13th Amendment Negative Effects

In 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment, which “abolished” slavery, was ratified. Many believe that the Thirteenth Amendment ended slavery overall, but that is not the case. After ratification, slavery was an act of punishment for convicted criminals. The amendment states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (4). Chattel slavery, a form of slave ownership, was the only form of slavery that was banned in the United States. The Thirteenth Amendment created many negative effects that resulted in a new prison system, new laws, an increase of convicted criminals, and brutal cheap labor. The American prison system originally believed that …show more content…
Whites were also being arrested for crimes, and were treated just as harshly as the African Americans. With the new laws created and the prison system using cheap labor as punishment, the amount of prisoners increased. Julian Hawthorne, a prisoner convicted of mail fraud, stated that “to-day we are creating some five hundred thousand slaves, black and white, each year” (9). Many people, black and white, were arrested for many crimes. Cheap labor was the cause of the increase of prisoners. Whenever the South needed work done, police would go out and convict people of crimes. Police took advantage of the prison system because they gained revenue from the amount of convicts arrested. In the anthology, Prison Writings in 20th-Century America, it states that, “many local deputy sheriffs and police received no regular salary, but were paid a fee for each person arrested” (4). Since the police were getting paid for the amount of criminals they caught, this gave them the excuse to search for more. Cheap labor and money caused the increase of convicted