"Chattel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now belong to me, you are my property, my chattel; I am going to give you my instructions, and they must be strictly ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... made two mistakes: he should have permitted the white people to leave the country and given a silken cord to the chief eunuch, to apply as directed. There are no written laws among the dark peoples that forbid the disposal of that chattel known as a woman of the harem, or zenana. There are certain customs that even the all powerful British ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... it happened, that, amidst all her trials, Winifred felt the loss of her father's favourite chair as a crowning misery, trivial as was that loss, when hope itself was lost. She had identified that very humble chattel with his figure almost her life long. She almost expected to see the two fair hands (for, truth to tell, the aged steward had never worked hard) on each side, and the venerable kind face projected forwards from its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... statute under which they were tried lays down an explicit recognition of their humanity: "And whereas natural justice forbids that any person, of what condition soever, should be condemned unheard." So thoroughly, in the whole report, are the ideas of person and chattel intermingled, that when Gov. Bennett petitions for mitigation of sentence in the case of his slave Batteau, and closes, "I ask this, gentlemen, as an individual incurring a severe and distressing loss," ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... which a single class are so set aside, unprotected by any law. When our slaves were killed or tortured by inhuman masters, there was at least some show of justice for them. The white murderer went through some form of trial and punishment. The slave, though a chattel, was still a human being. But these people are not recognized by the law as human beings. They cannot buy nor sell; they cannot hold property: if with their own hands they build a house and gather about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... as dark as himself. He owned nothing, not even himself, yet his dream of riches is the motive of my tale. Regarded as a chattel, for whom a bill of sale would have been made as readily as for a bullock, he proved himself a man and brother by a prompt exhibition of traits too common to human nature when chance and some heroism on his part gave into his hands the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... places us in the scale of existence, degrading as is its denial of our capacity for self-government, still it concedes to us more than any other Government on earth. Woman, over half the globe, is now and always has been but a chattel. Wives are bargained for, bought and sold, as other merchandise, and as a consequence of the annihilation of natural rights, they have no political existence. In Hindustan, the evidence of woman is not received in a court of justice. The Hindu wife, when her husband dies, must yield implicit obedience ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... there! The cows are infinitely prettier and more preferable, and lead much pleasanter lives. And the men for whom these poor wretched women work, lounge about in cafes all day, smoking and playing dominoes. The barbaric arrangement that a woman should be a man's drudge and chattel is quite satisfactory, I think, to the majority of our sex. It is certainly an odd condition of things that the mothers of men should suffer most from man's cruelty. But it is the work of an all-wise Providence, no doubt; and ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... of a family of colliers, the most debased class in a lawless district. Jack's father had been a colliery-serf, legally enslaved to his colliery, legally liable to be sold with the colliery as a chattel, and legally bound to bring up all his sons as colliers, until the Act of George III. put an end to this incredible survival from the customs of the Dark Ages. Black Jack was now a hero to the crowd, and knew it, for those vast clogs had kicked a woman to death on ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... worth all the rest of your family put together. The self-sacrifice which pampers the selfishness of others is NOT creditable. It is weak. It is unworthy. Remember what I say to you—make a fight for your rights, just as soon as you are old enough—your right to be a woman instead of a chattel and a drudge. And meantime, make up for your rebellion by being as obedient and helpful and affectionate to your parents as you ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... whereas all the modern mouthings about oppressed women are the exaggerations of a falsehood. If you read even the best of the intellectuals of to-day you will find them saying that in the mass of the democracy the woman is the chattel of her lord, like his bath or his bed. But if you read the comic literature of the democracy you will find that the lord hides under the bed to escape from the wrath of his chattel. This is not the fact, but it ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... undergone a change since his marriage. Previously he had considered a wife in the light of property; intellectual or moral independence he could not attribute to her. But he had learnt that Adela was by no means his chattel. He still knew diffidence when he was inclined to throw a joke at her, and could not take her hand without involuntary respect—a sensation which occasionally irritated him. A dim inkling of what was meant by woman's strength and purity had crept into ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... vision did not quite anticipate the modern apartment-house, which perhaps is a transitional expedient, moving toward the phalanstery, but he quoted Thoreau by saying, "A woman enslaved by her housekeeping is just as much a chattel as if owned by ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... a chattel, if the seller has possession of the article, and sells it as his own, he is understood to warrant the title. A fair price implies a warranty of title; and the purchaser may have satisfaction from the seller, if he sells goods as his own, and the title proves deficient. But if the possession ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... met the force of Great Britain with counter force, and thus cleared the field for the statesmanship that can make the proverbial two blades of grass grow. The man with the gun opened the way for the man with the hoe. We who are here, and the race we represent, owe our deliverance from chattel slavery to the men in arms who conquered the slaveholders' Rebellion. It is a sad thought, but nevertheless one too true thus far in human history, that liberty, man's greatest earthly boon, can be reached only through a pathway of blood. The Army made good our ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... every fraction of it. Another hundred she gave to Hepsey, who found her out and came to report her trials and tribulations. The good soul had ventured South and tried to buy her mother. But "ole missis" would not let her go at any price, and the faithful chattel would not run away. Sorely disappointed, Hepsey had been obliged to submit; but her trip was not a failure, for she liberated several brothers and sent ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... hound—or, if you prefer, young hero—to think to treat a woman like this as if she were any village wench! Medea marries her Orsini. A marriage, let it be noted, between an old soldier of fifty and a girl of sixteen. Reflect what that means: it means that this imperious woman is soon treated like a chattel, made roughly to understand that her business is to give the Duke an heir, not advice; that she must never ask "wherefore this or that?" that she must courtesy before the Duke's counselors, his captains, his mistresses; ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... the town-hall. His services were not of much service to the city on that day,—neither