"Chattel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breadth of the civilised world, promising ultimately to produce a change in social conditions compared with which the abolition of slavery sinks into comparative insignificance. It is no longer a question of the emancipation of a few chattel slaves, but of the ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... generous feeling, and what they regarded as a democratic principle of government, committed a serious error in bestowing the right of suffrage indiscriminately upon the male negro population of the South. A man who had been all his life an ignorant "chattel personal" was suddenly transformed into a sovereign elector. Instead of this precipitate legislation, it would have been wiser to restrict the suffrage to those who acquire a proper education, and ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... 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 ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... 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 difficulty of devising any definite course of action for the chief himself, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... with the question whether I was speaking the truth. She was 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 have ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... by virtue of the Constitution and the laws of the State of his former residence as to claim under them the right to own and sell his slave in a Territory. The difficulty is, while the emigrant might take with him his human chattel, he could not take with him the law ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... last 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, In the ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... "Do you 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 some chair ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... the valley and the settlement. In the mountains a woman works, of course, and earns her board and keep. She is a valuable industrial possession or chattel to the man, who may profit by her labour; never a luxury—a bill of expense. As she walked, Johnnie nodded toward the factory in the valley, beginning to blaze with light—her bridge of toil, that was to carry her from the island ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... 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 conventional restraints of outward demeanour, has made human intercourse smooth and seemly, but imposed ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... 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
... Virginia, which for eight years had been self-governing, Virginia which had begun to feel that she had a life of her own, a place of her own among the nations, suddenly found herself given away like some worthless chattel to two of the King's favourites -the Earl ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... are told, indeed, by the learned doctors of the nullification school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights of human nature: that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel; that crispy hair transforms a human being into a four-footed beast. The master-priest informs you that slavery is consecrated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament: that ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... 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 ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... to whom he was hired, that he determined to buy him at any cost. His old master held him proportionately high. But by paying one thousand dollars down, and promising to pay another thousand in a certain time, the purchase was made, and this chattel passed over into the hands ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... 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 you, Mr. Leigh, will ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... is even more repugnant to European feelings. In Africa a born chattel is a chattel for ever: the native phrase is, ''Pose man once come up slave, he be slave all time.' There is no such thing as absolute manumission: the unsophisticated libertus himself would not dream of claiming it. We have on board a white-headed ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... pigeon, the wolf has eaten the lamb; the lion has devoured the buffalo with sharp horns; man has killed the lion with an arrow, with a sword, with gunpowder; but the Horla will make of man what we have made of the horse and of the ox: his chattel, his slave and his food, by the mere of his will. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... 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 ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... 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 is ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... 1614 west Twenty-Second street, Jacksonville, Florida, claims to be a grandson of Osceola, last fighting chief of the Seminole tribe. Born in 1858 of a mother who was part of the human chattel belonging to one of the Hearnses of Alachua County in Florida, he served variously during his life as a State and Federal Government contractor, United States Marshal ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... tribes. We must go back to the age of Abraham and Sarah to find a Hebrew woman possessed of the same powers as the Babylonian lady who, in the fifth year of Cambyses, sold a slave for two manehs and five shekels of silver, her husband and mother guaranteeing the value of the chattel that was thus sold. ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... expressed may 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 ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... quiet confidence. He stepped close to her. "You are my slave, do you understand?—bought in the market-place as I might buy me a mule, a goat, or a camel—and belonging to me body and soul. You are my property, my thing, my chattel, to use or abuse, to cherish or break as suits my whim, without a will that is not my will, holding your very ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... to the main matter, and I implored her to let me take her home. First I gave her your letter. She read it, flushed up, and threw it away from her. 'He commands me!' she said, fiercely. 