Immediate Press Release/Public Service Announcement
July 13, 1787 to July 13, 2007
220 Years of Convict/Prison Slavery in America, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787
Contents:
p. 1 Northwest Ordinance of 1787
p. 2&3 Prison Slave Territory Expansion
p. 3,4 & 5 Thirteenth Amendment 1865
p. 6, 7 & 8 United Nations Petition to Abolish “slavery…as a punishment for crime…”
p. 9 – 16 Notes:
Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery
Email: prisonslavery@yahoo.com
http://prisonslaveryebook.blogspt.com
1.
Northwest Ordinance 1787
July 13, 2007 marks the 220th Year Anniversary of the Northwest (Territory) Ordinance of 1787, and gives focus to Article 6 as the legislative start of “slavery…in the punishment of crimes” in America (1).
On the 13th of July, 1787, the Congress of the old Confederation, sitting in New York passed "an Ordinance for the Government of the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio," which has passed into history as the "Ordinance of 1787.
“The banning of “chattel” slavery in the territory had the effect of establishing the Ohio River as the boundary between free and slave territory in the region between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River. This division…between free and slave…states was the basis of a critical political question in American politics in the 19th century until the Civil War.” (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
“The Territory embraced what is now the States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.” Over the next 72 years (1787 to 1859) its provisions were “applied to all the Territories of the United States lying north of latitude 36 degree 40', which now comprises the States of Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon. August 7, 1789, the Constitution of the United States having then been adopted, Congress, among its earliest acts, passed the binding force of the Ordinance of 1787, and adapted its provisions to the Federal Constitution. (2)”
Article 6:
- There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, (3)
- OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL
HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED: (emphasis added)
- Provided always: That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or service is lawfully
claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to
the person claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid. (4)
Article 6, exposes the peculiar institution of slavery’s “infinite capacity for propagation”. It is a classic example of “how” chattel slavery was successfully compromised, blocked, halted, struggled against, and prohibited North of the Ohio River and East of the Mississippi River while simultaneously providing for the expansion of “slavery…in the punishment of crime(s)”. Chattel slavery was blocked; the fugitive slave act has a question of compromise, convict/prison slavery was legislatively born, and convict slave holding territory rapidly expanded throughout the five new states of this territory, and beyond.
2.
Prison Slave Territory Expansion
Article 6 legislatively prohibited and blocked chattel slavery in the Northwest Territory while simultaneously enshrining slavery to punish crime(s) whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Article 6 serves as one classic example, within the history of slavery, where chattel slavery was legislatively blocked and prohibited, while the multi-state expansion of “slavery…as a punishment for crime” began.
Before the Civil War in America (1787 to 1861), convict/prison slave territory expanded across a minimum of eleven (11) new states with their various new state constitutional provisos, including: (5)
1. Ohio 1802,Article 8, Section 2:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in this state, OTHERWISE THAN FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
2. Indiana 1816/1851, Article 1, Section 37:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude within the State, OTHERWISE THAN FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
3. Missouri 1818/1819
And provided, also, that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, EXCEPT FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED;
4. Illinois 1818 Article 4, Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall hereafter be introduced into this State, OTHERWISE THAN FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED…”
5. Michigan 1837/1850 Article 18, Section 11
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, UNLESS FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME, shall ever be tolerated in this State.
6. Iowa 1846 Article 1, Section 23
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, UNLESS FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, shall ever be tolerated in this State.
7.Wisconsin 1848 Article 1, Declaration of Rights Sec. 2.
There shall be neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude in this state, OTHERWISE THAN FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
3.
8. California 1849, Article 1, Section 18
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, UNLESS FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, shall ever be tolerated in this State.
9. Oregon 1857, Article 1, Section 35
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the State, OTHERWISE THAN AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
10. Minnesota 1857-8, Article 1, Section 2
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the State OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
11. Kansas 1859 Bill of Rights, Section 6
Slavery prohibited. There shall be no slavery in this State; and no involuntary servitude, EXCEPT FOR THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIME, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
This convict/prison slavery proviso, Article 6 of the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787, was enshrined into legislative and material reality; and convict/prison slavery expanded across new states with OTHERWISE, UNLESS AND EXCEPT provisos.
