Slavery In The United States

"Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman shall be slave of free. Be it therefore enacted and declared by this present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother-“Partus Sequitur Ventrem”. And that if any Christian shall commit fornication with a negro man or woman, hee or shee soe offending shall pay double the fines imposed by the former act."

"Southern slaves were "the happiest, and, in some sense the freest people in the world," wrote George Fitzhugh, Virginia proslavery defender. He claimed bondwomen did "little hard work" and were "protected from the despotism of their husbands by their masters." In her famous diary, Mary Chesnut noted that the female slaves "take life easily. Marrying is the amusement of their life." Many antebellum southerners thought the female slaves were sensuous and promiscuous and cited the "easy chastity" of the bondwomen. Since associations were made between promiscuity and reproduction, the desired increase of the slave population seemed to be evidence of the bondwoman's passion. A slaveowner in northern Mississippi told Fredrick Law Olmsted that slaves "breed faster than white folks, a 'mazin' sight, you know; they begin younger," and, he added, "they don't very often wait to be married." Bondwomen's perception of the slave experience is in marked contrast to the slaveowners'. In her remarkable autobiography, Linda Brent, a mulatto female slave, noted, "Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own." Female bondage was worse than male bondage because the female slave was both a woman and a slave in a patriarchial regime where males and females were unequal, whether white or black. Because they were slaves, African-American women were affected by the rule of the patriarch in more ways and to a greater degree than the white women in the Big House. The size of the food allotment, brutal whippings, slave sales, and numerous other variables influenced the bondwoman's view of the patriarchy. Yet because she was a woman, her view, like that of the white woman, was also gender related. According to Anne Firor Scott, the most widespread source of discontent among white women centered around their inability "to control their own fertility." On the other hand, the bondwoman's entire sex life was subject to the desires of her owner. This essay will, therefore, deal only with the bondwomen's perspective from the viewpoint of gender, using twentieth-century interviews with female ex-slaves who were at least twelve or thirteen years of age at the time of emancipation. Of the 514 women in this category, 205, or almost forty percent, made comments of this nature."

"This article examines antislavery authors’ attempts in the 1850s to fictionalize the Margaret Garner story of slave infanticide as a means of converting northern white readers to the antislavery cause. In their attempts to gain sympathy for an enslaved female protagonist who had murdered her own child, these authors confronted strong cultural beliefs about femininity, motherhood, and blackness. Almost uniformly, their strategy involved lightening the skin of the main character and presenting the killing of her child as a form of suicide. Nevertheless, the intense emotions surrounding the slavery issue by the mid‐1850s also led these authors to endow their fictional slave women with an aggressiveness that challenged contemporary social boundaries for women."

"Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refusing to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. A doctor practicing in Georgia around the middle of the last century noticed that abortions and miscarriages were far more common among his slave patients than among the white women he treated. Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common occurrence during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom."

"The practices of abortion and infanticide seem worthy of at least a fleeting mention in most studies of slave women in the United States, yet few historians mention the use of contraception. Those who do, usually conclude that little is known about the subject, but that it is probably not particularly significant. This article will discuss the use of contraception among slaves and will concentrate, in particular, on the use of cotton roots as a form of birth-control. Evidence that the cotton root was used for this purpose is taken mainly from the Works Progress Administration (WPA) narratives, edited by George Rawick. George P. Rawick, ed., The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography, Vols. 2–41 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972–1979). As yet, the author has come across only a few references to the use of cotton roots as a form of contraception in any other source. The WPA narratives are a controversial source, but, in sifting through every single interview, the multiple references to such an intimate practice were striking and demanded attention. This article forms part of a chapter from a thesis which looks at the work of slave women in the American South. Liese M. Perrin, “Slave Women and Work in the American South” (University of Birmingham: Ph.D. diss., 1999). A thorough reading of the WPA narratives reveals not only that slave women used contraception, but also that it may have been very effective. In the context of slave women and work, this is a significant discovery, as the evidence, which is detailed below, suggests that slave women not only understood that their childbearing capacity was seen in terms of producing extra capital, but that they were sufficiently opposed to this function to actually avoid conception. The use of contraception can be seen not only as a form of resistance, but also, more specifically, as a form of strike, since reproduction was an important work role for most slave women."

