Slavery, Liberty, and the Right to Contract

19 N EV . L.J. 447, Z IETLOW

4/25/2019 8:51 PM

S LAVERY , L IBERTY , AND THE R IGHT TO C ONTRACT

Rebecca E. Zietlow*

T ABLE OF C ONTENTS

I NTRODUCTION ............................................................................................... 447 I. U NFREE L ABOR AND F REEDOM OF C ONTRACT IN THE A NTEBELLUM E RA .............................................................................. 451 A. The Right to Contract in Antebellum America ............................ 453 B. Slaves and Free Blacks ............................................................... 455 C. Northern Workers and Freedom of Contract .............................. 458 II. F REED S LAVES AND N ORTHERN W ORKERS A FTER THE C IVIL W AR .. 462 A. Freed Slaves ................................................................................ 463 B. Northern Workers ....................................................................... 465 III. L IBERTY OF C ONTRACT IN THE R ECONSTRUCTION C ONGRESS ........... 467 A. The Historical Case for Lochnerian Liberty of Contract ............ 468 B. Freedmen’s Bureaus and the Formalist Right to Contract ......... 470 C. The Reconstruction Congress and Liberty of Contract ............... 473 D. The 1868 Eight Hour Act and Liberty of Contract ...................... 475 C ONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 478

I NTRODUCTION

According to the Declaration of Independenc e, “all men are created equal . . . endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights . . . [including]

* I presented versions of this paper at A Workshop on Legal Transitions and the Vulnerable Subject: Fostering Resilience through Law’s Dynamism as well as The Thirteenth Amend ment and Economic Justice Symposium. Thank you to all the participants in these work shops for your helpful comments, especially Fred Smith and Jack Chin. Thanks to the plan ning committee and all the students who worked to make the symposium a success, especially the inimitable Ruben Garcia. Thanks to Ken Kersch, Jim Pope, and Mary Ziegler for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to my excellent research assistant, Kyle Clauss. Thanks to the University of Toledo College of Law for funding my research. Finally, thanks to all of the editors of the Nevada Law Journal, especially Shannon Zahm and Becky Crooker, for your hard work and assistance with this article.

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