Thirteenth Amendment 1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (12/18/1865):
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.
Approximately three years before Lincoln was elected president, before the Civil War to abolish all slavery in America, and before proposed wording for the 13th Amendment was being introduced in Congress; before these monumental historic events, eleven new states had already enshrined convict/prison slavery provisos within their various State Constitutions.
Charles Sumner, Abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts, and outspoken chairman on the Senate Select Committee on Slavery and the Treatment of Freedmen submitted a joint resolution (S.B. 24) to the Senate to amend the Constitution on February 8, 1864: (6)
“Everywhere within the limits of the United States, and of each state or Territory thereof, all persons are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as a slave”.6 (note: see footnotes on page 14)
4.
Not only would the passage of Sumner’s proposal have ended all slavery, it would have secured equality for all persons before the law. Its emancipating consequences would have been far-reaching for all people, regardless of race, sex, or previous condition of servitude.
Senator Henderson, from Missouri, had also proposed a joint resolution (S.B. 16) almost one month earlier, on January 11, 1864, for an amendment to abolish slavery.7
Slavery or involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT
FOR CRIME, shall not exist in the United States.8
An avowed slaveholder,9 Senator Henderson’s resolution was modeled on the convict/prison slavery proviso of the constitution with which Missouri entered the Union. Derived from the slavery proviso of the Northwest Ordinance, both the Missouri proviso and Henderson’s proposed Amendment preserved America’s slaveholding heritage.
Sumner stated, “(My) objection to it (the proposition of the committee) is, further, …it seems to me the language is not happy…I understand that it starts with the idea of reproducing the Jeffersonian ordinance. I doubt the expediency of reproducing that ordinance. It performed an excellent work in its day, but there are words in it which are entirely inapplicable to our time. That ordinance I will read. It is as follows:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory
OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY
SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
This ordinance, in precisely these words, was reproduced at a later day, in the very important act by which Missouri was admitted into the Union, containing the well-known prohibition which afterwards caused such debate.
There are words here, I have said, which are entirely inapplicable to our time. They are the limitation, “OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.” Now, unless I err, there is an implication from those words that men may be enslaved as a punishment of crimes whereof they shall have been duly convicted. There was a reason, I have said, for that at the time, for I understand that it was the habit in certain parts of the country to convict persons or to doom them as slaves for life as a punishment for crime, and it was not proposed to prohibit this habit. But slavery in our day is something distinct, perfectly well known, requiring no words of distinction outside of itself. Why, therefore, add “nor involuntary servitude otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted?” To my mind they absolutely introduce a doubt.15
Sumner denied any distinction between slavery and involuntary servitude, saying that the essential nature of slavery was by his time clear and recognizable and that the ordinance confused matters by implying that a difference did exist, creating a doubt of their meaning.
5.
On January 31, 1865, the House passed the Thirteenth Amendment with the required two-thirds majority – 119 yeas to 56 nays and 8 abstaining. It was then signed by President Lincoln and submitted to the various states for ratification. On December 6, 1865 25 states returned their ratifications (7), and on December 18, 1865, the Secretary of State certified that the Thirteenth Amendment had become part of the Constitution.
The Senate’s refusal to act on Sumner’s appeal to delete the EXCEPTION for slavery from the final document would victimize and enslave poor citizens and newly emancipated freedmen for more than 142 years, and for 220 years with the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. All slavery was not abolished. Chattel slavery was prohibited, prison slave territory expanded to all states, and to “any place subject to their jurisdiction”.
Today, the massive expansion of “slavery…as a punishment” represents a conservatively estimated 14 to 33 million caged and chained prison slaves internationally, with over 2.4 to 7.6 million men, women, and children in the USA at this very hour, not including the prison/war slaves of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad, Palestine, Hutto, etal. The abolition of convict/prison slavery in America will advance and accelerate the abolition of all old and modern forms and institutions of international slavery.