"It is precisely through her flesh as both mother and slave woman that Harriet A. Jacobs in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) claims the insurgent ground of her social identity and formulates her resistance to human bondage. By emphasizing her narrator's maternal sentiments, Jacobs resists prevailing beliefs concerning black women's indifference to their children while also establishing an important association between her protagonist Linda Brent and domestic ideologies. Much like Harriet Beecher Stowe and other nineteenth-century writers of sentimental fiction, Jacobs describes "nurture as a quintessence of the maternal that crosses race and class boundaries" (Stephanie Smith 215). Relying upon an understanding of maternity as a form of innate attachment, Jacobs presents Linda's actions as largely determined by the effect they will have on her children and their eventual emancipation. Many female slaves were unable to keep their families together, yet by emphasizing the oppositional action inspired by maternal sentiment Jacobs presents motherhood as a force that resists slavery and its supporters. By fashioning a literary persona who is defined almost exclusively by her maternal identity, Jacobs rejects the materialist logic of human ownership. Maternal love is shown to offer a model of relations that opposes the economy of exchange and possession characterizing the antebellum system of human bondage. Converting her body and reproductive abilities from sites of exploitation to vehicles of resistance, Linda undermines the authority of the slave master and works to liberate her children. Works by Carla Peterson, Valerie Smith, and Claudia Tate have focused upon Jacobs's departure from the assumptions and expectations of the male slave narrative to articulate the experiences and concerns of bondwomen. By contrast, I explore forms of female bodily resistance as well as ideological strategies of literary representation. Rather than conflate Jacobs with the text's protagonist, as many previous critics have done, I analyze Linda as a literary figure deliberately constructed to perform certain political aims. As the embodiment of maternal love, she acts almost exclusively to improve the lives of her children. Although Linda strains credibility as a result of her overriding maternal sensibility, Jacobs's reliance upon the trope of motherhood capitalizes on the political import of prevailing beliefs in the sanctity and power of the mother and suggests that a woman's sexuality offers a vital means of resistance against patriarchal oppression."

"Claudia Tate has observed that for female slaves "motherhood was an institution to which they had only biological claim". Enslaved women and their children could be separated at any time, and even if they belonged to the same owner, strict labor policies and plantation regulations severely limited the development of their relationships. Hortense J. Spillers concludes that because of this fundamental maternal outrage, and the concomitant banishment of the black father, "only the female stands in the flesh, both mother and mother-dispossessed. This problematizing of gender places her, in my view, out of the traditional symbolics of female gender". George Cunningham further argues, "Within the domain of slavery, gender or culturally derived notions of man- and womanhood do not exist". The predetermined violence of slavery disrupts conventional meanings attached to words such as "mother" and "womanhood." What is motherhood for a woman deprived of the ability to care for and protect her child? How are we to conceptualize maternal identity under conditions of enslavement? Furthermore, because procreation by bondwomen can be regarded as both a means of perpetuating slavery and an act of love and self-sacrifice, the sexuality of enslaved women and their relationship to their offspring must be understood as a complex negotiation involving individual agency, resistance, and power. Due to slavery's basic destabilization of blood relations, the black female subject demands new terms of radical self-determination. Spillers thus reminds her readers, "It is our task to make a place for this different social subject. In doing so, we are less interested in joining the ranks of gendered femaleness than gaining the insurgent ground as female social subject"."

"Atlantic slavery rested upon a notion of heritability. It thus relied on a reproductive logic that was inseparable from the explanatory power of race. As a result, women and their experienced of enslavement shed critical light on what it meant to be enslaved or free in the early modern Atlantic world. Regardless of the rate of reproduction among the enslaved-which remained low in all early American slave societies-the ideological solidity of those slave societies needed reproducing women. Building a system of racial slavery on the notion of heritability did not require the presence of natural population growth among the enslaved, but it did require a clear understanding that enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children. Resituating heritability was key in the practice of an enslavement that systematically alienated the enslaved from their kind and their lineage. Enslaved people had to be understood as dispossessed, outside of the normal networks of family and community, to justify the practice of mass enslavement."

