《美利坚合众国宪法》第十三修正案（英语：Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution）简称“第十三修正案”（Amendment XIII），旨在废除奴隶制和强制劳役（英语：involuntary servitude），除非是“依法判罪的人的犯罪的惩罚”。该修正案于1864年4月8日在联邦参议院以三分之二多数通过，再于1865年1月31日在联邦众议院通过，1865年12月6日获得宪法第五条所规定的四分之三多数州批准生效。1865年12月18日，国务卿威廉·H·苏厄德正式宣布修正案通过，成为南北战争结束后通过的三条重建修正案的第一条。
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]
林肯指示国务卿威廉·H·苏厄德和联邦众议员约翰·B·埃利（英语：John B. Alley）等人使用任何必要的手段来确保修正案通过，这些手段包括承诺政府公职、政治捐款及传出民主党议员有意改变投票立场的消息等[8]:312-313[13]:687。苏厄德有大笔资金直接进行贿赂。重新在众议院提出修正案的阿什利也成功游说了多位民主党议员转为支持[13]:687-689。众议员赛迪斯·史蒂文斯之后对此评价道：“19世纪最伟大的举措是在美国最纯洁的人的协助和教唆下，利用腐败才通过的。”不过，林肯在这场交易中所扮演的确切角色仍然不明[37]。
由于有民意上的支持，共和党人在1864年的国会两院换届选举中再度获胜，修正案通过的胜算因此进一步加大，议员们声称这毫无疑问是人民的意旨[38]。反对派则是由1864年民主党副总统候选人，联邦众议员乔治·H·彭德尔顿（英语：George H. Pendleton）带队[13]:688。共和党则将其要求平等的激烈用词淡化，以求获得更多人的支持[39]。为了安抚一些批评人士对修正案会造成现有社会结构分裂的担忧，一些共和党人还明确承诺修正案不会对父权体制构成任何不利影响[40]。
随着第39届国会（英语：39th United States Congress）即将召开，苏厄德继续向其它尚未批准的州施压[15]:232。南卡罗莱纳州、阿拉巴马州、北卡罗莱纳州和乔治亚州先后于1865年11和12月批准了修正案，达到内战前已有36个州的四分之三多数标准。所有州批准的具体日期如下[58]：
俄勒冈州和加利福尼亚州于1865年12月中旬批准修正案，佛罗里达州于1865年12月28日批准[60]，艾奥瓦州和新泽西州于1866年1月批准[62]，德克萨斯州于1870年批准[60]，特拉华州1901年批准[63]，肯塔基州在1976年批准[63]，密西西比州议会一直到1995年才批准修正案，并且迟至2013年2月才正式告知联邦注册办公室（英语：Office of the Federal Register），完成该州批准修正案的法律程序[64]。
正式的解放并没有改变留在南方大多数黑人的经济状况。[75]由于修正案仍然允许用强制劳役来惩罚犯罪行为，南方各州于是开始制订一系列环环相扣的法律来让黑人沦为刑事罪犯[76]:53。这些在黑人获得解放后通过或更新的法律被统称为黑人法令[70]:111。密西西比州是第一个通过这类法令的州，这项1865年通过的法律题为《赋予自由民公民权利的法案》（An Act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen）[77]，要求黑人工人在每年1月1日与白人农场主签订合同，否则将面临流浪罪的惩罚[76]:53。黑人如果犯下轻盗窃罪、讲粗话或是在日落后出售棉花，都会被判处强制劳役[76]:100。各州通过了新的，更严格的流浪法，选择性地针对那些没有白人保护的黑人[76]:53[17]:51-52，被定罪的黑人将被卖到农场、工厂、伐木营地、采石场和矿山[76]:6。
1870至1871年的执法法和1875年民权法案旨在打击白人至上主义者对黑人的暴力和恐吓行为，同时也部分起到了结束南方黑人奴隶处境的作用[17]:66-67。不过，这些法律的效果由于政治意愿的减弱和联邦政府在南部失去了权威而削弱，特别是在共和党人为保住总统席位而达成1877年妥协（英语：Compromise of 1877）结束重建以后[86]。
1947年，联邦司法部成功检控伊丽莎白·英格尔斯（Elizabeth Ingalls）奴役家仆多拉·L·琼斯（Dora L. Jones）。法院认为琼斯“是一个完全受被告意志操控的人，她没有行动自由，完全是在被告的控制之下进行服务，并且她对被告的服务是被强迫的。”[87]:1668第十三修正案在这一期间受到了的关注大幅增加，但从1954年的布朗诉托皮卡教育局案到1968年的琼斯诉阿尔弗雷德H·梅耶公司案（英语：Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.），修正案的风头都远远不及第十四修正案[87]:1680-1683。
劳役偿债制指一个人因为债务支付问题而在非自愿情况下通过劳役来清偿债务的情况。强制劳役指一个人被他人以武力胁迫或是以武力相要胁，亦或被威胁受法律强制手段打击而被迫作他人的奴隶，或是被迫劳役和提供服务。这其中还包括他人使用武力或威胁使用武力亦或威胁通过法律强制手段而造成的“恐惧气氛”下被迫工作。[92]在1911年的贝利诉阿拉巴马州案（英语：Bailey v. Alabama）中，联邦最高法院裁定债役法（指强制他人参加劳役来偿还债务的法律）违反了第十三修正案中禁止强制劳役的规定[93]。
