Servitude

• Author: Jeffrey Lehman, Shirelle Phelps

Page 121

The state of a person who is subjected, voluntarily or involuntarily, to another person as a servant. A charge or burden resting upon one estate for the benefit or advantage of another.

INVOLUNTARY SERVITUDE, which may be in the form of SLAVERY, peonage, or compulsory labor for debts, is prohibited by the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT to the U.S. Constitution. Article I, Section 9, of the original Constitution had given Congress the power to restrict the slave trade by the year 1808, which it did, but slavery itself was not prohibited until the Thirteenth Amendment was enacted in 1865. The slave trade had begun in the American colonies in the seventeenth century and involved the forcible taking and transport of Africans...