ly 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.

Origin and Purpose of the Amendment

"The language of the Thirteenth Amendment," which "reproduced the
historic words of the ordinance of 1787 for the government of the
Northwest Territory, and gave them unrestricted application within the
United States,"[1] was first construed in the Slaughter-House Cases.[2]
Presented there with the contention that a Louisiana statute, by
conferring upon a single corporation the exclusive privilege of
slaughtering cattle in New Orleans, had imposed an unconstitutional
servitude on the property of other butchers disadvantaged thereby, the
Court expressed its inability, even after "a microscopic search," to
find in said amendment any "reference to servitudes, which may have been
attached to property in certain localities * * *." On the contrary, the
term "servitude" appearing therein was declared to mean "a personal
servitude * * * [as proven] by the use of the word 'involuntary,' which
can only apply to human beings. * * * The word servitude is of larger
meaning than slavery, * * *, and the obvious purpose was to forbid all
shades and conditions of African slavery." But while the Court was
initially in doubt as to whether persons other than negroes could share
in the protection afforded by this amendment, it nevertheless conceded
that although "* * * negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress
which proposed the thirteenth article, [the latter] 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."[3] All uncertainty on this score was dispelled in later
decisions; and in Hodges _v._ United States[4] the Justices proclaimed
unequivocally that the Thirteenth Amendment is "not a declaration in
favor of a particular people. It reaches every race and every
individual, and if in any respect it commits one race to the nation, it
commits every race and every individual thereof. Slavery or involuntary
servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo-Saxon are as much
within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of the
African."[5]

Peonage

Notwithstanding its early acknowledgment in the Slaughter-