"Herbal remedies to induce miscarriage were equally well known to enslaved women. Slaves often grew herbs and mixed their own medicine, derisively referred to as “negro remedies” by Southern whites. A common concern among slave-owners (who, as I mentioned in my last post, stood to gain from their slaves’ pregnancies) was that slave women were using cotton root as an abortifacient. Historian Sharla Fett writes that white doctors worried that enslaved women were using those old emmenagogues pennyroyal, tansy and rue to end pregnancies. Just as with white women, doctors were eager to control the use of slaves’ herbal remedies, particularly those used to regulate menstruation."

"Many slave owners looked at black women’s bodies as a source of free labor and often forced relationships or raped enslaved women to produce more children. Generally, enslaved women who bore children were considered more valuable than those who didn’t. At the same time, the backbreaking work expected of the women, the lack of medical care and healthy food, and abusive treatment often resulted in miscarriages, premature births, and stillbirths. Those losses led some southern whites to conclude that enslaved women knew secret ways to manage their fertility. Though the practice probably wasn’t as common as was assumed, some black women did use remedies such as cotton root or looked to a black midwife to end their pregnancies. In doing so, they were asserting some control over their own bodies-and perhaps hoping to avoid the heartbreak of having a child born into slavery or sold away from the family. But the birth rate for black women didn’t notably decline until after the end of the Civil War."

"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at the history of Black women in this country. The tradition of disregarding the humanity of Black people is part of more than 400 years of white supremacist systems in America. Although abortion was legal throughout the country until after the Civil War, there were different rules for enslaved Black women than for white women. Enslaved Black women were valuable property. They didn’t have the freedom to control their bodies, and slave owners prohibited them from having abortions. Under the law, white men owned Black women’s bodies. So, enslaved women who had access to emmenagogic herbs — plants used to stimulate menstruation — had to make remedies to induce their own abortions in secret. When slavery was abolished in 1865, the societal control over Black women’s bodies remained. Today, our white supremacist culture judges Black women for both having children and for having abortions — besetting them with blame for virtually any decision they make and any form of agency they take about their bodies."

"Margaret Garner, who was born as an enslaved girl, almost certainly did not plan to kill her child when she grew up and became an enslaved mother. But she also couldn’t yet know that the physical, emotional and psychological violence of slavery, relentless and horrific, would one day conspire to force her maternal judgment in a moment already fraught with grave imperative."

"Throughout Antillean oral culture,” writes Maryse Conde in “La parole des femmes” (Women’s Word; 1979), “the mother is glorified as the bearer of gifts and the dispenser of goods. We can easily say that this is also the case in literature written by both men and women.” This idealization of the mother, which Conde characterizes as an enduring feature of the folklore and literature of the Antilles, has given rise to a romanticized, if not exotic, portrayal of maternity. It is only recently, argues Conde, that feminist literature of the Antilles has responded to the model image of a nurturing, supportive, selfless mother and the reductionist conception of maternity as the definitive function of women. The response, Conde adds, is somewhat nuanced: although literary heroines continue to conceptualize the mother as a prominent figure, they themselves refuse maternity. Conde suggests that the ambivalence that accompanies the heroine’s refusal reflects both the persistent defining power of the images and a conscious or unconscious rejection of them (40-47). I would like to suggest that, in addition, the ambivalence is indicative of residual traces of violence against the slave mother, vestiges of the past that consciously or unconsciously shape present conceptions of social identity. Rooted in the violence colonization of black female sexuality, motherhood in slavery was an extremely complex and conflict-ridden experience, the repercussions of which are still felt today and manifest themselves as the literary heroine’s ambivalence."

"Legend has popularized the image of the Caribbean as a woman compelled to suckle a snake all night long. This image of a woman’s violated body is viewed as paradigmatic of a land and people exploited and ravaged by imperialist aggression. As a corporeal representation, the image recalls Hortense Spillers’s formulation of the New World as a “scene of “actual” mutilation, dismemberment and exile,” where the “seared divided, ripped-apartness” of the flesh serves as “primary narrative.” As legend has encoded it, however, this primary narrative is inscribed in the flesh of the woman’s body and takes the particular form of violated maternity This powerful image of the violated maternal figure has, not surprisingly, found a significant place in contemporary Caribbean and African American literature. The literary representation of the figure of the violated mother is enmeshed with two dominant and long-standing issues of this literature. Although they have long been of concern in Caribbean and African American literature, the slave mother and black motherhood have only recently appeared, in all their complexity, as focal points for the exploration of past history and self-expression. Not only does the issue of violated maternity force the painfully unspeakable and unspoken experience into avenues of objectification, insisting that the sexual abuse of black women, both slave and free, be included in discussion of slavery, but, as image, it can also become emblematic or representative of an entire people, as in the work of Edouard Glissant. As well, it can become the cornerstone for a critique of repressed desire, as in Maryse Conde’s “Moi, Tituba, sorciere . . . Noire de Sale” (1986; Eng. “I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem”). This critique resolves itself, turning absence into presence, through an alternative production/reproduction: that of writing or telling the female self into existence."

