The statute that was used to convict the men prohibits conspiracy to deprive American citizens of their constitutional liberties, including the right to make contracts.

Whipple wrote that an “inferior class of white men feeling themselves unable to compete with colored tenants combined to drive them out of the country.” Knox approved the investigation, responding that the Department of Justice was “alive to the aggressive attitude of such organized bands as those to which you refer, and determined to meet such emergencies with proper and decisive action”.

[3] §1977 gives “all persons” in the U.S. the same right to make contracts “as is enjoyed by white citizens” : All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every state and territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.§5508, originating with the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and modified by the Enforcement Act of 1870, outlaws conspiracy to deprive citizens of their Constitutional freedoms: SEC.

[4] The state could obtain no conviction in Morris, unable to produce solid evidence even though, in Whipple's words, “the jurors, as well as the Court, were convinced we had indicted the right men”.

[6] Lawyers for Clampit, McKinney, and Hodges argued that the intended effect of the Thirteenth Amendment had been completed with emancipation and furthermore that no federally recognized right to make contracts existed at the time of its adoption.

[9] In oral arguments, Justice David Josiah Brewer asked whether all Black workers enjoyed special protections because of the Thirteenth Amendment.

He will become an outcast lurking about the borders and living by depredation.The Court ruled 7–2 for Hodges, holding the federal statutes unconstitutional and overruling the Arkansas convictions.

[13][14][15] Brewer interpreted the Thirteenth Amendment narrowly, in terms of legal rights, arguing that broad application led down a slippery slope to complete federal power.

Responding to certain statements from the Department of Justice's brief, Brewer wrote:[16][17] The logic of this concession points irresistibly to the contention that the Thirteenth Amendment operates only to protect the African race.

In Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 U. S. 698, the validity of the Chinese deportation act was presented, elaborately argued, and fully considered by this Court.

While there was a division of opinion, yet at no time during the progress of the litigation, and by no individual, counsel, or court connected with it was it suggested that the requiring of such a certificate was evidence of a condition of slavery, or prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment.Finally, Brewer wrote that Blacks deserved no special privileges because they enjoyed greater freedom as citizens:[21][22] One thing more: at the close of the Civil War, when the problem of the emancipated slaves was before the nation, it might have left them in a condition of alienage, or established them as wards of the government, like the Indian tribes, and thus retained for the nation jurisdiction over them, or it might, as it did, give them citizenship.

It therefore became competent for Congress, under the Thirteenth Amendment, to make the establishing of slavery, as well as all attempts, whether in the form of a conspiracy or otherwise, to subject anyone to the badges or incidents of slavery offenses against the United States, punishable by fine or imprisonment or both.And therefore: “legislation making it an offense against the United States to conspire to injure or intimidate a citizen in the free exercise of any right secured by the Constitution is broad enough to embrace a conspiracy of the kind charged in the present indictment.” Harlan cited U. S. v. Cruikshank, which affirmed guarantees by the Civil Rights Act of 1866 of equal rights to make contracts.

27, by which it was declared that all persons born in the United States, and not subject to a foreign power (except Indians, not taxed), should be citizens of the United States, and that such citizens, of every race and color, without any regard to any previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude, should have the same right, in every state and territory, to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real and personal property, and to full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and should be subject to like punishment, pains, and penalties, and to none other, any law, etc., to the contrary notwithstanding.

[30] Because slavery-like conditions were indeed prevalent in the Jim Crow South: “To muster the entire power of the federal government to deal with the Whitehall situation would mean deciding that federal power was to be used in the ordinary course of events.”[31] In her assessment, the decision represents an attempt to ignore the legacy produced by centuries of enslavement, portraying the racial animosity of the white-cappers as no different from anti-immigrant xenophobia.

[34] Karlan also suggests basic racial and economic biases, noting that Brewer had also written the majority opinion for In re Debs—finding in the latter case that a mass strike disrupting the railroad system did warrant federal intervention under the Commerce Clause.

She writes: “the outcome in Hodges reflected the Court’s view that the problems of eight black men were not as significant or compelling as those surrounding eighty thousand strikers".

[35] Karlan notes Arkansas Attorney General Whipple's satisfaction at having jailed the defendants for a year's worth of legal proceedings: “an early version of the notion that the process is the punishment.”[36] David Bernstein (law professor at George Mason) adds to Karlan's analysis of the original economic motivation behind the case: “this is just one example of a much broader phenomenon; during the Lochner era, the interests of white industrialists and black workers often converged in opposition to the racially exclusionary policies and attitudes of working class whites.”[37] Following the line of discussion between Brewer and Moody, he argues that the Court might have perceived a broad interpretation as threatening to “the very existence of craft unions”.