* The 13th Amendment doesn't "codify slavery for a certain class of people".*
Bullshit. It certainly did. That later laws, and the 8th amendment, were used (rightfully) to remove the threat of slavery, does not negate that at the time the 13th amendment was ratified it did allow for actual slavery as a punishment.
Specifically:
On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. [0]
During the second session to the Thirty-ninth Congress (December 12, 1866 - January 8, 1867), debates centered on the meaning of the exemption in the antislavery amendment, since punishment for crime found fit locale no only within the walls of prisons and jails but also on the auction block. In the very sentence abolishing slavery, provision had been made for its revival under another form and through the action of the courts of the United States. Those declared free by this clause of the Constitution found themselves returned to slavery. Senator Charles Sumner presented to Congress a notice posted by William Bryan, the sheriff of Anne Arundel County in Maryland: "Public Sale. -- The undersigned will sell at the court-house door, in the city Annapolis, at twelve o'clock m., on Saturday, 8th December, 1866, a negro man named Richard Harris, for six months, convicted at the October term, 1866, of the Ann Arundel county circuit court for larcenty, and sentenced by the court to be sold as a slave. Terms of sale, cash". During this same session of Congress, other cases were presented to demonstrate that these sales were nothing less than lingering relics of the Black Code. [1]
Please note that fully a year after the 18th amendment was passed, that slavery was still in use as a punishment for a convicted crime, and even after the amendment was passed, there was concern that the antislavery amendment wasn't actually doing it's job completely.
I will again note that I never made any comparisons to the any soviet system, and that all I did was note a historical oddity. As for it being "telling" that I assigned them the same label. I did not. The original poster did, I did not. We're not the same people, and whatever you see in me bringing this up, unless it's about a history lesson, then you're wrong. period.
The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful.. I agree with you 100%, and I never made such comparison.
Bullshit. It certainly did. That later laws, and the 8th amendment, were used (rightfully) to remove the threat of slavery, does not negate that at the time the 13th amendment was ratified it did allow for actual slavery as a punishment.
Specifically:
On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. [0]
During the second session to the Thirty-ninth Congress (December 12, 1866 - January 8, 1867), debates centered on the meaning of the exemption in the antislavery amendment, since punishment for crime found fit locale no only within the walls of prisons and jails but also on the auction block. In the very sentence abolishing slavery, provision had been made for its revival under another form and through the action of the courts of the United States. Those declared free by this clause of the Constitution found themselves returned to slavery. Senator Charles Sumner presented to Congress a notice posted by William Bryan, the sheriff of Anne Arundel County in Maryland: "Public Sale. -- The undersigned will sell at the court-house door, in the city Annapolis, at twelve o'clock m., on Saturday, 8th December, 1866, a negro man named Richard Harris, for six months, convicted at the October term, 1866, of the Ann Arundel county circuit court for larcenty, and sentenced by the court to be sold as a slave. Terms of sale, cash". During this same session of Congress, other cases were presented to demonstrate that these sales were nothing less than lingering relics of the Black Code. [1]
Please note that fully a year after the 18th amendment was passed, that slavery was still in use as a punishment for a convicted crime, and even after the amendment was passed, there was concern that the antislavery amendment wasn't actually doing it's job completely.
I will again note that I never made any comparisons to the any soviet system, and that all I did was note a historical oddity. As for it being "telling" that I assigned them the same label. I did not. The original poster did, I did not. We're not the same people, and whatever you see in me bringing this up, unless it's about a history lesson, then you're wrong. period.
The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful.. I agree with you 100%, and I never made such comparison.
[0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni...
[1] - Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, ISBN 978-0820321660, pg 195