6. PETITION -
UNITED NATIONS PETITION TO ABOLISH “SLAVERY…AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME… WITHIN THE UNITED STATES, OR ANY PLACE SUBJECT TO THEIR JURISDICTION”. I hereby sign this United Nations Petition to Abolition Prison Slavery in support of changing the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution so as to remove the offensive exception for “slavery…as a punishment for crime…in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction”; with the return of citizenship, labor and human rights for all. Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution (1865) “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”. So as to read:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. ________________________________________________________________________________
1.Print Name _____________________ Street Address, email _____________________________ Phone#_________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
2. Print Name _____________________StreetAddress,email________________________________Phone#__________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
3. Print Name ___________________ Street Address, email __________________________________ Phone#_______
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
4. Print Name_____________________ Street Address, email _____________________________ Phone#__________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
5. Print Name__________________ Street Address, email ________________________________ Phone#__________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
6. Print Name ___________________ Street Address, email __________________________________ Phone#_______
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
7. Print Name _____________________ Street Address, email _____________________________ Phone#__________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
8. Print Name__________________ Street Address, email ________________________________ Phone#__________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
9. Print Name ___________________ Street Address, email __________________________________ Phone#_______
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip___________________
10. Print Name _____________________ Street Address, email _____________________________ Phone#_________
Signature___________________ City________________________State_______________Zip_______________
7.
The three United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights authorities used for this petition include: Article 4: “No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”. Article 5: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. Article 23: Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
The Petition to Abolish Prison Slavery is a joint Congressional/United Nations petition to remove the EXCEPTION for slavery found within the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution specifically within the United States; and within any country, prison, jail, or torture chamber “any place subject to their jurisdiction”.
Three sections of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights have been chosen to provide international authority for this petition.
Today, the massive expansion of “slavery…as a punishment” represents a conservatively estimated 14 to 33 million caged and chained prison slaves internationally, with over 2.4 to 7.6 million men, women, and children in the USA at this very hour, not including the prison/war slaves of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Baghdad, Palestine, Hutto, etal.
As with the postbellum Black Codes, today lower offenses are raised to felony status while private prison construction companies, private prison corrections corporations, related prison expansionists and maintenance outsourcing similar to the old convict lease system is now making trillions of dollars world wide. This is to be expected because slavery has always been profitable. Without “profit”, slavery would cease to exist.
8.
In this work to abolish “slavery…as a punishment”, we further seek to encourage and give momentum to the abolition of both economic slavery, and slavery as the spoils of war. CAPS ultimate goal is to gain Universal Emancipation from all slavery. “To do less than this at the present moment, when slavery is still menacing, would be an abandonment of duty”.
This newly revised CAPS Petition to Abolish Prison Slavery will be submitted to the United Nations, to the United States Congress, to the various States, to appropriate International Courts, and to supportative representatives of the various nations.
We seek to give encouragement to readers of this document within the pits of hell or in the halls of Congress. Where ever you might be at this moment, we encourage, challenge and/or provoke your further study, analysis, debate, litigation, grassroots organizing, petitioning and lobbying for the abolition of slavery as a punishment for crime, slavery as a spoils of war, and slavery as an economic class status. Towards Abolition of all slavery.
Respectfully Submitted,
by Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery (CAPS)
Coordinator, Lee Wood
email:prisonslavery@yahoo.com www.books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0910007004
Abolish Prison Slavery, Fascism, War, and Poverty
Abolish Torture, the Death Penalty, Prison Construction, exploited labor, exploited tax payers and return all citizenship, labor, human and economic rights.
Free Mumia, Peltier, and all political and economic prisoners.
9
NOTES:
Jeffersonian Ordinance p. 9
Slavery Abolition by several States p. 9
Possible Compromise p. 9
AAP p. 9
New Prison Slavery State Constitution Amendments & Provisos p.10
Thirteenth Amendment Debates – Congressional Globe p. 10, 11, 12, 13
States Ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment p. 12
Petition p. 13
10.