on that day nor on the two following days. He was using all his mental faculties in endeavouring to decide what it might be best for him to do in the present emergency. The red house was a chattel of great value in Nuremberg,—a thing very desirable,—the possession of which Peter himself did desire with all his heart. But then, even in regard to the house, it was not to be arranged that Peter was ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... minded less if the pros and cons had been set before me, instead of being treated like a chattel; but I do not think my education ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... born in slavery, and I belonged to a Baptist preacher. Until I was fifteen years old I was taught that I was his own chattel-property, and he could do with me like he wanted to, but he had been taught that way too, and we both believed it. I never did hold nothing against him for being hard on Negroes sometimes, and I don't think I ever would of had any trouble ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... rising] Wheres the police? Wheres the Government? Wheres the Church? Wheres respectability and right reason? Whats the good of them if I have to stand here and see you put my son in your pocket as if he was a chattel slave, and you hardly out of gaol as a common drunk and disorderly? ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... (pp. 9 and 93-98), and then shooting them legally. "By the percentage of wages," says the report of Congress, "by false measurements, by rents, stores, and other methods the workman is virtually a chattel of ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... severance of the marital tie would be the work of the house or relatives, rather than the act of the wife, who was not "a person" in the case. Indeed, in the olden time a woman was not a person in the eye of the law, but rather a chattel. The case is somewhat different under the new codes,[26] but the looseness of the marriage tie is still a scandal to thinking Japanese. Since the breaking up of the feudal system and the disarrangement of the old social and moral standards, the statistics made annually from the official ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... am no chattel to be bartered, and this miserable title of princess has no charms for me. You can command me, father, to renounce the man I love, but you can never compel me to give my hand to a man I do not love, ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... Jo, gravely, "I'm agreeable to become a good and chattel for this occasion only, as the playbills say, and hold myself up to the ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... a long piece of paper from his pocket and lays it down in front of me. It looked like a chattel mortgage on Mexico, and what paragraphs didn't commence with "to wit," started ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... "Nay, he is no chattel of mine," said the merchant. "He is the thrall of goodman Reas, over in Rathsdale—a morning's walk from here. If you would deal with him a guide will soon be got to take you ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... matter of convenient arrangement. Two ancient names, two great fortunes cry aloud for union and they drown the voice of the heart. I am bestowed like a chattel." ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... rarely shown by the young Jallabs or slave-traders; when older they learn how much money is lost with the chattel's virginity. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... Will, I insist on it still, So sneer on and welcome And e'en laugh your fill. I, William Hickington, Poet of Pocklington, Do give and bequeathe, As free as I breathe, To thee, Mary Jaram, The queen of my haram, My cash and cattle, With every chattel, To have and to hold, Come heat or come cold, Sans hindrance or strife, (Tho' thou art not my wife,) As witness my hand, Just here as I stand, This 12th of July, ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... wealth, ceases to be merely a question of the control of labor and becomes a question of the control of the transmission of human life. Such control might have been accounted a possible privilege among Virginian breeders of slaves. But so to regard it seems monstrous, now that chattel slavery has been universally condemned, thanks to the triumphant levellers of the last hundred years. What is more, all trade is beginning to be regarded as a question ultimately, not of the manufacture ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... belong to me Lola?" Very energetically—"No!" "To whom do you belong then?" "To myself." "And to whom do I belong? do I belong to you?" "No!" "Whose Henny am I?" "Your own!" These amusing answers bear the very impress of the animal's sense of independence: she is loth to be considered a "chattel," like ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... beach which the ocean of knowledge—you may call it science if you like—is flowing over, is theological humanity. Somewhere between the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Saint Augustine sin was made a transferable chattel. (I leave the interval wide for others to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... accustomed to think of as a Mahometan institution, existed more or less perfectly in Greece by seventeen centuries at least antecedently to Mahometanism. Already before Homer, before Troy, before the Argonauts, woman was an abject, dependent chattel in Greece, and living in nun-like seclusion. There is so much of intellectual resemblance between Greece and Rome, shown in the two literatures, the two religions, and the structure of the two languages, that we are apt to overlook ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... tell you that no chattel of the Church, no bond-slave of pope or bishop can enter my Man-Factory? Didn't I tell you that you couldn't enter unless your religion, whatever it might be, was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... could ever hope to earn by any other profession. I grant it; but between the independent wage-earner and the one who is given his keep for his services is the difference between the free-born and the chattel.... The present state of affairs brings about a disastrous condition in the woman's world of labor, so that the woman wage-earner must not only compete with the man worker but with the domestic woman who has her home and clothes supplied her ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... fill it out for a supposed sale. Compare with it a mortgage deed. A quitclaim deed. Compare a mortgage deed with a chattel mortgage. Account for the differences. If A buys a farm from B and does not file his ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... the off-hand masterful tone he had hitherto spoken in, and becoming earnest; still holding her arm, however, as if she were his chattel to be taken up or put down at will. 'It is never too late to break off a marriage that's distasteful to you. Now I'll say one thing; and it is truth: I wish you would marry me instead of him, even now, at the last moment, though you have ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... into human language, or that has exceeded it, has grown out of that pledge. There is no misery on earth like that of a pure and refined woman who finds herself owned, body and soul, by a drunken, licentious, brutal man. The very fact that she is held to obedience by a spiritual tie makes it worse. Chattel slavery was not so bad; for, though the master might pervert religion for his own satisfaction, he could not impose upon the slave. Never yet did I see a negro slave who thought it a duty to obey his ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... wife beating. Of course, I'm not your chattel yet, because the ceremony hasn't been read; but if you would like to anticipate a few hours and beat me, I don't suppose there is any reason ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... a Gaspard Chuckle when he checked up the total Get, for now he owned two Brick Buildings and had tasted a little Blood in the way of Chattel Mortgages. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... affect the government of another class of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery, but its effects can be as far-reaching and as debasing. There has been some manifestation of its possible consequences in the recent outbreaks of lynching and other race oppression in the South. The practical disfranchisement of the colored people in several States, ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... when his task work was over. I asked Abraham what sum his grandfather paid for his freedom: he said he did not know, but he supposed a large one, because of his being a 'skilled carpenter,' and so a peculiarly valuable chattel. I presume, from what I remember Major M—— and Dr. H—— saying on the subject of the market value of negroes in Charleston and Savannah, that such a man in the prime of life would have been worth from 1,500 to 2,000 dollars. However, whatever the man paid for his ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... of the master. There were good men, according to their lights,—according to their training and environment,—among the Southern slaveholders, who treated their slaves kindly, as slaves, from principle, because they recognized the claims of humanity, even under the dark skin of a human chattel. There was many a one who protected or pampered his negroes, as the case might be, just as a man fondles his dog,—because they were his; they were a part of his estate, an integral part of the entity ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... zake zi ya hamba, 'The daughters of him they do walk.'" These characteristics appear in the formation of the Creole French, in connection with another childlike habit of the negro, who loves to put himself in the objective case, and to say me instead of I, as if he knew that he had to be a chattel. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... husband, pistol in hand. The evening was stormy, and she asked him if they could not remain there till morning. "It would not be right, Ellen," he replied; and with tears in her eyes, they went forth into the darkness and rain. Was that a man to be treated like a chattel? How many white gentlemen are there, who, in circumstances as perilous, would have manifested such nicety of moral perception, such genuine delicacy of feeling? England has kindly received that worthy and persecuted couple. All who set foot on her ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child
... let them all go forth whither God may direct them to their end; let them all do justice on the thief as it was formerly Eadmund's law. And be the ceapgild (i.e., market value) paid to him that owns the chattel; and be the rest divided in two, half to the hundred, half to the lord except men; and let the lord take possession of ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... sizing me up as a man. I cannot describe that calm appraising look. There was no sex in it, nothing even of that implicit sympathy with which one human being explores the existence of another. I was a chattel, a thing infinitely removed from intimacy. Even so I have myself looked at a horse which I thought of buying, scanning his shoulders and hocks and paces. Even so must the old lords of Constantinople ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... weighed and brought forth talents of gold ten in all, and two shining tripods and four caldrons, and a goblet exceeding fair that men of Thrace had given him when he went thither on an embassy, a chattel of great price, yet not that even did the old man grudge from his halls, for he was exceeding fain at heart to ransom his dear son. Then he drave out all the Trojans from the colonnade, chiding them with words of rebuke: "Begone, ye that dishonour and do me shame! ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... And with that he marched off, evidently in high dudgeon. A little ripple of laughter swept over the upturned faces of the crowd. "One dollar," repeated the young man, his voice full of a polite weariness. "Do I hear no other bid? I offer myself, a human chattel, at absolute sale; no reservations; warranted sound and kind; no objection to the country; not ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... society. Epictetus showed that a Phrygian slave could live a life of the loftiest exaltation; Aurelius proved that a Roman Emperor could live a life of the deepest humility. The one—a foreigner, feeble, deformed, ignorant, born in squalor, bred in degradation, the despised chattel of a despicable freedman, surrounded by every depressing, ignoble, and pitiable circumstance of life—showed how one who seemed born to be a wretch could win noble happiness and immortal memory; the other—a Roman, a patrician, strong, of heavenly beauty, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... personal chattel is the immediate occasion of the death of any reasonable creature; which is forfeited to the king, to be applied to pious uses, and distributed in alms by his high almoner[u]; though formerly destined to a more superstitious purpose. ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... until my stock purchase, had been the chattel and creature of one Button Gwynnet Fles. In appearance he was such a genuine Yankee, lean and sharp, with a slight stoop and prying eyes, that one quite expected a straw to protrude from between his thin lips or have him draw ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... to whose social position there was no objection, were too old. If she, the daughter of a general, had married a captain, then a major's wife would have taken precedence of her. Such a degradation would have killed her. Moreover, she had no wish to be a man's chattel, or an ornament for his drawing-room. She was accustomed to command, accustomed to be obeyed; she could obey no man. The freedom and independence of a man's life appealed to her; it had fostered in her a loathing for ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... be asked, Why I have published anything so long after my escape from slavery? I answer I have been induced to do so on account of the increasing disposition to overlook the fact, that THE SIN of slavery lies in the chattel principle, or relation. Especially have I felt anxious to save professing Christians, and my brethren in the ministry, from falling into a great mistake. My feelings are always outraged when I hear them speak ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... every tenant-in-chief should do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman of the free; and that every slave should, without any property however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some master. The whole system was connected with military service. This was the feudal system. There was some resemblance to it in parts of the Saxon organization; but under that organization there ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... took the responsibility of calling it from the nowhere into the here. This doctrine of the responsibility of the parent to the child is comparatively new and goes neither with marriage nor with the home. The old and current notion is that the child is a chattel. ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... enjoyed as a birthright. Wherever he moved or wished to move he was met and surrounded by the most galling and degrading social and civil conditions and proscriptions. True he held a bill of sale of his person, had ceased to be the chattel property of an individual, but he still wore chains, which kept him, and which were intended to keep him and such as him, slaves of the community forever, deprived of every civil right which white men, their neighbors, were bound ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke
... knew that for the moment she was nothing more than an old chattel pushed away into ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... Spring he went with his father into Fallon, the nearest trading point, to see David Robinson, the owner of the local bank. By giving a chattel mortgage on their growing wheat, they borrowed enough, at twenty per cent, to buy seed corn and a plow. It was Wade's last effort. Before the corn was in tassel, he had been ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... you make men hear you! For mercy—for blessed charity—ah, M'sieur, M'sieur, I will carry your sins for you; I will go to hell in your place! You are great—one sees it; and he is great, too! M'sieur, I am your chattel, your ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. The particular member of that wealthy family whom she had married was rich, even as his relatives counted riches. Sophie had very advanced and decided views as to the distribution of money: it was a pleasing and fortunate circumstance ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... usurped the functions that rightly belong to the legislative assembly, with a virtual dictatorship as the inevitable result." The consequence of State Paternalism is the death of individual liberty either through socialism or autocracy. Man becomes the chattel of a bureaucratic government. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... child!—accomplished, beautiful with the most touching beauty, innocent as an angel—all these qualities that should disarm the very wolves and crocodiles, are, in the eyes of those to whom I stand indebted, commodities to buy and sell. You are a chattel; a marketable thing; and worth—heavens, that I should say such words!—worth money. Do you begin to see? If I were to give you freedom, I should defraud my creditors; the manumission would be certainly annulled; you would be still a slave, and I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... become a widower, and where, consequently, the family had lost a female laborer. The son was then sent out to work in the fields, and this circumstance, together with the subjection and degradation of women in a social organization in which even the man was a mere chattel, favored the existence of a crime that greatly complicated the relations of blood in a peasant family, and often led to the brutal treatment of helpless wives by infuriated husbands. Nor did the evil stop even with a partial amelioration of the cause, but tended for a time to reproduce itself; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... loved with all the strength of his being, honored and revered and longed to make his wife,—and the world could speak of her in that loose, pragmatical, possessive, chattel-like way. His typewriter! No more his than any man's who gave her employment. No longer his, in fact, since he was virtually forbidden her presence. He who had offered her his hand and name and love was actually of less account in ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill would serve things still—things are of the snake. The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... of the same clay as himself, with similar bundles of nerves and desires, contradictions, irritabilities, and lovablenesses. Heaven in the drawing-room and hell in the kitchen is not the atmosphere for a growing child to breathe—nor an adult either. One of the great and selfish objections to chattel slavery was the effect on ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... "horse-dealer" approaching his chattel, but keeping the chain's length away; then he poured me a full cup of wine, and another for himself. I later recollected that the man had held the cup a long time to his lips, but without my being able to see whether he drank or not. "Come," he added. "Come, let us drink ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... flushed, but the grocer bit back the words that trembled on his lips. Little Wimpy had gallantry to spare when it came to facing fire, which is a clean foe and a clean fighter, but his courage stopped there. Varr owned his store, Varr held a chattel mortgage on his fixtures—and there were the little Wimpies to be ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... and thou comest singing down the fell, and I go weeping o'er the sea! I am not all so ill at heart. It was love of thee that drove me down to sin, as love of thee might otherwise have lifted me to holiness. But, loving thee as thou seest, this day I wed a dotard, and go his chattel and his bride across the sea, and leave thee singing on the fell, and by thy side her who is my foe. Thou hast done great deeds, Brighteyes, and still greater shalt thou do; yet but as echoes they shall reach my ears. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... man," he said, "only a poor chattel of the Lord's, a poor frail jug that has gone too often to the well. A poor man of a blackened reputation, who has been set upon by spies of France, and threatened in his own house, but who has managed to escape—" and his voice ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... that most dreaded by the limited class of well cared-for house servants, of which Pompey was a good representative. He knew, as well as I, that his poor average of happiness was fortuitous—that it hinged on the life of his master. At his death he might become the chattel of any human brute with a white epidermis and money enough to buy him; might be separated from wife, children, companions and past associations. Suggesting the practical wisdom involved in the biblical axiom that sufficient for the day is ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lawyer, in thy pristine years And his, with thy possession much enhanced His meagre sum of personal estate; And, in phrase professional, call'd thee 'chattel'— A vile distinction for a beaver hat! A lawyer's hat!—alack! what teeming store-house oft Of mischiefs dire; ill-boding parchment; 'writs,' With hieroglyphics mystical inscribed; Invention curious of graceless men, And in sad mock'ry named 'the grace of God!' What ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... south; and the true voice and spirit of this province is that when the flying slave has once put the roar of Niagara between him and the bay of the bloodhounds of his master—from that hour, no man shall ever dream of recovering him as his chattel property." ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... became a marketable chattel of the State. His services were sold by public auction, the purchaser acquiring the right to transport him and sell him for the term of his sentence to a builder, planter, manufacturer, or other employer beyond ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... man," is "drawn from a very obvious principle of moral science. It is a plain truth, universally received, that every right supposes or involves a corresponding obligation. If, then, a man has a right to another's person or powers, the latter is under obligation to give himself up as a chattel to the former." Most assuredly, if one man has a right to the service or obedience of another, then that other is under obligation to render that service or obedience to him. But is such an obligation absurd? Is it inconsistent with the inherent, the inalienable, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... dignity is almost ashamed of it. "I grieve", he says, "more than I ought for a mere slave". Just as one might now apologise for making too much fuss about a favourite dog; for the slave was looked upon in scarcely a higher light in civilised Rome. They spoke of him in the neuter gender, as a chattel; and it was gravely discussed, in case of danger in a storm at sea, which it would be right first to cast overboard to lighten the ship, a valuable horse or an indifferent slave. Hortensius, the rival advocate who has been mentioned, a man of more luxurious ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... Schmitthenner, I, who calls attention and with reason to the importance of loans on chattel mortgages. But Berkeley, Querist, No. 265, remarks that a squire with a yearly income of L1000 can, "upon an emergency," do less good or evil than a merchant ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... features were still strange to him; and he was bidden to multiply himself, that sacred learning might be perpetuated in his