"From the moment of its introduction into the Atlantic world, hereditary racial slavery depended on an understanding that enslaved women's reproductive lives would be tethered to the institution of slavery. At the same time, few colonial slave codes explicitly defined the status of these children. This essay explores English slave codes regarding reproduction under slavery alongside the experience of reproduction to suggest that legislative silences are not the final word on race and reproduction. The presumption that their children would also be enslaved produced a visceral understanding of early modern racial formations for enslaved women. Using a seventeenth-century Virginia slave code as its anchor, this essay explores the explicit and implicit consequences of slaveowners' efforts to control enslaved women's reproductive lives."

"It is clear to see how deeply abortion bans are rooted in white supremacy and patriarchal strongholds when we look at the history of Black women in this country. The tradition of disregarding the humanity of Black people is part of more than 400 years of white supremacist systems in America. Although abortion was legal throughout the country until after the Civil War, there were different rules for enslaved Black women than for white women. Enslaved Black women were valuable property. They didn’t have the freedom to control their bodies, and slave owners prohibited them from having abortions. Under the law, white men owned Black women’s bodies. So, enslaved women who had access to emmenagogic herbs — plants used to stimulate menstruation — had to make remedies to induce their own abortions in secret."

"Over the course of decades, she has made it her mission to see that this day came. It was almost a singular mission. She has walked for miles and miles, literally and figuratively, to bring attention to Juneteenth, to make this day possible...when I think about someone like Miss Opal Lee, part of what I think about is our proximity to this period of history, right? Slavery existed for 250 years in this country, and it’s only not existed for 150. And, you know, the way that I was taught about slavery, growing up, in elementary school, we were made to feel as if it was something that happened in the Jurassic age, that it was the flint stone, the dinosaurs and slavery, almost as if they all happened at the same time. But the woman who opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture alongside the Obama family in 2016 was the daughter of an enslaved person — not the granddaughter or the great-granddaughter or the great-great-granddaughter. The daughter of an enslaved person is who opened this museum of the Smithsonian in 2016. And so, clearly, for so many people, there are people who are alive today who were raised by, who knew, who were in community with, who loved people who were born into intergenerational chattel bondage. And so, this history that we tell ourselves was a long time ago wasn’t, in fact, that long ago at all."

"I did something good: I made Juneteenth very famous. It’s actually an important event, an important time. But nobody had ever heard of it."

"I went to Galveston, Texas, in part, because I wanted to spend time with people who were the actual descendants of those who had been freed by General Gordon Granger’s General Order No. 3. And it was a really remarkable moment, because I was in this place, on this island, on this land, with people for whom Juneteenth was not an abstraction. It was not a performance. It was not merely a symbol. It was part of their tradition. It was part of their lineage. It was an heirloom that had been passed down, that had made their lives possible. And so, I think I gained a more intimate sense of what that holiday meant."

"On June 19, 1865 — nearly nine decades after our Nation’s founding, and more than 2 years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation — enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally received word that they were free from bondage. As those who were formerly enslaved were recognized for the first time as citizens, Black Americans came to commemorate Juneteenth with celebrations across the country, building new lives and a new tradition that we honor today. In its celebration of freedom, Juneteenth is a day that should be recognized by all Americans. And that is why I am proud to have consecrated Juneteenth as our newest national holiday... I call upon the people of the United States to acknowledge and celebrate the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of Black Americans, and commit together to eradicate systemic racism that still undermines our founding ideals and collective prosperity."

"Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come. This is a day of profound — in my view — profound weight and profound power. A day in which we remember the moral stain, the terrible toll that slavery took on the country and continues to take — what I’ve long called “America’s original sin.” At the same time, I also remember the extraordinary capacity to heal, and to hope, and to emerge from the most painful moments and a bitter, bitter version of ourselves, but to make a better version of ourselves. You know, today, we consecrate Juneteenth for what it ought to be, what it must be: a national holiday."

"Most of the jurisprudence surrounding the thirteenth amendment concerns Congress’ power under the second section, but this essay will focus on the first, which is self-executing. Although primarily directed against the slavery of the antebellum South, the amendment is broader in scope, as the Court held when it first considered the amendment in the Slaughter House Cases: Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it 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. The Court also said that “the word servitude is or larger meaning than slavery, as the latter is popularly understood in this country . . . . It was very well understood that . . . the purpose of the article might have been evaded, if only the word slavery had been used.” Later cases explain more specifically what “involuntary servitude” encompassed: “the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property and “services”; “a condition of enforced compulsory service of one to another,” ”that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude.”"

"Bailey’s definition of involuntary servitude as “that control by which the personal service of one man is disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit” encompasses the burden imposed on women by laws against abortion, since the “natural operation” of a statute prohibiting abortion is to make it a crime for a woman to refuse to render service to a fetus. Even had the decision been differently worded, any decision in Bailey’s favor would probably protect the woman who seeks to abort, since the servitude to which Bailey was subjected was considerably less-less taxing, less intrusive, and less total in its probable impact on the course of his whole life-than that which forced pregnancy imposes on her. Bailey also provides an answer to those who would dispute that the servitude is involuntary. As I noted earlier, some opponents to abortion think that women should be considered to assume the risk of pregnancy when they consent to have sex. This argument is far-fetched, but even if women did deliberately assume such a risk, Bailey holds that the right to personal liberty guaranteed by the thirteenth amendment is inalienable. The full intent of the constitutional provision could be defeated with obvious facility if, through the guise of contracts under which advances had been made, debtors could be held to compulsory service. It is the compulsion of the service that the statute which enforces the amendment inhibits, for when that occurs the condition of servitude is created, which would not be less involuntary because of the original agreement to work out the indebtedness."

"The thirteenth amendment is both libertarian and egalitarian, because the paradigmatic violation, antebellum slavery, deprives its victims of both liberty and equality. It compelled some private individuals to serve others, and it did so as part of a larger societal pattern of imposing such servitude on a particular caste of persons. If the libertarian and egalitarian rules of decision are both plausible readings of the amendment, it is because each stresses one undeniable aspect of the paradigmatic case. Th Court may invalidate laws that impose servitude only on individuals, as it said it was doing in Bailey, and Congress may outlaw practices that stigmatize, but do no more than stigmatize, traditionally subjugated groups, as in Jones. But if either of these cases were paradigmatic of the amendment reaches far enough to forbid either of these injuries standing alone, a fortiori it forbids practices that inflict both of them at once. Compulsory pregnancy is such a practice."

"The importance to thirteenth amendment jurisprudence of this concern about invidious social meanings is most evident in the Court’s interpretation of the second section of the amendment, which provides that “Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” This provision, the Court has held, “authorizes Congress not only to outlaw all forms of slavery and involuntary servitude but also to eradicate the last vestiges and incidents of a society half slave and half free. . . .” On the basis of this interpretation, the Court in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. sustained Congress’ authority to outlaw private racial discrimination: “Congress has the power under the Thirteenth Amendment to determine what are the badges and incident of slavery, and the authority to translate that determination into effective legislation.” Tribe thinks that this language, if read literally, grants to Congress a power to protect individual rights “which is as open-ended as its power to regulate interstate commerce.” But unlike the thirteenth amendment, the commerce clause does not specify the evil which Congress is empowered to eliminate. If the thirteenth amendment authorizes congress to eradicate the badges of slavery-even those which, as in Jones, do not directly impose involuntary servitude-this can only be because they, too, are among the evils that the amendment forbids."

"Robertson, more than any other Supreme Court decision, supports the view that the thirteenth amendment does not prohibit forced childbearing. But later cases have invalidated all four of Robertson’s arguments. The peonage cases squarely hold that a state “may not directly or indirectly command involuntary servitude, even if it was voluntarily contracted for.” As for “services which have from time immemorial been treated as exceptional,” both the Supreme Court and the lower courts have largely neglected this phrase, probably because it simply makes no sense; how can there be an exception that antedates the rule?197 The public necessity requirement seems to have been considerably tightened in Butler and Jacobson. And we know that has become of the idea that women are incompetents who may therefore properly be subjected to the absolute authority of their fathers and husbands. The sounder view would seem to be that of the dissenting Justice Harlan, who called the Court’s decision “judicial legislation” and concluded that “[a] condition of enforced service, even for a limited period, in the private service of another, is a condition of involuntary servitude.” Here, as in another, better known Civil War amendments case, Harlan’s lone dissent seems to have prevailed over brown’s majority opinion. Robertson, although it has never expressly been overruled, stands as a decision whose rationale has evaporated from under it."

"Bailey’s libertarian reading go the amendment, in which the right to freedom outweighs any other consideration, may seem unsatisfying, both morally and as an account of the amendment’s purpose. Its vision of society may appear more harmonious with the constitutionalization of laissez-faire individualism in Lochner v. New York, decided six years before Bailey, than with modern sensibilities. The modern administrative state needs to interfere with traditional individual liberties in myriad ways, some of them vitally linked to the promotion of women’s equality. This way be why, when an amicus in Roe relied on Bailey’s libertarianism to argue for a thirteenth amendment right to abortion, the Court expressly rejected the view “that one has an unlimited right to do with one’s body as one pleases” The liberty guaranteed by the thirteenth amendment, however, is narrower than this. It is not quite correct t say that the thirteenth amendment protects one’s right to control one’s own body. More precisely, the liberty the thirteenth amendment guarantees is the liberty not to have one’s body controlled by and for others."

"Even if the amendment guarantees self-ownership, why can I not contract my self-ownership away? Alienability is after all one of the rights normally associated with ownership. Inasmuch as I am not permitted to sell myself, it may be argued that I am not fully the owner of myself. Nozick, for example, thinks that a free system would allow a person to sell himself into slavery. To explain Bailey’s rule of inalienability, it is necessary to look beyond libertarian individualism and consider broader social inequalities. Such inequalities are part of the concern of a constitutional provision designed to eradicate slavery, because slavery did more than compel some individuals to serve the private interests of others: that burden was placed on a determinate social caste. 65 The framers believed that he work of abolition was only half complete as long as blacks remained legally inferior to whites, and they were right. Ass development in the South after the Civil War brutally demonstrated, pervasive inequalities make it possible for some citizens to subjugate others in ways that resemble antebellum slavery all too well."

"The idea of self-ownership is inextricably linked with our society’s ideals of individual worth and dignity To give control of even part of my body to someone else is to treat me as property, as as thing rather than a person. The right not to have one’s body controlled by others is inalienable, for two reasons: first, because agreements to abandon one’s freedom are likely to be made in coercive circumstances in which consent is illusory, and second, because to enforce such agreements tends to place the state’s imprimatur on relations of caste domination and subjection. All of these concerns are applicable to women with unwanted pregnancies, whose “consent” to their condition is usually equally illusory. Laws against abortion define women as a servant caste and enforce that definition with criminal sanctions. This is the same kind of injury that antebellum slavery inflicted on blacks, and it therefore violates women’s thirteenth amendment rights."

"Even if the thirteenth amendment provides textual support for Roe’s holding, what, if anything, has it to say about the jurisprudence of the abortion cases that followed Roe? To begin with, there is one kind of case in which the thirteenth amendment argument is simply overpowering. A demand by the father that the pregnancy continue, however deeply he might desire to procreate, would be a request that another person’s body be placed at his disposal for his purposes. A law giving the gather of the fetus the right to veto an abortion would represent the easiest thirteenth amendment case of all."

"The women who bear children and the medical experts who assist them testify that pregnancy and childbearing are indeed labor. The fact that many women enter into such labor voluntarily and joyfully does not alter the fact that other women, under other circumstances, find childbearing too arduous, become pregnant through no choice of their own, and are then forced to complete the pregnancy to term by compulsion of state laws prohibiting voluntary abortion. It is the purpose of the Thirteenth Amendment to prohibit a relationship in which one person or entity limits the freedom of another person. In the absence of a compelling state interest or due conviction for a crime, the state’s forcing the pregnant woman through unwanted pregnancy to full term is a denial of her Thirteenth Amendment right to be free from “a condition of enforced compulsory service of one to another.” This is the very essence of involuntary servitude in which the personal service of one person is “disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit.”"

"At the end of the Civil War slavery was for the first time authorized by the US Constitution in the 13th Amendment, which authorized the government to treat convicts as slaves. So the newly “freed” Blacks were simply targeted with criminal prosecutions and then placed right back into bondage to serve as contract laborers, on chain gangs, and on prison plantations."

"The Thirteenth Amendment’s promise of freedom has long provided to male citizens the sovereign control of their own bodies."

"When women are compelled to carry and bear children, they are subjected to “involuntary servitude” in violation of the thirteenth amendment. Abortion prohibitions violate the amendment’s guarantee of personal liberty, because forced pregnancy and childbirth, by compelling the woman to serve the fetus, created “that control by which the personal service of one man [sic] is disposed of or coerced for another’s benefit which is the essence of involuntary servitude.” Such laws violate the amendment’s guarantee of equality, because forcing women to be mothers makes them into a servant caste, a group which, bu virtue of status of birth, is held subject to a special duty to serve others and not themselves. This argument makes available two responses to the objection that the fetus is a person. The first is that,even if this is so, the fetus’ right to continued aid from the woman does not automatically follow. As Thomson observed, “having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person’s body-even if one needs it for life itself.” Quite the reverse, giving fetuses a legal right to the continued use of their mothers’ bodies would be precisely what the thirteenth amendment forbids. The second response is that since abortion prohibitions infringe on the fundamental right to be free of involuntary servitude, the state bears the burden of having to show that the violation of this right is justified. The state cannot carry this burden, because no one knows how to prove (or disprove) that a fetus is, or should be considered, a person. The mere possibility that it “might” be is not enough to justify violating women’s Thirteenth Amendment rights by forcing them to be mothers."

"There is, however, a single Supreme Court decision which announces an exception to the thirteenth amendment broad enough to accommodate forced childbearing. In Robertson v. Baldwin, a divided Court upheld against a thirteenth amendment challenge a statute authorizing the forcible return of deserting seamen to their vessels. The exception to the amendment carved out in Robertson is far broader than that of the alter conscription cases. But, as I will explain, Robertson is no longer good law. Justice Brown, writing for the Court, relied on four arguments. First, he held that “involuntary servitude” does not include any servitude entered into voluntarily, and that “an individual may, for a valuable consideration, contract for the surrender of his personal liberty for a definite time and for a recognized purpose, and subordinate his going and coming to the will of another during the continuance of the contract;not that all such contracts would be lawful, but that a servitude which was knowingly and willingly entered into could not be termed involuntary.” This might be construed to encompass pregnancy, at least in cases in which the woman freely consented to sex and thus, some will say, voluntarily undertook the risk of conception. For all the reason enumerated earlier, this voluntariness is often suspect, but since Brown abjured a blanket inalienability rule, his reasoning might permit the state to demand that women prove this on a case-by-case basis. Second, he held that “the amendment was not intended to introduce any novel doctrine with respect to certain descriptions of service which have always been treated as exceptional; such as military and naval enlistments,” and concluded that “services which have from time immemorial been treated as exceptional shall not be regarded as within its purview.” A woman’s duty to bear children might be characterize as such an exceptional service, although this cannot easily be reconciled with the fourteenth amendment cases noted above. Third, Justice Brown argued that such exceptions should be recognized as “arising from the necessities of the case.” Unlike the conscription cases, however, the necessity that Brown deemed sufficient to justify the imposition was private need, not danger to the polity. The risk that deserting sailors pose to a ship is, of course, considerably less than the danger that abortion poses to a fetus. Fourth, he observed that Congress had made “very careful provisions. . . for the protection of seamen . . . as far as possible, against the consequences of their own ignorance and improvidence,” and concluded that “seamen are treated by Congress . . . as deficient in that full and intelligent responsibility for their acts which is accredited to ordinary adults, as needing the protection of the law . . . .” So much for compulsory service being an honorable badge of citizenship. This rather seems analogous to the common law’s traditional treatment of women as incompetents."

"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."

"Each of the organizations and individuals urges upon the Court the position that laws restricting or regulating abortion as a special procedure violate the Thirteenth Amendment by imposing involuntary servitude without due conviction for a crime and without the justification of serving any current national or public need...."