(1) Thirty three months earlier, “on the 1st of March, 1784, a committee consisting of Mr. (Thomas) Jefferson of Virginia, Mr. Chase of Maryland, and Mr. Howell of Rhode Island, reported an ordinance (referred to as the Jeffersonian Ordinance) for the temporary government of the territory…that any of the States may be admitted into the Union when their number of free inhabitants is as many as any one of the least numerous of the thirteen original States… It proposed, also, five "articles of compact." The fifth article was as follows:
"That after the year 1800 of the Christian era, THERE SHALL BE NEITHER SLAVERY NOR INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE IN ANY OF THE SAID STATES, OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED TO HAVE BEEN PERSONALLY GUILTY."
(2)(African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A.P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907)
(3) The slaves enumerated (40,370) in the Northern States were held, subject to the varied provisions under which the several States had abolished slavery, or provided for its ultimate extinction. The time and mode of abolition adopted by the several States was as follows:
-Vermont, 1777; framed constitution fourteen years before she became a member of the Federal Union, whereof the “first” article abolished slavery.
-Pennsylvania, 1780; all persons born in the State after March 1 to be free at the age of twenty-eight.
-Massachusetts, 1780; absolute prohibition.
-New Hampshire, 1783; absolute prohibition.
-Rhode Island, 1784; all born in the State after March, 1784, to be free.
-Connecticut, 1784; gradual abolition.
-New York, 1799; gradual emancipation; in 1817, a further act decreed that there should be no slavery in the State after July 4, 1827.
-New Jersey, 1804; gradual emancipation.
(4) A possible compromise could have existed between Northern anti-slavery and Southern pro-slavery legislators so as to give Southern slave owner class the fugitive slave act allowing recapture of runaway slaves within this Territory; and by prohibiting the growing of tobacco and indigo north of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers so as not to compete with slave states. These potential concessions to antebellum slave holding forces could have been in exchange for both the no chattel slavery statement, and for the institutionalization of “slavery…in the punishment of crimes”. Chattel slavery was blocked; prison slavery was born, and convict/prison slave holding territory rapidly expanded.
“Evolution of the Ordinance of 1787: With an Account of the Earlier Plans for the Government”, Jay Amos Barrett, 9 June, 1891, US4616.11A, pp. 79-80
(5) New Prison Slave State Constitutional Amendments and Provisos: (Prison Slavery, pgs 207 – 221)
(6) Congressional Globe
Nearly one month after Henderson submitted his resolution and only two days after Sumner submitted his, the Senate Committee on the Judiciary announced acceptance of Henderson’s resolution as the basis for the Thirteenth Amendment. In this report to the Senate, Senator Trumbull briefed the Senate on the proposed amendment:
11.
I will state that the amendment, as recommended by the Committee on the Judiciary, provides for submitting to Legislatures of the several States a proposition to amend the Constitution of the United States so that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIME, WHEREOF A PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction; and also that Congress shall have power to enforce this article by proper legislation. I desire to give notice to the Senate that I shall at an early day, call for the consideration of this resolution.10 (note: these footnotes are on page 13)
On April 8, 1864, Senator Charles Sumner made his final appeal to the Senate to change the wording of the ominous amendment and asked that his proposed joint resolution be accepted as a substitute:
Beyond my general desire to see an act of universal emancipation that shall at once and forever settle this great question, so that it may no longer be the occasion of strife between us, there are two other ideas which are ever present to my mind as a practical legislator: first, to strike at slavery wherever I can hit it; and secondly, to clean the statute-book of all existing supports of slavery, so that it may find nothing there to which it may cling for life. To do less than this at the present moment, when slavery is still menacing, would be an abandonment of duty. 11
So long as a single slave continues anywhere beneath the flag of the Republic I am unwilling to rest. Too well I know the vitality of slavery with its infinite capacity of propagation, and how little slavery it takes to make a slave State with all the cruel pretensions of slavery…12
Sumner then criticized the proposed amendments’ resemblance to Article 6 of the Northwest (Territory) Ordinance of 1787:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said territory, OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF
THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED…
Let me say frankly that I should prefer a form of expression different from that which has the sanction of the committee. They have selected what was intended for the old Jeffersonian Ordinance (of 1787), sacred in our history, although, let me add, they have not imitated it closely. But I must be
pardoned if I venture to doubt the expediency of perpetuating in the Constitution language which, if it have any signification, seems to imply “slavery or involuntary servitude” may be provided “for the
punishment of crime.” There was a reason for that language when it was first employed, but that reason no longer exists. If my desires could prevail, I would put aside the ordinance on this occasion, and find
another form. I know nothing better than these words:
All persons are equal before the law so that no person can hold another as a slave; and
the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this decision
into effect everywhere within the United States and the jurisdiction thereof.13
12.
