The Thirteenth Amendment and American Freedom: A Legal History

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NYU Press, 2004 M12 12 - 229 páginas

In this narrative history and contextual analysis of the Thirteenth Amendment, slavery and freedom take center stage. Alexander Tsesis demonstrates how entrenched slavery was in pre-Civil War America, how central it was to the political events that resulted in the Civil War, and how it was the driving force that led to the adoption of an amendment that ultimately provided a substantive assurance of freedom for all American citizens.
The story of how Supreme Court justices have interpreted the Thirteenth Amendment, first through racist lenses after Reconstruction and later influenced by the modern civil rights movement, provides insight into the tremendous impact the Thirteenth Amendment has had on the Constitution and American culture. Importantly, Tsesis also explains why the Thirteenth Amendment is essential to contemporary America, offering fresh analysis on the role the Amendment has played regarding civil rights legislation and personal liberty case decisions, and an original explanation of the substantive guarantees of freedom for today's society that the Reconstruction Congress envisioned over a century ago.

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Contenido

Slavery and Its Social Penetration
11
On the Road to Ratification
34
End of Radical Ideals and Judicial Response
59
Summing Up and Looking Ahead
94
Theoretical Foundation
101
Thirteenth Amendment and Constitutional Rights
112
Contemporary Settings
137
Conclusion
161
Select Bibliography
201
Index
221
About the Author
229
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Página 78 - We consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to consist in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it.
Página 81 - The liberty mentioned in that amendment means not only the right of the citizen to be free from the mere physical restraint of his person, as by incarceration, but the term is deemed to embrace the right of the citizen to be free in the enjoyment of all his faculties ; to be free to use them in all lawful ways ; to live and work where he will ; to earn his livelihood by any lawful calling ; to pursue any livelihood or avocation, and for that purpose to enter into all contracts which may be proper,...
Página 115 - It does not authorize Congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights; but to provide modes of redress against the operation of State laws, and the action of State officers executive or judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified in the Amendment.
Página 3 - No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize, or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
Página 15 - And an act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular Territory of the United States, and who had committed no offence against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law.
Página 14 - That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished Slavery in all our national territory, ordained that ' no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
Página 84 - All citizens of the United States shall have the same right, in every State and Territory, as is enjoyed by white citizens thereof to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property.
Página 80 - If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States...
Página 31 - We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.

Acerca del autor (2004)

Alexander Tsesis is Assistant Professor at at the Loyola University School of Law, Chicago.

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