sons, to the glory of the God of his fathers. All this while he had been led about as a creature without a will, a chattel, an instrument. In his maturity he awoke, and found himself poor in health, poor in purse, poor in useful knowledge, and hampered on all sides. At the first nod of opportunity he broke away from his prison, and strove to atone for his wasted youth by a life of useful labor; while at ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... why and I do not see any reason for changing my idea," she said coolly. "When it no longer suits me to be a chattel, I shall cease to be ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Territories, along the coast and between the States. The free States are the particeps criminis of the slave States. They are living under a pledge of their tremendous physical force to rivet the manacles of chattel slavery upon millions in the South; they are liable at any instant to be called on under the Constitution to suppress a general insurrection of the slaves. This relationship is criminal, "is full of danger, ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... three times, and know something of nature. Now ye may note it as clear as the north star, prisons in slave countries a'n't fit for dogs. They may tell about their fine, fat, slick, saucy niggers, but a slave's a slave—his master's property, a piece of merchandise, his chattel, or his football-thankful for what his master may please to give him, and inured to suffer the want of what he withholds. Yes, he must have his thinking stopped by law, and his back lashed at his master's will, if he don't toe the mark in work. ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... dryly, breaking in on her. "She used to belong to your grandmother, and now you belong to her. The plan of ownership has merely been reversed, that's all. Tell me, Miss Emmy Lou, how does it feel to be a human chattel, with no prospect of emancipation?" Then catching the hurt look on her flushed face he dropped his raillery and hastened to make amends. "Well, never mind. You're the sweetest slave girl I ever met—I guess you're the sweetest one that ever lived. Besides, she's gone—probably won't be back for half ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... recognized the slave as a human being. The Roman world was full of slaves. Not only were there slaves born but debtors sometimes sold themselves[14] or their children. The criminal might be enslaved. In early pagan times the slave had no rights. He was a chattel disposable according to the will of his master who had jus vitae necisque, who could slay, mutilate, scourge at pleasure.[15] In the course of time this extreme power was restrained. Hadrian forbade the killing of slaves, Marius allowed the slave ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... constantly meeting "smart" fellows. Their eagerness and aptitude in learning to read surprises every one. Their memories are usually excellent, their power of observation pretty keen, and their general intelligence is in most striking contrast to the idea of chattel and wonderfully harmonizes with that of man. I am only stating the grounds on which I have hopes of their development, not trying to describe their characteristics or the course or limit of that development. ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... Leighton, a schism in the church would have meant nothing unless it came to the point of cracking heads; but a schism in governmental policy, which placed the right to govern one's self and own black chattel in the balance, found him taking sides from the first, thundering out from the pulpit, supported by text and verse, the divine right of personal dominion by purchase, and in superb contradiction voicing the constitutional ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... toward Melicent, rejoicing that his chattel had golden hair and was comely beyond comparison with all other women ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away thrice, he is to be executed as a felon. The master can sell him, bequeath him, let him out on hire as a slave, just as any other personal chattel or cattle. If the slaves attempt anything against the masters, they are also to be executed. Justices of the peace, on information, are to hunt the rascals down. If it happens that a vagabond has been idling about for three ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... of chattel slavery in the one case seemed a legitimate ground for destroying a government which had as definite an existence as any government known to mankind, so the resolve to impose a single religious creed upon many millions of individuals was held ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that this "chattel" must have been the subject of much inquiry and anxiety from the nature of his former position, as a prominent piece of property, as a member of the Baptist church, as taking "first premiums" in making tobacco, and as a paper carrier in the National American office, felt called ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... has made himself master of you; no doubt of that. He does what he likes with you;—leads you by the nose. You follow him whither he chooses, and assume every shape at his command; you are his chattel, his toy. I know how it will be: you are going to let Ixion off, because you have had relations with his wife; she ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... which Christianity is yet to shine through and change to light. But it is not a plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only morally touch us.—But the disputes between the masters and the Government, and between the Government, impregnated with Slavery, and the Northern citizen, these touch us sharply, and if not wisely met, will yet scourge us with thorns! ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher
... is to be a very important factor in promoting the future prosperity of the country. Already it is manifest that his value to the South as a freed man is far greater than the price formerly set upon him as a chattel. The unrequited toil of the slave is seen in the light of history to be the dearest kind of labor. It was frequently said after the war that the emancipated Negro would be worthless as a laborer; that he was naturally lazy, shiftless, and ...
— The American Missionary - Vol. 44, No. 3, March, 1890 • Various
... the influence of slavery in the United States, that the ministers of religion, even in the so-called free states, are the mere echoes, instead of the correctors, of public sentiment. We have thought it advisable to show that the present system of chattel slavery in America undermines the entire social condition of man, so as to prepare the reader for the following narrative of slave life, in that otherwise happy ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... crowd of persons who had been specially invited to 'meet their Royal Highnesses,' and had so far been held worthy neither to dance nor to eat in the same room with them. But in vain. Rose still felt herself, for all her laughing outward insouciance, a poor, bruised, helpless chattel, trodden under the heel of a world which was intolerably powerful, rich, and self-satisfied, the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... La Rue to give up this most valuable chattel was out of the question. What he did, therefore, was to fly into a rage, refuse the Kid's offer in language which would have precipitated a brawl had the young man been less earnest in his wooing, and consign Minnie to the watchful vigilance ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... coming of spring. She has long learned with patience, and to-day she knows many things dear to the soul far better than her teachers. In olden times the Jews claimed to be the conservators of the world's morals—they treated woman as a chattel, and said that because she was created after man, she was created solely for man. Too many still are Jews who never called Abraham "Father," while the Jews themselves have long acknowledged woman as man's proper helpmeet. In those days women had ...