…Enough has been said to explain the origin of the words which are now proposed (French Declaration of Rights, 1787). It will be for the Senate to determine if it will adopt them.
Should the Senate not incline to this form, there is still another I would suggest, as follows:
Slavery shall not exist anywhere within the United States or the jurisdiction thereof; and that the Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry this prohibition into effect.14
The Congressional Globe’s report on the Senate debates of April 8, 1864:
MR. SUMNER. Now, Mr. President, the state of the question is this, the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Henderson) offered a proposition in this form:
Art. 1. Slavery or involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT
FOR CRIME, shall not exist in the United States…
I make this comment on the proposition which we have before us, that of the Senator from Missouri, in order to explain why I should be against that in the form in which it stands; I am free to say that in some respects I think it better than the article proposed by the committee. It is as follows:
Slavery or involuntary servitude, EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT
FOR CRIME, shall not exist in the United States.
It is simpler than the proposition of the committee…
(My) objection to it (the proposition of the committee) is, further, …it seems to me the language is not happy…I understand that it starts with the idea of reproducing the Jeffersonian ordinance. I doubt the expediency of reproducing that ordinance. It performed an excellent work in its day, but there are words in it which are entirely inapplicable to our time. That ordinance I will read. It is as follows:
There shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.
This ordinance, in precisely these words, was reproduced at a later day, in the very important act by which Missouri was admitted into the Union, containing the well-known prohibition which afterwards caused such debate.
There are words here, I have said, which are entirely inapplicable to our time. They are the limitation, “OTHERWISE THAN IN THE PUNISHMENT OF CRIMES WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.” Now, unless I err, there is an implication from those words that men may be enslaved as a punishment of crimes whereof they shall have been duly convicted. There was a reason, I have said, for that at the time, for I understand that it was the habit in certain parts of the country to
13.
convict persons or to doom them as slaves for life as a punishment for crime, and it was not proposed to prohibit this habit. But slavery in our day is something distinct, perfectly well known, requiring no words of distinction outside of itself. Why, therefore, add “nor involuntary servitude otherwise than in the
punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted?” To my mind they absolutely introduce a doubt.15
Sumner denied any distinction between slavery and involuntary servitude, saying that the essential nature of slavery was by his time clear and recognizable and that the ordinance confused matters by implying that a difference did exist, creating a doubt of their meaning. His concern was well founded because, in 1857, before the Civil War, Iowa made use of the doubt. In an attempt to disguise in its practice of slavery, Iowa changed its constitution to prohibit slavery and permit involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime.
Sumner further argued that:
In placing a new and important text into our Constitution, it seems to me we cannot be too careful in the language we adopt. We should consider well that the language we adopt here in this Chamber today will in all probability be adopted in the other House, and it must be adopted, also, by three fourths of the Legislatures of the States. Once having passed this body, it is substantially beyond correction. Therefore, it seems to me, we have every motive, the strongest inducement in the world, to make that language as perfect as possible.16
Sumner also understood that the real meaning of the proposed Thirteenth Amendment would be camouflaged by it‘s awkward grammar; that the prison slavery proviso of the Thirteenth Amendment as ratified has gone substantially unchallenged and unrecognized, even by constitutional lawyers, for more than a century testifies to Sumner’s foresight:
I say, therefore, that I object to the Jeffersonian ordinance even if it were presented here in its original text. But now I am brought to the point that the proposition of the committee is not the Jeffersonian ordinance, except in its bad features. In other respects, it discards the language of the Jeffersonian ordinance and also its collocation of words. The language of the committee is as follows:
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.
