History of the United States I / Unit 16 USH1 2255 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Punishment Clause
The idea
The Thirteenth Amendment holds that 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. The Senate passed it in April eighteen sixty-four, the House concurred in January eighteen sixty-five, and it was ratified in December eighteen sixty-five, the first amendment added to the Constitution since eighteen oh four. The excepting clause is the most consequential clause in the amendment and the one students read past.
In practice
A constitutional ban on forced labour that names, in the same sentence, the one condition under which forced labour remains lawful.
Where people slip
Set this clause beside the Black codes at entry 2268. Those codes made refusing a labour contract an arrest for vagrancy, punishable by unpaid forced labour. That is not a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment. It is an application of it. The anchor never quotes the excepting clause, and this course does.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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