— Pulpit and Press • Mary Baker Eddy
... analogous to the case of the predial slaves, or slaves glebae adscripti of Russia, or Hungary, or other states. It is a peculiar system of personal slavery, by which the person who is called a slave is transferable as a chattel, from hand to hand. I speak of this as a fact; and that is the fact. And I will say further, perhaps other gentlemen may remember the instances, that although slavery, as a system of servitude attached to the earth, exists in various ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... she clamours to the driver to "put it in the boot," her absorbing anxiety about the pattens, "with which she plays innumerable games of quoits upon Mr. Pecksniff's legs," her evolutions in that confined space with her most prominently visible chattel, "a species of gig umbrella," prepare the way for her still more characteristic confidences. Then in earnest—she had spoken twice before that from her window over the bird-fancier's—but then in earnest, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... in the court-house (County Court Act 1888, s. 162), and may also attack persons who having means refuse to comply with an order to pay money, or refuse to comply with an order to deliver up a specific chattel or disobey an injunction. A court of quarter sessions has at common law a like power as to contempts in facie curiae and is said to have power to punish its officials for contempt in non-attendance ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... I to do? Renounce all freedom, be nothing but a machine, a chattel, in the hands of a man I do not know—God knows I am willing! But there are other and more pressing questions from my point of view; in the first place, this matter of literature—to write no more, to give up what has been the occupation and aim of my life; that ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... accordingly apply discriminately either punishment or non-punishment." But anti-slavery legislation has never done this, and never will. The question is not to any large extent the comfort or misery of the chattel, but the forbidding that one human being should be allowed to deal with another ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell
... keep body and soul together; and for more than half of that time I have lived on one meal a day. That is what we have come to; we of the submerged majority. And that isn't all. The wage-worker himself, when he is fortunate enough to find a chance to earn his crust, is but a serf; a chattel among the other possessions of some fellow man who has acquired him in the plutocratic redistribution of the earth and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... thou and what is it thou wantest?" The Prince answered, "I am a foreigner from a far country, and I have heard of Mubarak thy lord that he is famed for liberality and generosity; so that I come hither purposing to become his guest." Thereupon the chattel went in to his lord and, after reporting the matter to him, came out and said to Zayn al-Asnam, "O my lord, a blessing hath descended upon us by thy footsteps. Do thou enter, for my master Mubarak awaiteth thee." ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... well; and without exception they do it, making no resistance whatever—allowing themselves to be driven to baptism in flocks like sheep, and believing, as they are commanded to do, that all power comes from one God, who bestows it upon one lord. For the Arian serf is a mere chattel without a will, and will not think for himself until he is educated to do so. This work of education has been a long time in progress; but, as the previous speaker rightly said, the idea of ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... which have since been quoted, both in the Old and New World, and have had power to modify those cruel laws which at that period made woman, despite her understanding intellect, an idiot, and despite her loving heart a chattel—in the law. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... better to live and suffer and die in that way, as long as you have art as your goal. A thousand times would I prefer to live that way than to be my husband's servant, the slave of my children, and a household chattel!" exclaimed Janina ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... thought it was almost impossible for her to assume that disguise, and travel a distance of 1,000 miles across the slave States. However, on the other hand, she also thought of her condition. She saw that the laws under which we lived did not recognize her to be a woman, but a mere chattel, to be bought and sold, or otherwise dealt with as her owner might see fit. Therefore the more she contemplated her helpless condition, the more anxious she was to escape from it. So she said, "I think it is almost too much ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all their communications technicians. They lost contact with the outside. O.K. Within a couple of centuries they'd gotten into a state of chattel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They were at this stage when a scout ship from the UP Space Forces discovered ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... morning now that shone upon Aunt Kizzie and her child. But night came, utterly dark and cheerless night, to both mother and boy. The two were put upon the block together. The boy showed for himself. But the sexagenarian human chattel was mercilessly scrutinized. She was made to sing, dance, and run. Her red turban was torn off, and in spite of the hirsutian manipulations to which she had been subjected, her wool appeared, like Shakspeare's spirits, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... abundantes in seculo obtinuerunt divitias. Lo, saith holy lecture, which lords be these shrewes? Thilke that God giveth most, least good they dealeth, And most unkind be to that comen, that most chattel wieldeth.[44] Quae perfecisti destrutxerunt, justus autem, &c. Harlots for their harlotry may have of their goodes, And japers and juggelers, and janglers of jestes, And he that hath holy writ aye in his mouth, And can tell of Tobie, and of the twelve apostles, Or preach of the penance that Pilate ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... sharp commands of Fritz Braun were now conveyed to the responsible underlings! Sohmer, staggering homeward with his greedy Aspasias from the Waterloo conflicts of the race-track, sullenly assented at last to the chattel mortgages and bills of sale which placed the "Valkyrie" and the whole building under August Meyer's name. Then, taking the downward road, Sohmer tried to drown himself in drink, ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... connected with the court, as a royal pensioner, nor as forming the bulk of the population. The rarity of any reference to him in contemporary documents makes further specification conjectural. The ardu was a slave, his master's chattel, and formed a very numerous class. He could acquire property and even hold other slaves. His master clothed and fed him, paid his doctor's fees, but took all compensation paid for injury done to him. His master usually found him a slave-girl as wife (the children were ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... energy of a man is his own and his right to it must be regarded. Since the abolition of chattel slavery this has ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... planter must see, and he gave no credence to any accounts but his. Now the consequence of cruelty is to make men at war with its objects. No one but a most irritable person feels angry with his beast, and even the anger of such a person is of a moment's duration. But towards an inanimate chattel even the most irritable of sane men can feel nothing like rage. Why? Because in the one case there is little, in the other no conflict or resistance at all. It is otherwise with a slave; he is human, and can disobey—can even resist. This feeling always rankles in his oppressor's ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... against slavery, and in favor of universal emancipation; if they could listen, as they repeated the still bolder and scathing denunciations of their great orator, O'Connell, as he trampled on the dehumanizing system of chattel slavery, they would scorn the advice of the traitor leaders, who, under the false guise of Democracy, but in hostility to all its principles, would now lure them, by the syren cry of peace, into the destruction of the Union, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... battles in Kansuh; My mother died: nights passed and mornings came, And with them waned my beauty. Now no more My doors were thronged; few were the cavaliers That lingered by my side; so I became A trader's wife, the chattel of a slave Whose lord was gold, who, parting, little recked Of separation and the unhonoured bride. Since the tenth moon was full my husband went To where the tea-fields ripen. I remained, To wander in my little lonely boat Over the cold bright wave o' nights, and dream Of the dead days, ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... with the Maid, I saw that she