Note the learned justice's use of the words, "If" and "shall develop". Clearly, while Justice Miller saw danger there, he did not equate the two situations cited to actual slavery. I understand that there was a serious problem, particularly with the Chinese coolies, who often discovered (belatedly) that either the terms were such that they could not possibly pay the debt they had incurred, or perhaps that their women were being forced into prostitution in order to pay the debt. In my book (and that of most other libertarians), such an arrangement, even though "voluntarily" entered into, constitutes fraud on the part of the other parties. A fraudulent contract is an invalid contract.
So I say again, the two terms, indentured and involuntary, are not synonymous.
So I say again, sophistry is the foundation of Libertarian doctrine.
The 13th Amendment 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.'
The meaning of this is as clear as language can make it. The things denounced are slavery and involuntary servitude, and Congress is given power to enforce that denunciation. All understand by these terms a condition of enforced compulsory service of one to another. While the inciting cause of the Amendment was the emancipation of the colored race, yet it is not an attempt to commit that race to the care of the nation. It is the denunciation of a condition, and not a decla- [203 U.S. 1, 17] ration in favor of a particular people. It reaches every race and every individual, and if in any respect it commits one race to the nation, it commits every race and every individual thereof. Slavery or involuntary servitude of the Chinese, of the Italian, of the Anglo-Saxon, are as much within its compass as slavery or involuntary servitude of the African. Of this Amendment it was said by Mr. Justice Miller in Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 69, 21 L. ed. 406: 'Its two short sections seem hardly to admit of construction.' And again: 'To withdraw the mind from the contemplation of this grand yet simple declaration of the personal freedom of all the human race within the jurisdiction of this government . . . requires an effort, to say the least of it.'
A reference to the definitions in the dictionaries of words whose meaning is so thoroughly understood by all seems an affectation, yet in Webster slavery is defined as 'the state of entire subjection of one person to the will of another,' and a slave is said to be 'a person who is held in bondage to another.' Even the secondary meaning given recognizes the fact of subjection, as 'one who has lost the power of resistance; one who surrenders himself to any power whatever; as a slave to passion, to lust, to strong drink, to ambition,' and servitude is by the same authority declared to be 'the state of voluntary or compulsory subjection to a master.'
U.S. Supreme Court, HODGES v. U. S., 203 U.S. 1 (1906)