'But I am no one's chattel.' I replied that you had only summoned her back to her duty and her home, and I asked her if she could really mean to repay your unfailing love by bringing anguish and dishonor upon you? She sat dumb, and her stubbornness ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... better known as "Mammy Dink", is one of the oldest ex-slaves living in Muscogee County. She was born the chattel of Major Jack Walton, the largest ante-bellum planter and slave-holder of Talbot County, a man who owned several hundred Negroes and ten thousand or more acres of land. As a child, "Mammy Dink" was "brung up" with the Walton white children, often joining and playing with them in ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... most in his power to make or mar the fugitive sailor's chances was in connection with the familiar fiction that the Englishman's house is his castle. To hide a sailor was to steal the king's chattel—penalty, 5 Pounds forfeited to the parish; and if you were guilty of such a theft, or were with good reason suspected of being guilty, you found yourself in much the same case as the ordinary thief or the receiver of stolen goods. A search ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... in the rudest tribes, the women and children were subject to the will of the stronger, the head of the family. Among the Aryan races the family system was widened, and the patriarch of the tribe secured personal obedience and economic services from all members of the community. Chattel slavery, the typical form of industrial organization in early tropical civilization, seems to have been one of the necessary steps to progress from rude conditions; students to-day incline to view it as an essential stage in the history of the race. But as conditions changed with industrial development, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... the ring? It was not upon him when he was stripped for the embalmer. Of that I made sure. Neither was it among his private effects. In vain I searched every room that he had entered, every box, and vase, and chattel that he had owned. I sifted the very sand of the desert in the places where he had been wont to walk; but, do what I would, I could come upon no traces of the ring of Thoth. Yet it may be that my labours would have overcome all obstacles had it not ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Clarkson, Wilberforce, Macaulay, and others, had secured the abolition of the slave trade thirty years before (1807), but the united opposition of the colonial planters to a reform which would deprive them of the services of their chattel laborers postponed the consummation of the humanitarian measure. The reformed Parliament proved less sensitive to the planters' arguments. It destroyed the system forever, making a cash compensation to ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... 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
... When my fellow-chattel appeared next morning with my coffee, he was embarrassed. With guile he strove to be talkative about matters of no consequence. But ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... church on Easter Sunday, followed by a trophy. This trophy had once been a chattel, but was now, as Mr. Deane assured him, a man. Scarcely a shade darker than Mr. Deane himself as to complexion, in figure quite as prepossessing, in bearing not less erect, he passed up the north aisle of St. Peter's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... of bed and softly slipped the bolt of the door into her husband's dressing room. She did it on a wild impulse. She felt that she could not bear him near her to-night. He should see that she was not his chattel.... But, perhaps, he did not want to come.... Well, so much the better. In any case, she wanted to show him that she did not want him. She wondered if he would venture.... She wondered if he ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... becomes almost a passion. As the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comes unconsciously to worship idols, and imitates bad patterns and examples in the absence of worthy ones. He obeys as with a deep sense of being our chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce him, if the means be wisely chosen. The authority must, of course, be ascendancy over heart and mind. The more absolute such authority the more the will is saved from caprice and feels the power of steadiness. Such authority ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... prayer. The recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he was the chattel of his master! ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... superior qualifications were subject to the control of a vulgar, narrow-minded, tyrannical master. This same gentleman, having heard of the fame of George's invention, took a ride over to the factory, to see what this intelligent chattel had been about. He was received with great enthusiasm by the employer, who congratulated him on possessing so valuable a slave. He was waited upon over the factory, shewn the machinery by George, who, in high spirits, talked so fluently, held himself so erect, looked ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... Crown and from public bodies, this same institution was declared to be recognized by the common law of England; and slaves were declared to be, in their language, merchandise, chattels, just as much private property as any other merchandise or any other chattel. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... lump sum of money to which amount is added the cost of her outfit, usually as much as the price paid to the woman or her relatives. Until this amount was worked off—and the accounts were, of course, not over accurately kept—the woman was to all intents the chattel of her master. This has, undoubtedly, for many centuries been the custom of the country. I am glad, however, to be able to state that quite recently the highest court in Japan has decided that, whatever custom may have decreed, the law gives, and ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... his room to watch him. He was white and still, hardly breathing, already the overdue chattel of the grave. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... actually; for the 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 Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and 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 days, he is to be taken to his birthplace, ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... from being considered a chattel and a beast of burden, was for the first time considered man's equal, and allowed ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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; that, at the least suspicion of rebelliousness, ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... jealously stand aloof from whatever is in their apprehension, menial drudgery; but their activity in fact contributes appreciably to the sustenance of the group. The subsequent stage of quasi-peaceable industry is usually characterised by an established chattel slavery, herds of cattle, and a servile class of herdsmen and shepherds; industry has advanced so far that the community is no longer dependent for its livelihood on the chase or on any other form of activity that can fairly be classed as exploit. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... father had 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... am 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 - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... conscience and honesty withdrew. Without going into the demoralizing details, suffice it to say that I stole a blanket from some hapless victim belonging to another company, and thus safeguarded the health and military efficiency of a chattel of the Nation. How the other fellow got along, I don't know. I made no impertinent inquiries, and, during the day time, indefinitely thereafter, kept that blanket in my knapsack, carefully concealed from prying eyes. But it will be recorded here that this was ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... visible Lord more distant than the new invisible one. The slave became the serf; that is, he could be shut in, but not shut out. When once he belonged to the land, it could not be long before the land belonged to him. Even in the old and rather fictitious language of chattel slavery, there is here a difference. It is the difference between a man being a chair and a man being a house. Canute might call for his throne; but if he wanted his throne-room he must go and get it himself. Similarly, he ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... 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
... But when the Eunuch saw the Caliph he cried out at him and sprang up to strike him exclaiming, "Woe to thee! art thou Jinn-mad? whither going?" But the Commander of the Faithful shouted at him saying, "Ho! thou ill-omened slave!" and the chattel in his awe of the Caliphate fancied that the roar was of a lion about to rend him and he ran off and entered the presence of his owner quivering with terror. "Woe to thee!" said his master; "what hath befallen thee?" and he, "O my lord, the while I was sitting at the gate suddenly a man passed ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... belong to me, you are my property, my chattel; I am going to give you my instructions, and they must ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... after her, panting and wounded. Aunt Alsie repel—refuse her!—Aunt Alsie!—who had always been her special possession and chattel. It had been taken for granted in the family, year after year, that if no one else was devoted to Hester, Aunt Alsie's devotion, at least, never failed. Hester's clothes were Miss Puttenham's special care; it was for Hester that ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... around the colt's neck, was the mountain Shylock, Pedro Garcia, intent upon leading off the innocent new-comer. Pedro no doubt had perceived an opportunity either to force Felipe to meet some of his debts, or else hold the colt as a very acceptable chattel. Also, he evidently had calculated upon early dawn as the time best suited to do this thing, in view of Felipe's long debauch upon unpaid-for wine. At any rate, there he was, craftily letting down the bars. Raging with ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... This small element had for centuries now been swelled by captives taken in war, and by accessions through misery, poverty, and debt, which drove men to sell themselves and families and wear the collar of servitude. The slave was not under the lash; but he was a mere chattel, having no more part than cattle (from whom this title is derived) in the real ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... with the whipping paddle upon the bottom of his feet, by old Master Jack, until blood blisters arose, when he took his knife and opened them. I was then sent for salt and water, and the bruises of the suffering chattel were washed as usual in ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... 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
... get the form for the recognizances, the amount of which, L100, after such a sentence, was a fair proof of the view of the Court as to our good faith in the whole matter. As a married woman, I was unable to give recognizances, being only a chattel, not a person cognisable by law; the Court mercifully ignored this—or I should have had to go to prison—and accepted Mr. Bradlaugh's sole recognizance as covering us both. It further inserted in the sentence that we were "to be placed in the First ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... that any of the human species were put under his feet; it was only all things, and man, who was created in the image of his Maker, never can properly be termed a thing, though the laws of Slave States do call him "a chattel personal;" Man then, I assert never was put under the feet of man, by that first charter of human rights which was given by God, to the Fathers of the Antediluvian and Postdiluvian worlds, therefore this doctrine of equality ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... Didn't I 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
... 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 ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... infinite risk; to be born of wicked parents and trained in vice! to be born of silly parents, and trained to unrealities! of parents who regard you as a sort of chattel or property, belonging more to them than to yourself! Again, you may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will never be able to understand you, and who will do their best to thwart you (as a hen when she has hatched a duckling), and then call you ungrateful because you do not ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... Bless you!