From the earlier chapters on the Negroes and on the Cotton Hands it is plain that the Southern agricultural laborer is unsatisfactory to his employer, and not happy in himself; that the two races, though allied, are yet in disharmony. Of recent years a new or rather a renewed cause of race hostility has been found, because the great demand for labor, chiefly in the cotton fields, gives rise to the startling abuse of a system of forced labor, commonly called peonage, which at the mildest is the practice of thrashing a hand who misbehaves on the plantation, and in its farthest extent is virtually slavery. For this system the white race is solely accountable, inasmuch as it is the work of white men, sometimes under the protection of laws made by white legislatures, and always because of an insufficient public sentiment among white people. When the slaves were set free, the federal government was careful to protect them against a relapse into bondage. The Thirteenth Amendment, which went into effect in 1865, absolutely prohibited "slavery or involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." In addition, in 1867, an act of Congress formally prohibited "the system known as peonage." A further statue of 1874 declared it a crime "to kidnap or carry away any other person with intent to hold him in involuntary servitude." The word "peonage" comes from the Mexican system of serfdom, the principle of which is, that if an employee owes his master he must continue to serve him until that debt is paid, the only escape being that if another employer is willing to come forward and assume the debt the employee is allowed to transfer his obligation to the new master. In practice, the system amounts to vassalage, inasmuch as the debt is usually allowed to reach a figure which there is no hope of paying off. The term "involuntary servitude" is clear enough, and it is a curious fact that when the Philippine Islands were annexed there was a system of slavery in the Sulu Archipelago which was actually recognized by a treaty made by General Bates; but the federal government dropped the treaty, and there is no doubt that the United States courts would uphold any Sulu bondman who sought his liberty under the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1865 some of the Southern states passed vagrant laws under which Negroes were obliged to make a labor contract for a year, and could be compelled to carry out that contract; and the belief in the North that these statutes were virtually intended to reënslave the freedmen was one of the mainsprings of the Fourteenth Amendment and the other Reconstruction legislation.