The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—MiscellanyIngersoll, Robert Green
Religion
The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 11 (of 12): Dresden Edition—Miscellany
Ingersoll, Robert Green
Free thought
"It is, however, clear that the words 'involuntary servitude' include
something more than slavery, in the strict sense of the term. They
include also serfage, vassalage, villanage, peonage, and all other forms
of compulsory service for the mere benefit or pleasure of others. Nor
is this the full import of the term. The abolition of slavery and
involuntary servitude was intended to make every one born in this
country a free man, and as such to give him the right to pursue the
ordinary avocations of life without other restraint than such as affects
all others, and to enjoy equally with them the fruits of his labor.
A person allowed to pursue only one trade or calling, and only in one
locality of the country, would not be, in the strict sense of the term,
in a condition of slavery, but probably no one would deny that he would
be in a condition of servitude. He certainly would not possess the
liberties, or enjoy the privileges of a freeman."
Justice Field also quotes with approval the language of the counsel for
the plaintiffs in the case:
"Whenever a law of a State, or a law of the United States, makes a
discrimination between classes of persons which deprives the one class
of their freedom or their property, or which makes a caste of them, to
subserve the power, pride, avarice, vanity or vengeance of others--there
involuntary servitude exists within the meaning of the 13th Amendment."
To show that the framers of the 13th Amendment intended to blot out
every form of slavery and servitude, I call attention to the Civil
Rights Act, approved April 9, 1866, which provided, among other things,
that:
"All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign
power--excluding Indians not taxed--are citizens of the United States;
and such citizens, of every race and color, without regard to any
previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, are entitled to
the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security
of person and property enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject
to like punishments, pains and penalties--and to none other--any
law, statute, ordinance, regulation or custom to the contrary
notwithstanding; and they shall have the same rights in every State and
Territory of the United States as white persons."
The Supreme Court, in _The Slaughter-House Cases,_ (16 Wallace, 69) has
said that the word servitude has a larger meaning than the word slavery.
"The word 'servitude' implies subjection to the will of another contrary
to the common right." A man is in a state of involuntary servitude when
he is forced to do, or prevented from doing, a thing, not by the law of
the State, but by the simple will of another. He who enjoys less than
the common rights of a citizen, he who can be forced from the public
highway at the will of another, who can be denied entrance to the cars
of a common carrier, is in a state of servitude.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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