About This Book
The essay traces the continuity from transatlantic enslavement to post-emancipation systems that reimpose coerced labor under legal pretenses, arguing that formal abolition was followed by statutes and court practices that differentiated rights by race. It outlines constitutional and statutory tensions, invokes the Supreme Court’s definition tying compulsory service to indebtedness, and groups contemporary mechanisms of coercion into five categories: criminalized employment contracts, restrictions on recruiting laborers, penalties tied to surety breaches, vagrancy laws, and immigrant-agent regulations. Using Southern statutes as examples, it shows how such laws penalize leaving work and thereby function to compel labor despite formal guarantees of freedom.
About the Author
You May Also Like
The Mystic Mid-Region: The Deserts of the Southwest
by Arthur J. Burdick
The Story of Slavery
by Booker T. Washington
The Evolution of States
by J. M. Robertson
The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections / Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes
by Robert Arnold
William Clayton's Journal / A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of "Mormon" Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake
by William Clayton
Forgotten Books of the American Nursery / A History of the Development of the American Story-Book
by Rosalie Vrylina Halsey