did make naughtily to act as that I did be a slave-master, and she but a chattel to me; for she to be husht before me, and neither to yield her slender body willing to mine arm, nor to resist me; but only to be still, as that she had no saying in this matter; and as that I was like to beat her at my pleasure, or to withhold ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... regarded Gertrude, nevertheless the first tidings of her betrothal with Alaric struck him as though he had still fancied himself a favoured lover. He felt as though, in his absence, he had been robbed of a prize which was all his own, as though a chattel had been taken from him to which he had a full right; as though all the Hampton party, Mrs. Woodward included, were in a conspiracy to defraud him the moment ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... limbs in silken cords of reverence, making a rude world civil, was now to inaugurate for diffidence its miserable career. Through the rough deference of the German camp, through the Provencal code of courtoisie, up to the modern law of fine manners, the drudge and chattel of the primeval tribe has risen to impose her law upon the modern world. Earth is better for this finer power, but social intercourse is less sincere. For woman, having curbed the brute man by ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... her husband free to use his own judgment, but this matter of indebtedness was alarming. She knew how slowly money came in on the farm and how impossible it was to raise a mortgage once it was plastered over a piece of land. Already she saw the day of payments, note-renewals, and chattel mortgages staring them in the face. Elizabeth's pride had suffered a fall. She saw the weary years stretch ahead of them without joy and without hope other than that which those about them had, unless some special providence assisted them to avoid the common lot of farmers. As she went about her ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... must fight a battle by her own strength with such weapons as God had given to her. God had, indeed, given to her many weapons, but she knew but of one. She did know that God had made her very beautiful. But she regarded her beauty after an unfeminine fashion,—as a thing of value, but as a chattel of which she could not bring herself to be proud. Might it be possible that she should win for herself by her beauty some position in the world less burdensome, more joyous than that of a governess, and less dependent than that of a daily ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... be controlled, all things else would come right of themselves with us. Slavery has not only been controlled, but it has been destroyed, and yet things have not begun to come right with us; but it was in the order of Providence that chattel slavery should cease before industrial slavery, and the infinitely crueler and stupider vanity and luxury bred of it, should be attacked. If there was then any prevision of the struggle now at hand, the seers averted their eyes, and strove only to cope with the less evil. Thoreau himself, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... returning to his office. In one respect he had been much more fortunate than poor Eames, for he had been made happy with the smiles of his lady love. Alexandrina and the countess had fluttered about him softly, treating him as a tame chattel, now belonging to the noble house of de Courcy, and in this way he had been initiated into the inner domesticities of that illustrious family. The two extra men-servants, hired to wait upon Lady Dumbello, had vanished. The champagne had ceased to flow in a perennial stream. Lady Rosina ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... Barnum had sold the American Museum to Messrs. John Greenwood, Jr., and Henry D. Butler. They paid nearly twice as much for the collection as it had originally cost, giving notes for nearly the entire amount, securing the notes by a chattel mortgage, and hiring the premises from Mrs. Barnum, who owned the Museum property lease, and on which, by agreement of the lessees, she realized something like $19,000 a year. The chattel mortgage was, of course, turned over to the New York assignees ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Wherefore I take it he thinks it safer to betroth her to this scion of the Sanghurst brood, who will be heir to all his father's ill-gotten wealth. But if I know Mistress Joan, as I think I do, she will scarce permit herself to be given over like a chattel, though she may have a sore fight ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... evolution of our housewife. We are apt to think of the home as originating in a sort of cave, where the little unit—the Man, the Woman, and the Children—dwelt in isolation, ever on the watch against marauders, either animal or human. In this cave the woman was the chattel of man; he had seized her by force and ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... parallel in heathen lands. It is a hideous offshoot of American Republicanism and American Christianity! It seems that Pauline—a young and beautiful girl—attracted the admiration of her master, and being (to use the words of the law) his "chattel personal to all intents and purposes whatsoever," became the victim of his lust. So wretched is the condition of the slave woman, that even the brutal and licentious regard of her master is looked upon as the highest exaltation ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... idea to what part of the coast Azinte had been taken. For all he knew to the contrary, she might have been long ago shipped off to the northern markets, and probably was, even while he talked of her, the inmate of an Arab harem, or at all events a piece of goods—a "chattel"—in the absolute possession of an irresponsible master. Besides the improbability of Kambira ever hearing what had become of his wife, or to what part of the earth she had been transported, there was also the ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... the retaining and the increase of the public land domain; the management of the State and community lands on their own account; the giving of State credit to cooeperative societies; the socialization of mortgages, debts, and loans on land; the socialization of chattel and real estate insurance, etc. Bebel agreed to all these State-socialist propositions. He recalled the fact, that the nationalizing of the railroads had been accomplished with the agreement of the social-democracy."[21] "That which applies to the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... is to create; to desire is to summon. To build up the chimera is to provoke the reality. The all-powerful and terrible mystery will not be defied. It produces result. You are here. Do I dare to lose caste? Yes. Do I dare to be your mistress—your concubine—your slave—your chattel? Joyfully. Gwynplaine, I am woman. Woman is clay longing to become mire. I want to despise myself. That lends a zest to pride. The alloy of greatness is baseness. They combine in perfection. Despise ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... who believe that as a quasi-legal institution it may be absolutely abolished. Perhaps the analogy to the abolition of slavery is most striking in that these groups, in their varying points of view, are like those earlier associations which differed widely in regard to chattel slavery. Only the so-called extremists, in the first instance, stood for abolition and they were continually told that what they proposed was clearly impossible. The legal and commercial obstacles, bulked large, were placed before them and it was ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams
... for the present that the slave possessed no rights at all. He was the chattel of his master, who possessed over him the full power of life and death, limited only by public opinion and prudential considerations. A Roman might have at his disposal one slave or ten thousand slaves. He could ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... but secretly, by spidery machinations and by wheedling and cajolery and lies. They have purchased your slave judges, they have debauched your slave legislatures, and they have forced to worse horrors than chattel slavery your slave boys and girls. Two million of your children are toiling to-day in this trader-oligarchy of the United States. Ten millions of you slaves are not properly sheltered ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... they submit themselves to their husbands they receive praise, but if they desire to rule, they get less credit even than the husbands who submit to their rule. But the husband ought to rule his wife, not as a master does a chattel, but as the soul governs the body, by sympathy and goodwill. As he ought to govern the body by not being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so he ought to rule his ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... a vile chattel, for a price betrayed, Bartered and bargained for in privy market By one whom he had held his perfect friend, One he had trusted, one he had well loved, One whom by ties of kindness ...
