Again, carefully guarding the rights and liberties of the people we find:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly [pg 133] convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”[76]
This is not a part of the original Constitution. It was adopted after the war had driven slavery from our shores. The spirit of America has from the beginning been exerted in enlarging the rights of human beings. Slavery existed before the adoption of the Constitution, and so strongly was it intrenched at that time in some of the colonies that it was impossible then to wipe it out.
But it did not belong in America, and the time came when the American people, after a long bitter war, crushed the slave power, and swept from our shores the last vestige of involuntary servitude. That it might not be renewed, the people amended the Constitution so as forever to bar slavery or involuntary servitude except as men might be put in prison in punishment for crime after a full, fair trial.
Did you ever read of the debtor's prison? It used to be in nearly every country in the world, that men who were merely unfortunate, who got in debt and who could not pay when the debt was due were sent to prison, and kept there sometimes for long periods. It was most cruel, because in many instances the persons were honest. They wanted to pay their debts, but sickness came, or floods, or fire, or other misfortune, and when the time came they were unable to pay and thus they lost their liberty.
In those olden days, men were not only imprisoned, but in some countries they were compelled to labor for the person whom they owed. They were compelled to be slaves.
But at last we have reached a stage in America, where no one may be compelled to work for another, unless by his own free will, except under conviction of a crime where the State may compel prisoners to work for some one in order to help pay the expense of maintaining them.
The old debtor's prison is gone. No one in this country [pg 134] can now be imprisoned for an ordinary debt. There are a few States in which a person may be imprisoned for debts arising in fraud, but for an ordinary contract debt, mere inability to pay, no one in America can now be compelled to submit to imprisonment.
I wish sometime you would think seriously about what America has done for the poor. In the olden days they had few if any rights; but to-day in America, while by law we cannot prevent sickness nor sorrow, or other misfortune, we can and we do guard the liberty of the poorest and the most unfortunate. In fact many laws have been enacted which give to the poor special privileges which are denied to those who have property or money.
For instance in nearly every State there are what are called exemptions for a person who is the head of a family, which protect him even in the possession of a limited amount of property which his creditors cannot take away from him in payment of a debt. In most of the States laborers may hold the earnings of a certain period, for instance ninety days, for support of themselves and their families, which no one can touch, which no officers and no court can seize in payment of a debt. Also they are protected in their household goods, their clothing for themselves and their families, and in many other ways.