在1883年的一组民权案件（英语：Civil Rights Cases）中，最高法院把5个有关1875年民权法案（英语：Civil Rights Act of 1875）的案件合并审查，该法禁止在“旅馆、地面或水域的公共交通工具、剧院和其它公共娱乐场所”的种族歧视行为。法院认为第十三修正案对大部分非政府行为的种族歧视行径没有约束力。[69]:122大法官布拉德利在多数意见中认为，第十三修正案赋予国会取缔奴隶制的权力，但这种权力对个人行为无效，他还认为第十三修正案中保护的公民基本权力与人们在社会中生活的社会权利有所区别[17]:70。多数意见认为，1875年民权法案将导致有关奴隶制的争论深入到现实生活中的每一个角落，但人们有时候会因为个人生计、工作、业务等方面的需要来作出一些可能会被认为存在歧视的行为，据此而以法律加以限制和惩罚是不妥当的[103]。肯塔基州律师出身的大法官约翰·马歇尔·哈伦在目睹了有组织的种族暴力活动后改变了自己对民权法案的看法，他在法院唯一的反对意见中称，这种由团体或个人在行使公共或准公共职能时表现出的歧视是一种代表性的奴役制度，国会应当对其加以取缔。[17]:73[104]
在1906年的霍奇斯诉美国案（英语：Hodges v. United States）中，法院推翻了一条联邦法规，该法规中对任何两个或更多数目的人阴谋损害、欺压、威胁或恐吓任何人自由行使或享受宪法和美国法律保障的权利或特权的行为提供了惩罚依据。在该案中，阿肯色州的一组白人密谋以暴力手段阻止8名黑人到一家木材厂工作，这些白人被联邦大陪审员定罪。最高法院判决该联邦法规没有第十三修正案的授权。认为这不过是个人行为，不受宪法修正案的限制。哈伦再次写下反对意见，坚持自己有关第十三修正案的保护应当不只是“人身自由”而已。[106][17]:79-80法院又在1922年的科里根诉巴克利案判决中再次重申了霍奇斯案的意见，称第十三修正案对地役权不适用[107]。
法律史将1968年的琼斯诉艾尔弗雷德·H·迈耶公司案（英语：Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co.）视为第十三修正案判例法的一个转折点[110][27]:2。最高法院在该案判决认为国会可以“合理”地对个人的种族歧视和强制劳役行为作出限制[110]。琼斯夫妇居住在密苏里州的圣路易斯县，他们起诉的是当地一家拒绝卖房子给他们的房地产公司。法院的判决是以7比2的投票结果作出的。判决书中称内战结束后用来限制黑人自由行使权利的黑人法令是奴役系统的替代品，将黑人排除在白人社会以外。这种因他人肤色而拒绝其购买房产意向的做法无疑也是奴隶制的遗留。判决书中还表示，无论北方还是南方的黑人公民，都视第十三修正案为自由的保证，这些自由包括他们的来去自由和买卖自由。如果国会连黑人用同样的钱买到和白人同样东西，住在白人能住的房里这样的权利都不能保证，那么修正案也就成了一张白纸。如果国会连做为一个自由公民的这一点权利都保护不了，那么第十三修正案就做出了一个这个国家无法遵守的承诺。[111]这一案件的裁决也就将美国当代社会中的种族主义问题与历史上的奴隶制问题联系了起来[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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容(PDF)存档于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. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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 （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆） (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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容(PDF)存档于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. （原始内容存档于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. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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]. （原始内容存档于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（英语：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 (编). 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]. （原始内容存档于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 (编). Encyclopedia of the United States Constitution. Infobase: 738–739. 2009 [2013-09-28]. （原始内容存档于2013-10-11）.
