>When the 13th Amendment was proposed, one of the big compromises the South fought for was the "except as punishment for crime" clause. The south didn't really

>When the 13th Amendment was proposed, one of the big compromises the South fought for was the "except as punishment for crime" clause. The south didn't really get a say in the text of the 13th since they weren't around. That clause was included so as not to screw with the established prison labor systems of the states that were in the union. The 13th was in the over at a time when union support for the war was low and it wasn't a boat anyone felt like rocking. It wasn't a contentions clause and was basically seen as a common sense exception at the time. If it wasn't then you'd think some of the more abolitionist states would have tried to abolish that too or you'd at least have some period correspondence about it you could refer to. >And, of course, immediately after it was passed there was a big cultural shift in racist stereotypes of Black men from being effeminate and cowardly to being big scary criminals. You're early by a century. The lazy and up to no good criminal black man is a stereotype that mostly came around in the 1960s after we incentivized urban minorities to quit working above the table (and quit getting married) with asinine welfare eligibility rules. As an aside, president Johnson actually has some very quotable quotes on this subject. In the many decades between the civil war and great depression blacks increasingly moved north and moved to urban areas (mostly in the north and midwest but some in the south) to get jobs in the industrial economy and because the alternatives in the south sucked. Throughout this time period they were stereotyped as tireless workers with some cultural differences much the same way other cultural groups have been over the years.