A Recent Georgia Peonage Case
527
Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madi
it was authorized by law, but peonage in
son, Alexander Hamilton
a certain sense is not only slavery with
and Patrick
Henry, among the most illustrious of the patriots and sages of the Revolution, all deprecated the principle of the system, and Mr. Jefferson, who has been
rightfully termed ‘The Father of Democ racy,’ declared that in the presence of the institution he trembled for his
country when he remembered that God was just. This great man was indeed the author of that clause of the ordinance of
the government of the great Northwest
out authority of law, but in absolute violation of law. "The usual expedient, as I have been
informed, is for the person who desires the services of the laborer, who has either broken his contract or been guilty of other misbehavior, to swear out a
warrant and take the prisoner before a justice of the peace, have him bound over to the next term of the court, go on his bond or secure him bail, and then in
territory, which had been ceded by Virginia to the United States, which included the territory of the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and much else,
a compulsory way take the man to his
which forever prohibited the introduc
person desiring the labor of the convict;
tion of slavery into that portion of our
the convict is then taken and compelled
country.
In the very acme of our own
great Civil War- ‘The Brothers' War,’
farm or plantation and compel him to
labor. Sometimes after a prisoner has been convicted, the fines are paid by a
to work out the fine.
Other pretexts
are used, as the indictments and convic
as it has been called by a gifted Southern
tions in the records of the court will
writer—— after
show, to unlawfully obtain possession of persons accused of crime, and under the abuse or misuse of the process of the
Southern
that
loftiest
type
manhood,
Robert
E.
of Lee,
had overthrown the massive armies of the union on the blood-stained snow of
Fredericksburg,
the
incomparable
Southern chieftain set free and sent across the river and into the Northern lines the slaves which had been be queathed to his family by the will of George Washington Park Custis, the adopted son of Washington, and the father-in-law of Lee. By one stroke of the pen, the Czar of Russia struck the shackles of serfdom from millions of his subjects.
But never, even when slavery
courts in one way or another to hold them in involuntary servitude, and com
pel them to work out a debt thus con tracted. This is all utterly violative of law; everybody concerned in it is guilty except the peon himself. “There is no power in a private per
son, under guise of settling a criminal case, to imprison or otherwise deprive any person of his liberty for the pay ment of a debt, whether that debt is for
a fine imposed by a court, or for ad vances in the usual course of farming operations, or for any other debt of any other character. Imprisonment for debt
was rife everywhere, would the consti tutional law of any government justify a private individual or individuals in seizing upon the person of any one to whom they had no title as a slave and under threats or actual force hold and
Such imprisonment, and deprivation of liberty, would be false imprisonment
work the victim to advance the avarice,
under the Georgia law, and, if the facts
or the gain, or the necessities of the wrongdoer. The Southern people, when it existed, might justify slavery because
conform to the definition of the offense of peonage, and satisfy the jury that the charge of peonage is true, it is peonage
is abolished in the state of Georgia.