— The Duchess of Padua • Oscar Wilde
... daughter had appeared to you. Pleading for mercy to the unfortunate. We are in your hands as in the hand of God, Helpless. O then accord the unhoped for boon! By what is dear to thee, thy veriest own, I pray thee,—chattel or child, or holier name! Search through the world, thou wilt not find the man Who could resist the leading ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... held a great commission, under royal signet, requiring all good subjects, all officers of whatever degree, and especially justices of the peace, to aid him to the utmost, with person, beast, and chattel, or to answer it ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of the group itself, was, so to speak, the capturer, her position in regard to her dependent husband would be profoundly modified, in comparison with that of the ordinary captive female, whereas such a captive, seized by the usual process of hostile capture, had been a mere chattel utterly without power; she, as a free agent in her own home, with her will backed by that of her brothers" [why not, I would ask, her sisters and her mother?] "could impose law on ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... good talk in the hotel lobby, after Sam had made himself at home in his room. "I'm going to run a whole combination. I've got in with a man who's a real genius. His name's Jonas. He represents the brewers' trust, and he's going out to start saloons with chattel mortgages on the fixtures. It's a big thing by itself. But then besides that he's got orders to apply for street-railroad franchises wherever he can get them, and he is going to start agencies to sell typewriters and bicycles and some patent medicines, and ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... value and gradually becomes divided, and with each step in this direction the negro loses his importance in the eye of his owner. When, however, men are forced to abandon the land they have exhausted, it becomes consolidated, and the moveable chattel acquires importance in the eyes of his emigrant owner. At death, the land cannot, under these circumstances, be divided, and therefore the negroes must; and hence it is that such advertisements as the following are a necessary consequence of the system that ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... and design and forethought into the industrial welter, being 'contrary to the laws of political economy.' Even the proletariat sympathized, though to them Capitalist liberty meant only wage slavery without the legal safeguards of chattel slavery. People were tired of governments and kings and priests and providences, and wanted to find out how Nature would arrange matters if she were let alone. And they found it out to their cost in the days when Lancashire used up nine generations of wage slaves ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... one of you, Conscript Fathers, though I be captured times without number. My body is a Carthaginian chattel, but my spirit is yours. The former has been alienated from you, but the latter nobody has the power to make anything else than Roman. As captive I belong to the Carthaginians, yet, as I met with misfortune not from cowardice but from zeal, I am not only a Roman, but my heart is in your ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... played into the hands of this man and his companions. The traders made their own laws and set their own standards. The value of a squaw of the Blackfeet was no more than that of the liquor she had destroyed. It would be in character for them to keep her as a chattel captured in war. ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... own particular possession; he was her chattel, her thing; and he and other people knew that it was no light affair to meddle with the personal property ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... enchant. aye, an affirmative vote. bow, a weapon. chose, did choose. bow, part of a ship. chose, a thing; a chattel. chap, a boy. bass, a term in music. chap, the jaw. bass, a fish. gout, a disease. conjure', to implore. gout, ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... on his back, folks were talking about him. We had to raise money on the boats to pay for our food and father's medicine. If we don't have a good season this summer we will be unable to pay off the chattel mortgage next winter, and will lose the boats. I tell you, Miss Wyn, it ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... marriage with Dorothy Vernon, I had not at all taken into consideration her personal inclination. A girl, after all, is but the chattel of her father, and must, perforce, if needs be, marry the man who is chosen for her. But leaving parental authority out of the question, a girl with brick-red hair and a multitude of freckles need not be considered when an agreeable, ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... thou as peasant-girls to jape He-whore! Thy Lord's delight the while: Now shall hair-curling chattel scrape Thy cheeks: poor wretch, ah' poor ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... You know Purse, that keeps the gen'ral store? Wa'al, he come to me some months ago, on the quiet, an' said that he wanted to borro' five hunderd. He didn't want to git no indorser, but he'd show me his books an' give me a statement an' a chattel morgidge fer six months. He didn't want nobody to know 't he was anyway pushed fer money because he wanted to git some extensions, an' so on. I made up my mind it was all right, an' I done it. Wa'al, about a month or so after he come to me with tears in his eyes, ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... at the helpless Kerothi. "That doesn't mean much to you, does it? In your society, women are chattel, to be owned, bought, and sold. If you see a woman you want, you offer a price to her father or brother or husband—whoever the owner might be. Then she's yours until you sell her to another. Adultery is a very serious crime on ...
— The Highest Treason • Randall Garrett
... she received him so? She had gone too far—much too far. But, somehow, she had not been able to bear it—that buoyant, confident air, that certainty of his welcome. No! She would show him that she was not his chattel, to be taken or left on his own terms. The, careless good-humor of his blue eyes was too much, after those ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... been one's own chattel; as if a Non-Austrian Kaiser mere impossible, and the Reich and its laws had, even Officially, become phantasmal! That, in fact, was Maria Theresa's inarticulate inborn notion; and gradually, as her successes on the field rose higher, it became ever more articulate: till this of "the SEYN-SOLLENDE ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... wit, and beauty were rendered impotent by a greatness of fortune whose proportions obliterated all else; if one simply argued from the premise that young love was no affair of hers, since she must always be regarded as a gilded chattel, whose cost was writ large in plain figures, what girl, with blood in her veins, could endure it long without wincing? This girl had undue, and, as he regarded such matters, unseemly control over her temper and her nerves, but she had blood enough in ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... at my opportunity. "If you are not merely a chattel and a decoy, if there is any womanhood, any self-respect in you, you ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... baptismal entry, but a slave needed no more—indeed did not need that. It was not given for his sake, but only for the convenience of his godfather should the chattel ever seek to run away, or should it become desirable to exchange him for some other form of value. There was nothing harsh or brutal or degraded about it. Mr. Desmit was doing, in a business way, what ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... that is, a working-beast and a part of the stock of the manor on which he liveth; but then thou and the like of thee shall free him, and then is mastership put to its shifts; for what should avail the mastery then, when the master no longer owneth the man by law as his chattel, nor any longer by law owneth him as stock of his land, if the master hath not that which he on whom he liveth may not lack and live withal, and cannot have without ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... aware that residents in these breeding States are to be found who would scorn to utter a wilful falsehood, and who deny this propagation of the human chattel for the flesh market; but there can be little doubt that the unbiased seeker after truth will find that such is the case. And why not? Why should those who make their livelihood by trafficking in the flesh of their fellow-creatures ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray |
