"“In one sense of the word” observes Robert Lee Hales, “no labor is “involuntary"-not even that of a slave. It is performed through the voluntary muscular movements of the laborer, who chooses to perform it in order to avoid something worse. Obviously, the word is not used in the Thirteenth Amendment in this restricted sense.” Nat Turner, who has hanged in Virginia in 1831 after leading a bloody slave rebellion, would probably have agreed with Hegel that “if a man is a slave, his own will is responsible for his slavery, just as it is its will which is responsible if a people is subjugated. Hence the wrong of slavery lies at the door not simply of enslavers or conquerors but of the slaves and the conquered themselves.” But Hegel did not infer that slavery therefore was legitimate. If the ubiquity of consent in this sense is not to vitiate the thirteenth amendment altogether, the amendment must be understood as standing for the proposition that there are certain choices that a person should not find herself having to make: specifically, choices between submitting to servitude or denying a need (for example, the need for food, or to be free form pain) that almost all human beings find irresistible. That is why the courts should not give their imprimatur to choices made under such circumstances."
January 1, 1970