Debaters of the Thirteenth Amendment understood it to authorize broad civil rights protection.

Evidence

“The debates demonstrated that both supporters and opponents of the [Thirteenth] amendment expected the constitutional change to provide sweeping power to protect civil rights. Section 2, as the congressmen understood it and the Supreme Court later interpreted it, provided the authority to end all manner of subjugation, not only chattel slavery. In the course of a contentious debate, a consensus developed that the Thirteenth Amendment would empower Congress to end arbitrary practices connected to the incidents of involuntary servitude.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 857

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the book’s move to tie modern subjugation forms (convict labor, peonage) to the Thirteenth Amendment’s original understanding. Directly useful for defending the causal chain from slavery to present harms.