United States v. McClellan

• Citation: 127 F. 971
• Parties: UNITED STATES v. McCLELLAN et al.
• Decision Date: 15 March 1904
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Georgia

127 F. 971

UNITED STATES v. McCLELLAN et al.

United States District Court, S.D. Georgia, Eastern Division.

March 15, 1904

Alexander Akerman, Asst. U.S. Atty.

W. M Toomer, Leon A. Wilson, and John C. McDonald, for defendants.

SPEER District Judge.

The indictment in this case charges the prisoners, one of whom was the sheriff of Ware county, and another an attorney at law practicing in the courts, with forcibly seizing certain citizens, known under the law of Georgia as 'persons of color,' and selling them to other persons, to be held by force, and compelled by force to labor in a state involuntary servitude, which is termed 'peonage.' A demurrer to the indictment was interposed. There are a number of such cases, and it is agreed in judicio by the assistant district attorney, who represents the government, and by the counsel for the prisoners, that the arguments made in this case shall suffice for all.

The indictment is as follows:

'The grand jurors of the United States, selected, chosen, and sworn in and for the Eastern Division of the Southern District of Georgia, upon their oaths present: That heretofore, to wit, on the eleventh day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and two, one Thomas J. McClellan, late of said division and district within said division and district, and within the jurisdiction of this court, did then and there knowingly and unlawfully cause one John Wesley Boney to be held to a condition of peonage; for that the said Thomas J. McClellan in the county of Ware, in the state of Georgia, did forcibly seize the body of the said John Wesley Boney, without his consent and without authority of law, and did then and there sell the body of the said John Wesley Boney, without his consent and without authority of law, to Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee, and did then and there forcibly and against the will of him, the said John Wesley Boney, and without authority of law, deliver him, the said John Wesley Boney, into the custody of the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee, then and there causing him, the said John Wesley Boney, to be held by the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee to a condition of peonage; for that the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee then and there so having obtained the custody of the body of the said John Wesley Boney, did then and there, by force and against the will of him, the said John Wesley Boney, and without authority of law, transport the body of the said John Wesley Boney to the county of Lowndes, in said state, and did then and there hold the said John Wesley Boney, against his will, to labor for them, to work out a debt which they, the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee, claimed to be due them by the said John Wesley Boney, and to labor under the terms of an alleged contract between them, the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee, and said John Wesley Boney; he, the said Thomas J. McClellan, then and there well knowing that the said John Wesley Boney would be so held as aforesaid by the said Edward J. McRee, William McRee, and Frank I. McRee; whereby, in the manner aforesaid, the said Thomas J. McClellan did cause the said John Wesley Boney to be held to a condition of peonage; contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided, and against the peace and dignity of the said United States.'

The law upon this subject is found in the act of Congress approved March 2, 1867, c. 187, Sec. 1, 14 Stat. 546, entitled 'An act to abolish and forever prohibit the system of peonage in the territory of New Mexico and other parts of the United States. ' This act, by the codifiers of the Revised Statutes, has been distributed in several sections-- 1990, 1991, 5526, and 5527 (U.S.Comp.St. 1901, pp. 1266, 1267, 3715, 3716). It is, however, serviceable to the correct understanding of the law that the act should be considered in the precise form in which it was enacted. The material section is the first. It provides:

'That the holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage, is hereby declared to be unlawful, and the same is hereby 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 of the United States, 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, be, and the same are hereby declared null and void; and any person or persons who shall hold, arrest, or return, or cause to be held, arrested, or returned, or in any manner aid in the arrest or return of any person or persons to a condition of peonage, shall, upon conviction, be punished by fine not less than one thousand nor more than five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not less than one nor more than five years, or both, at the discretion of the court.'

This act is denounced by the demurrers, first, for the alleged reason that it was beyond the constitutional power of Congress; and, secondly, because it does not apply to the illegal sale, holding in imprisonment, and labor of the citizen.

It is, perhaps, not inappropriate that the court should express its appreciation of the erudite arguments based upon careful research made by the learned counsel for the prisoners and for the government. Nor is it unmindful of the voluntary aid afforded by statesmen and others trained in the same school of constitutional construction with the prisoners' counsel. That a chairman of a penitentiary committee of the Georgia Senate appeared for the prisoners; that a member of the House judiciary committee in Congress, from the district of the prisoners, contributed a brief in their behalf; that a solicitor general of the state court in their state judicial district, charged with the prosecution of such offenses under the state law, sat with the prisoners and their counsel during the hearing-- taken altogether, is somewhat persuasive of the conclusion that if there is no system of peonage de jure, to which the statute applies, there is yet a de facto system of some equivalent sort, which has evoked the liveliest apprehensions of those who participate in its operation and emoluments, and of others whose sentiments toward it are not wholly antipathetic.

Notwithstanding the comprehensiveness of the arguments, the inquiry presented by the demurrers may be somewhat succinctly presented: Did Congress have the power to enact this legislation; does the legislation itself apply to the illegal arrest and sale of a citizen into involuntary servitude, as set out in the indictment; and is the indictment technically sufficient?

It does not seem difficult to find authority in the Constitution for this legislation. The thirteenth amendment provides:

'Section 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 went into effect on the 18th day of December, 1865. This long antedated the reconstruction period. The white people of the Southern states reorganized their state government with unreserved acquiescence in the abolition of slavery. Here, then, is the constitutional power of Congress to enact this legislation. The power is as unquestionable as that to regulate interstate and foreign commerce, to establish post offices and post roads, or to provide a uniform system of bankruptcy. Then Congress, by appropriate legislation, can prevent involuntary servitude. It is wholly fallacious to contend that this legislation must be directed at state action. There is no such limitation in the thirteenth amendment. That this is true of the fourteenth amendment, as argued at length, may be conceded, without impairing the grant of power in the thirteenth amendment which Congress exercised. No recourse, then, need be had to the fourteenth amendment, and why embark into a discussion of the powers of Congress therein granted? Indeed, the statute making peonage and involuntary servitude penal was approved more than eight months before the fourteenth amendment was proclaimed to be a part of the Constitution.

The case of United States v. Harris, 106 U.S. 629, 1 Sup.Ct. 601, 27 L.Ed. 290, on which the prisoners' counsel rely, related to another and wholly different section of the Revised Statutes. This was an attempt to secure citizens against conspiracies to deprive them of the protection afforded by State laws. It impinged upon state authority, and the court declared it unconstitutional; but even there, Mr. Justice Wood, for the court, observes:

'It is clear that this amendment (the thirteenth), besides abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude within the United States, gives power to Congress to protect all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States from being in any way subjected to slavery or involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, and in the enjoyment of that freedom which it was the object of the amendment to secure.'

Again in the Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3, 3 Sup.Ct. 18, 27 L.Ed. 835, where the Supreme Court of the United States, in pursuance of the uniform policy of the national judiciary to conserve the just rights of the states,...