The Senate will observe what to my ear is a discord, the introduction of those two “shalls” so near together, but that is not of great importance.
MR. DOOLITTLE. They are both in the Jeffersonian ordinance.
MR. SUMNER. But they are further apart, and the whole effect is entirely different. As I have said already, the language of the ordinance is entirely different. As I have said already, the language of the ordinance is, “There shall be.” Mark the beginning as compared with that of the committee. The committee say, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,” &c. The ordinance says, “There shall be” – the word of prohibition coming first, at the outset –
14.
“neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory otherwise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”; whereas the committee say,
“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.”17
At this point, Sumner urged that if the Senate intended slavery to stand as a punishment for crime, they should state so clearly or remove the proviso entirely. The Senate did neither:
If Senators desire the Jeffersonian ordinance, I say let us take it in its original form as it appears in that ordinance, and was subsequently reproduced in the Missouri statute; do not let us take it in this modified form, which, while pretending to be the Jeffersonian ordinance, is not the Jeffersonian ordinance except in that feature which I think, if Senators apply their minds to it, they will see is clearly objectionable. I refer to the words, “EXCEPT AS A PUNISHMENT FOR CRIMES, WHEREOF THE PARTY SHALL HAVE BEEN DULY CONVICTED.” I have already said that for myself I should prefer the form which I have sent to the Chair, and on which the question is now to be taken; but I offer it as a suggestion, and if Senators do not incline to it, I have no desire to press it.
--------------------------------------------------------
CONGRESSIONAL Globe, vol.2, p.1313.
Ibid., p. 197.
Ibid., p. 521.
Ames, pp. 214-215.
Congressional Globe, vol. 2, p. 1313.
Ibid, p. 1461, Henderson concludes a long argument in the slavery debates with:
“There are but two sides to the question. The one is Union without slavery; and another is the immediate and unconditional acknowledgement of the southern confederacy… For the expression of this sentiment I may be called a fanatic…it results not from any sudden abhorrence of slavery, for I have been in its midst all my life. It does not spring from hatred of slaveholders, for, whether in honor or shame, I am a slaveholder today.
Ibid, vol. 1, p. 553.
Ames, pp. 215-216.
Congressional Globe, vol. 2, p. 1482.
Ibid
Ibid, p. 1483.
Ibid, pp. 1487-1488.
Ibid, p. 1488
Ibid.
Ibid.
15.
(7)
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Illinois (February 1, 1865)
Rhode Island (February 2, 1865)
Michigan (February 3, 1865)
Maryland (February 3, 1865)
New York (February 3,1865)
Pennsylvania (February 3, 1865)
West Virginia (February 3, 1865)
Missouri (February 6, 1865)
Maine (February 7, 1865)
Kansas (February 7, 1865)
Massachusetts (February 7, 1865)
Virginia (February 9, 1865)
Ohio (February 10, 1865)
Indiana (February 13, 1865)
Nevada (February 16, 1865)
Louisiana (February 17, 1865)
Minnesota (February 23, 1865)
Wisconsin (February 24, 1865)
Vermont (March 8, 1865)
Tennessee (April 7, 1865)
Arkansas (April 14, 1865)
Connecticut (May 4, 1865)
New Hampshire (July 1, 1865)
South Carolina (November 13, 1865)
Alabama (December 2, 1865)
Ratification was completed on December 6, 1865. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
1. Oregon (December 8, 1865)
2. California (December 19, 1865
3. Florida (December 26, 1865, reaffirmed on June 9, 1869)
4. 4. Iowa (January 15, 1866)
5. 5. Jersey (January 23,1866 after having rejected it on March 16, 1865)
6. Texas (February 18, 1870)
7. Delaware (February12, 1901, after having rejected it on February 8, 1865)
8. Kentucky (March 18, 1976, after having rejected it on February 24, 1865)
9. Mississippi (March 16, 1995, after having rejected it on December 5, 1865)
END
