1. A situation in which one person has absolute power over the life, fortune, and liberty of another.
2. The practice of keeping individuals in such a state of bondage or servitude. • Slavery was outlawed by the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. [Cases: Slaves
1. C.J.S. Peonage § 2.]
“Slavery was a big problem for the Constitution makers. Those who profited by it insisted on protecting it; those who loathed it dreaded even more the prospect that to insist on abolition would mean that the Constitution would die aborning. So the Framers reached a compromise, of sorts. The words ‘slave’ and ‘slavery’ would never be mentioned, but the Constitution would safeguard the ‘peculiar institution’ from the abolitionists.” Jethro K. Lieberman, The Evolving Constitution 493 (1992).
