodations for all whom they are under a legal duty to carry. It is quite another thing for government to forbid citizens of the white and black races from travelling in the same public conveyance, and to punish officers of railroad companies for permitting persons of the two races to occupy the same passenger coach. If a State can prescribe as a rule of civil conduct, that whites and blacks shall not travel as passengers in the same railroad coach, why may it not so