WI: A provision is made for American slaves to earn their freedom?

Say a constitutional amendment (preferably before the 1820s) is passed, which allows for Africans to escape bondage by serving in the military, or as couriers, etc?

What are the effects?
 
I’m pretty sure you don’t need a constitutional amendment for that. You’d need one to prevent all future slavery entirely, but for the freedom from slavery all you need is agreement.

As for the scenario, I can’t see it being implemented on a federal level in the first place, if only from lack of support. A single slaveowning state, however, is entirely possible. Other states could simply copy the document for their own laws.

As Virginia, for example, was close to outright emancipation in the 1820s (but didn’t pass it), it would be interesting to consider whether legislation providing for slaves working for their freedom would have passed...
 
Trouble is, by 1820 the South put up a stubborn fight just over allowing slavery in Missouri. Doesn't sound like an attempt to phase it outin the existing slave states would get much traction.
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
In the Middle Ages in the Holy Roman Empire, there used to be a law that an escaped serf who reaches a free city (i.e. one which is a direct part of the realm, not subject to a feudal lord) and manages to stay there for a year and a day becomes free.

Maybe something similar is instituted in the US, i.e. any slave who escapes, enters a non-slaveholder state and fulfills some requirement (say, as the OP suggested, enlisting in the army) immediately earns their freedom?
 
How many barriers will be thrown up in the path of the slave that is trying to get free? Will the (southern) army recruiter put up a physical test that is too difficult to pass? Will the messenger service claim the messages are not being delivered correctly and fire the slave?

Even simply interfering with the hours such a location is open will allow all sorts of problems to keep slaves where the plantation owners think they should be.
 
Hmmm.... Some war where the US is desperate for manpower, and promises slaves freedom if they enlist?

Of course, the problem the US had with wars up until WWI was money, not men. The government ran out of money and means to fight the war long before they ran out of bodies. So... It would pretty much have to be during the Revolutionary War, I'd think. That was the only war fought at home, really.
 
I believe in the 1600's that the black slaves were treated as indentured servants in the same way as those from Ireland and England. Problem was that cotton and especially sugar were labor intensive so by the 1700's they decided to make new black slaves permanent sort of like medieval serfs.
 
Think about the other facially neutral rights that accrued to property owners in societies where slaves were owned. And think about the many, many, many societies in the world where slavery exists in fact even though it is not explicitly a legally protected category of property.

If you were to make it possible as an abstract matter for slaves to buy their freedom, then first you have to address the really huge problem that a slave has no legal right to his or her own labor. The master owns that. And the master owns everything the slave would putatively own. So, unless the slave is secretly stealing his or her own time from his master and hiding the proceeds from that where the master cannot find it, and enduring all the risk to person that entails, he or she has nothing with which to buy his or her freedom.

The exception to that would be a situation where the master permits the slave to work for money from other people. But, and this is the gravity of the injustice we're dealing with here, there is structurally no difference between that and the slaveowner just freeing the slave outright, albeit on an installment plan.

Now, setting all that aside, let's imagine a situation where hypothetically some system was required whereby slaves could own their own property, to some degree their own labor, and thus buy their own freedom. To do this the states involved would have to set maximum hours beyond which the slaves could not be made to work by their masters for free. The states would have to establish a minimum wage slaves would get paid. The states would have to prohibit masters from charging the slaves for the necessities of life as a way of draining these resources. And the states would have to prevent any number of other schemes (for example, requiring a deposit from the slave so as not to sell his or her family members) that would also drain these funds from the slaves. Seriously, think about all the different means of duress and coercion available to someone who holds another person as a slave. How could you prevent all of them from being exercised and still have a situation that you would call slavery?

Now, we know from the historical development of labor law in the United States that the right of government to regulate wages and hours terms in contracts between private persons was only truly established subsequent to the end of slavery. Which makes sense in the employment context, because on what grounds are you going to start regulating consensual labor arrangements when nonconsensual ones persist?

What any such "buy-out" system amounts to, because it is dependent on the good will of the slaveowner in so many ways, is as a system of voluntary manumission. And, as we all know from the stories of such slaveowners as George Washington, that was already a possibility in the system that existed.