"From the outset, the Amendment has been interpreted by this Court to apply to all persons without regard to race or class, and to guarantee universal freedom in the United States.... It is the purpose of this brief to show that anti-abortion laws, which force an unwillingly pregnant woman to continue pregnancy to term, are a form of involuntary servitude without the justification of serving any current national or public need."

"There are two explanations for Bailey’s inalienability rule. The first is prophylactic: the rule prevents enforcement of ersatz contracts to which, because made in coercive circumstances, there was never real consent. The second is symbolic: by following the rule, the state refuses to give its sanction to the subjection of one class of citizens to another. Most economic analysts favor the first explanation. They have found inalienability to be problematic on its face, because this kind of paternalistic restraint may actually harm those it purports to help. That was the argument of the dissenting opinion in Bailey, in which Justice Holmes declared that he “cannot believe” that the amendment prohibits a statute which “punishes the mere refusal to labor according to contract as a crime.” The Thirteenth Amendment does not outlaw contracts for labor. That would be at least as great a misfortune for the laborer as for the man that employed him. For it certainly would affect the terms of the bargain if it were understood that the employer could do nothing in case the laborer saw fit to break his word."

"To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world."

"So far as the Negroes were concerned, their demand for a reasonable part of the land on which they had worked for a quarter of a millennium was absolutely justified, and to give them anything less than this was an economic farce."

"The Sherman order gave rise to all sorts of difficulties. The Negroes were given only possessory titles. Then the owners came back and immediately there was trouble. The Negroes protested, “What is the use of giving us freedom if we can’t stay where we were raised and own our own house where we were born and our own piece of ground?” It was on May 25, 1865, that Johnson in his Proclamation of Pardon had provided easy means whereby all property could be restored, except the land at Port Royal, which had been sold for taxes. General Howard came to Charleston to make arrangements, and the story is characteristic—“At first,” said a witness, “the people hesitated, but soon as the meaning struck them that they must give up their little homes and gardens and work for others, there was a general murmuring of dissatisfaction.”"

"I chose the number of the bill, 40, as a symbol of the forty acres and a mule that the United States initially promised freed slaves. This unfulfilled promise and the serious devastation that slavery had on African-American lives has never been officially recognized by the United States Government."

"The Negro voter ... had, then, but one clear economic ideal and that was his demand for land, his demand that the great plantations be subdivided and given to him as his right. This was a perfectly fair and natural demand and ought to have been an integral part of Emancipation. To emancipate four million laborers whose labor had been owned, and separate them from the land upon which they had worked for nearly two and a half centuries, was an operation such as no modern country had for a moment attempted or contemplated. The German and English and French serf, the Italian and Russian serf, were, on emancipation, given definite rights in the land. Only the American Negro slave was emancipated without such rights and in the end this spelled for him the continuation of slavery."

"President Johnson, forgetting his own pre-war declaration that the “great plantations must be seized, and divided into small farms,” declared that this land must be restored to its original owners and this would be done if owners received a presidential pardon. The pardoning power was pushed and the land all over the South rapidly restored. Negroes were dispossessed."

"Treason must be made odious, and the traitors must be punished and impoverished, their great plantations must be seized, and divided into small farms, and sold to honest, industrious men. The day for protecting the lands and negroes of these authors of rebellion is past."

"In October of 1865, the freedpeople of Edisto Island, South Carolina, learned that the land they had farmed during the war and now regarded as their own was about to be restored to its rebel owners. They sent a letter of protest to General O. O. Howard, commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. “Land monopoly is injurious to the advancement of the course of freedom,” wrote a committee of three, “and if Government Does not make some provision by which we as Freedmen can obtain A Homestead, we have Not bettered our condition.” This judgment reflected the sentiment of former slaves..."

"Judge Taney ... may decide, and decide again; but he cannot reverse the decision of the Most High. He cannot change the essential nature of things — making evil good, and good evil. Happily, for the whole human family, their rights have been defined, declared, and decided in a court higher than the Supreme Court."

"Slavery lives in this country not because of any paper Constitution, but in the moral blindness of the American people, who persuade themselves that they are safe, though the rights of others may be struck down."

"At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, to-day, pour forth a stream, a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced..."