Samuel Clyatt v. United States

• Decision Date: 13 March 1905
• Docket Number: No. 235,235
• Citation: 49 L.Ed. 726,25 S.Ct. 429,197 U.S. 207
• Parties: SAMUEL M. CLYATT v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

197 U.S. 207

25 S.Ct. 429

49 L.Ed. 726

SAMUEL M. CLYATT

v UNITED STATES.

No. 235.

Argued December 13, 14, 1904.

Decided March 13, 1905.

Sections 1990 and 5526, Rev. Stat. (U. S. Comp. Stat. 1901, pp. 1266, 3715), read:

'Sec. 1990. The holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage is abolished and forever prohibited in the territory of New Mexico, or in any other territory or state of the United States; and all acts, laws, resolutions, orders, regulations, or usages of the territory of New Mexico, or of any other territory or state, which have heretofore established, maintained, or enforced, or by virtue of which any attempt shall hereafter be made to establish, maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, are declared null and void.'

'Sec. 5526. Every person who holds, arrests, returns, or causes to be held, arrested, or returned, or in any manner aids in the arrest or return of any person to a condition of peonage, shall be punished by a fine of not less than one thousand nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not less than one year nor more than five years, or by both.'

On November 21, 1901, the grand jury returned into the circuit court of the United States for the northern district of Florida an indictment in two counts, the first of which is as follows:

'The grand jurors of the United States of America impaneled and sworn within and for the district aforesaid, on their oaths present, that one Samuel M. Clyatt, heretofore, to wit: on the eleventh day of February, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and one, in the county of Levy, state of Florida, within the district aforesaid, and within the jurisdiction of this court, did then and there unlawfully and knowingly return one Will Gordon and one Mose Ridley to a condition of peonage, by forcibly and against the will of them, the said Will Gordon and the said Mose Ridley, returning them, the said Will Gordon and Mose Ridley, to work to and for Samuel M. Clyatt, D. T. Clyatt, and H. H. Tift, copartners doing business under the firm name and style of Clyatt & Tift, to be held by them, the said Clyatt & Tift, to work out a debt claimed to be due to them, the said Clyatt & Tift, by the said Will Gordon and Mose Ridley; contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the United States.'

The second count differs only in charging that defendant caused and aided in returning Gordon and Ridley. A trial resulted in a verdict of guilty, and thereupon the defendant was sentenced to confinement at hard labor for four years. The case was taken on appropriate writ to the court of appeals for the fifth circuit, which certified to this court three questions. Subsequently the entire record was brought here on a writ of certiorari, and the case was heard on its merits.

Messrs. William G. Brantley, A. O. Bacon, and W. M. Hammond for Clyatt.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 209-213 intentionally omitted] Attorney General Moody and assistant Attorney General Purdy for the United States.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 213-215 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Brewer delivered the opinion of the court:

The constitutionality and scope of §§ 1990 and 5526 present the first questions for our consideration. They prohibit peonage. What is peonage? It may be defined as a status or condition of compulsory service, based upon the indebtedness of the peon to the master. The basal fact is indebtedness. As said by Judge Benedict, delivering the opinion in Jaremillo v. Romero, 1 N. M. 190, 194: 'One fact existed universally: all were indebted to their masters. This was the cord by which they seemed bound to their master's service.' Upon this is based a condition of compulsory service. Peonage is sometimes classified as voluntary or involuntary; but this implies simply a difference in the mode of origin, but none in the character of the servitude. The one exists where the debtor voluntarily contracts to enter the service of his creditor. The other is forced upon the debtor by some provision of law. But peonage, however created, is compulsory service,—involuntary servitude. The peon can release himself therefrom, it is true, by the payment of the debt, but otherwise the service is enforced. A clear distinction exists between peonage and the voluntary performance of labor or rendering of services in payment of a debt. In the latter case the debtor, though contracting to pay his indebtedness by labor or service, and subject, like any other contractor, to an action for damages for breach of that contract, can elect at any time to break it, and no law or force compels performance or a continuance of the service. We need not stop to consider any possible limits or exceptional cases, such as the service of a sailor (Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U. S. 275, 41 L. ed. 715, 17 Sup. Ct. Rep. 326), or the obligations of a child to its parents, or of an apprentice to his master, or the power of the legislature to make unlawful, and punish criminally, an abandonment by an employee of his post of labor in any extreme cases. That which is contemplated by the statute is compulsory service to secure the payment of a debt. Is this legislation within the power of Congress? It may be conceded, as a general proposition, that the ordinary relations of individual to individual are subject to the control of the states, and are not intrusted to the general government; but the 13th Amendment, adopted as an outcome of the Civil War, reads:

'Sec. 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.

'Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.'

This amendment denounces a status or condition, irrespective of the manner or authority by which it is created. The prohibitions of the 14th and 15th Amendments are largely upon the acts of the states; but the 13th Amendment names no party or authority, but simply forbids slavery and involuntary servitude, grants to Congress power to enforce this prohibition by appropriate legislation. The differences between the 13th and subsequent amendments have been so fully considered by this court that it is enough to refer to the decisions. In the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U. S. 3, 20, 23, 27 L. ed. 835, 842, 843, 3 Sup. Ct. Rep. 18, 28, 30, Mr. Justice Bradley, delivering the opinion of the court, uses this language:

'This amendment, as well as the 14th, is undoubtedly self-executing without any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms are applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own unaided force and effect it abolished slavery, and established universal freedom. Still, legislation may be necessary and proper to meet all the various cases and circumstances to be affected by it, and to prescribe proper modes of redress for its violation in letter or spirit. And such legislation may be primary and direct in its character; for the amendment is not a mere prohibition of state laws establishing or upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States. . . .

'We must not forget that the province and scope of the 13th and 14th Amendments are different; the former simply abolished slavery: the latter prohibited the states from abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; from depriving them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and from denying to any the equal protection of the laws. The amendments are different, and the powers of Congress under them are different. What Congress has power to do under one, it may not have power to do under the other. Under the 13th Amendment, it has only to do with slavery and its incidents. Under the 14th Amendment, it has power to counteract and render nugatory all state laws and proceedings which have the effect to abridge any of the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, or to deprive them of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or to deny to any of them the equal protection of the laws. Under the 13th Amendment, the legislation, so far as necessary or proper to eradicate all forms and incidents of slavery and involuntary servitude, may be direct and primary, operating upon the acts of individuals, whether sanctioned by state legislation or not; under the 14th, as we have already shown, it must necessarily be, and can only be, corrective in its character, addressed to counteract and afford relief against state regulations or proceedings.'

In Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 542, 41 L. ed. 256, 257, 16 Sup. Ct. Rep. 1138, 1140, Mr. Justice Brown, delivering the opinion of the court, said;

'That it does not conflict with the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime, is too clear for argument. Slavery implies involuntary servitude,—a state of bondage; the ownership of mankind as a chattel, or at least the control of the labor and services of one man for the benefit of another, and the absence of a legal right to the disposal of his own person, property, and services. This amendment was said in the Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 21 L. ed. 394, to have been intended primarily to abolish slavery, as it had been previously known in this country, and that it equally forbade Mexican peonage or the Chinese coolie trade, when they amounted to...