Of course, there is one additional way this system would run into trouble in a legal system in which property rights are sacrosanct (which seems in the western context to be a pre-requisite for slaveowning societies to exist in the first place). Property rights include the right to decide whether or not to sell the property, excluding only limited exceptions like purveyance or eminent domain. Slaveowners would object to any system that would require them to sell under given circumstances because it redefines what property means. And within the legal context of a conservative slaveowning society, the weight of tradition is on the side of that position. Because once you can require someone to sell one kind of property, what's the limit to requiring them to sell their land or their moveable goods?

In so many ways, it really is simpler and more expedient to just establish the rule that humans are not, never where, and can't be, property.
 
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Think about the other facially neutral rights that accrued to property owners in societies where slaves were owned. And think about the many, many, many societies in the world where slavery exists in fact even though it is not explicitly a legally protected category of property.

If you were to make it possible as an abstract matter for slaves to buy their freedom, then first you have to address the really huge problem that a slave has no legal right to his or her own labor. The master owns that. And the master owns everything the slave would putatively own. So, unless the slave is secretly stealing his or her own time from his master and hiding the proceeds from that where the master cannot find it, and enduring all the risk to person that entails, he or she has nothing with which to buy his or her freedom.

The exception to that would be a situation where the master permits the slave to work for money from other people. But, and this is the gravity of the injustice we're dealing with here, there is structurally no difference between that and the slaveowner just freeing the slave outright, albeit on an installment plan.

Now, setting all that aside, let's imagine a situation where hypothetically some system was required whereby slaves could own their own property, to some degree their own labor, and thus buy their own freedom. To do this the states involved would have to set maximum hours beyond which the slaves could not be made to work by their masters for free. The states would have to establish a minimum wage slaves would get paid. The states would have to prohibit masters from charging the slaves for the necessities of life as a way of draining these resources. And the states would have to prevent any number of other schemes (for example, requiring a deposit from the slave so as not to sell his or her family members) that would also drain these funds from the slaves. Seriously, think about all the different means of duress and coercion available to someone who holds another person as a slave. How could you prevent all of them from being exercised and still have a situation that you would call slavery?

Now, we know from the historical development of labor law in the United States that the right of government to regulate wages and hours terms in contracts between private persons was only truly established subsequent to the end of slavery. Which makes sense in the employment context, because on what grounds are you going to start regulating consensual labor arrangements when nonconsensual ones persist?

What any such "buy-out" system amounts to, because it is dependent on the good will of the slaveowner in so many ways, is as a system of voluntary manumission. And, as we all know from the stories of such slaveowners as George Washington, that was already a possibility in the system that existed.

Of course, there is one additional way this system would run into trouble in a legal system in which property rights are sacrosanct (which seems in the western context to be a pre-requisite for slaveowning societies to exist in the first place). Property rights include the right to decide whether or not to sell the property, excluding only limited exceptions like purveyance or eminent domain. Slaveowners would object to any system that would require them to sell under given circumstances because it redefines what property means. And within the legal context of a conservative slaveowning society, the weight of tradition is on the side of that position. Because once you can require someone to sell one kind of property, what's the limit to requiring them to sell their land or their moveable goods?

In so many ways, it really is simpler and more expedient to just establish the rule that humans are not, never where, and can't be, property.

Historically in the US, slaves sometimes could save their own wages and buy their way out of slavery, but this timeline would involve the government doing it. In real-life cases where a slave could buy his or her freedom, it seems the master would demand so many hours of work a day from a slave, and then allow the slave to work for their own wages during their free time. I'm not sure how prevalent this was, and I think it was more common for skilled laborers in border states. Maybe it was a way to discourage running away.
 
Historically in the US, slaves sometimes could save their own wages and buy their way out of slavery, but this timeline would involve the government doing it. In real-life cases where a slave could buy his or her freedom, it seems the master would demand so many hours of work a day from a slave, and then allow the slave to work for their own wages during their free time. I'm not sure how prevalent this was, and I think it was more common for skilled laborers in border states. Maybe it was a way to discourage running away.

The crucial issue is that all this exists at the whim of the master. Sure, you could have a master permit a slave to work for someone else, earn a small wage, or even grow and sell a small crop on his or her own. But the slave has no defensible legal right to any of it. It's a gift, whether or not it's a strategy to dissuade slaves from fleeing. If you are saying "hey, what happens if they let slaves who are permitted by their masters to do these things buy their freedom if they are also by their masters permitted to do so", then you're describing the situation as it existed. If you're saying, "what happens if a system outside the permission of the master is established to allow slaves to thus buy their freedom regardless of the master's consent?", then all the issues I delineate apply.
 
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