The US amendment banning slavery and the leasing of convicts after its adoption

On 6 December 1865 the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, was ratified by the requisite number of states.

Its text reads:

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.

Nevertheless, once the amendment had been adopted, the legal provision on the leasing of convicts came into use: coupled with arrests for vagrancy, it supplied labour to landowners who had been deprived of their slaves. More often than not, people who had only just been freed fell once again into bonded dependence, even if this was no longer slavery for life.