—when I took my wife along on the cruise of the Minota, we found on board a nigger- chasing, adorable Irish terrier puppy, who was smooth-coated like Jerry, and whose name was Peggy. Had it not been for Peggy, this book would never have been written. She was the chattel of the Minota's splendid skipper. So much did Mrs. London and I come to love her, that Mrs. London, after the wreck of the Minota, deliberately and shamelessly stole her from the Minota's skipper. I do further admit that I did, deliberately and shamelessly, compound my wife's felony. We ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... for, deceive not yourself, the harem, what we are 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 ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... by what he considers his rights, and is ready to fight for them. Our archers have proved that the commonalty are as brave as the knights, and though badly armed, this rascaldom may fight sturdily. The French peasant has no rights, and is a chattel, that his lord may dispose of as he chooses. As long as they met with no opposition all who fell into their hands were destroyed, and the castles ravaged and plundered, the peasants behaving like a pack of mad wolves. Our fellows are of sterner stuff, and they will have a mind to fight, if ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... Fox Ellison, taken as was the custom, from the slave-holder who held her as a chattel. Her parents took her away from the plantation when they were freed and lived in different localities, supported by the father who was now paid American wages. Her parents died while she was quite young and she married Fox Ellison, an ex-slave of the Fox Ellison plantation. His name was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... Marshal 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 ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old-time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, and were taken for granted by everybody; only they did not show, as in the old slavery times, because there was no difference in ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... citizen is wealthy enough to lend money to the Federal Government, a State cannot tax his scrip to the amount of one cent. But, if the doctrine contended for by some is sound, then it may take the citizen himself, confiscate the whole of his property, blot out his citizenship, and make a chattel of him, and the Federal Government can afford him no protection! Among all the doctrines that Slavery has originated in this country, there is none ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... situation. He regarded her only as a friend in need of sympathy and help. His chivalry was up in arms at the thought that she was not properly appreciated by her husband, who, he began to suspect, was inclined to neglect her and treat her as a mere chattel. The suspicion angered him. True, Violet had never definitely told him so; but he gathered as much from her unconscious admissions and revered her all the more for her bravery in endeavouring to keep ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... 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 days she had ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 Governor 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," it is really ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... sympathizing with the stranger whose righteous indignation had about it a manliness that appealed to them. Presently Sir Algernon ceased to kick, his struggles grew fainter. Brian let his right arm pause then, and with his left flung his foe into the corner as if he had been a mere chattel. ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... 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 ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... 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," ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... slaves attached to it? To answer that question we may examine the sales of slaves and the sales of lands to see if either group has peculiarities, the recurrence of which in a sale of land and slaves might decide. But we soon find that a slave was sold exactly like a piece of land or any chattel. The only exception is that certain guarantees are expected with the slave, which differ from those demanded with a piece of land. On the whole, then, the chief group will be "sales," with subdivisions according to the class of property used. ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... the "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 ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... response to what I said, to refer to the testimony of history, I will bear witness now, by the authority of history, that this very race of which he speaks is the only race now existing upon this planet that ever hewed their way out of the prison-house of chattel slavery to the sunlight of personal liberty by their own unaided arm. So much for that part of the gentleman's argument as relates ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... 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
... right to exist as an independent nation of slaveholders. How may we explain so monstrous a pretence? There is but one explanation that is adequate. It may be stated in a single word, ambition. The lesson of our experience is that this malignant system of slavery, the chattel slavery of the South, is too great a temptation to the ambition of men. Let us not disregard it. Political ambition stands always ready to strike hands with the devil, and the devil is always near the conscience of ambitious men. We have no recourse ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... ultimately most conducive to the public prosperity—is to dispose of it for a term of years, that is, on long leases of 1000 years, or virtually in perpetuity; the object in this case of adopting the leasehold tenure being, by making the land a chattel interest, to get rid of the difficulties in the matter of inheritance and transfer, which, under the administration of English law, and in reference more particularly to the Asiatic people who will be the principal landowners, are incident to real property. Town ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... families had come from Mexico to escape revolutionary disturbances there, bringing implements, horses, cattle, etc. When they arrived they had to borrow seeds and provisions for the support of the families. The company furnished these on a chattel mortgage at 7 per cent. But the company was not able to provide irrigating water, so the settlers, after two years of fruitless effort, had to leave the land, losing all their mortgaged personal property. Some families lost $700 ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... himself, 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? Whats the world ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... "I 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, were he even ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... full instructions to act for me, and even an authorization in writing, if you prefer it. She is already in the habit of coming here; but her visits will give you very little trouble. And, as she is a slave, or, as you call it, I believe, a chattel, she will be already quite accustomed to the treatment which her class are in the habit ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... to the thing which he has made by his labor. This is a very modern and highly civilized conception. Singularly enough, it has been brought forward dogmatically to prove that property in land is not reasonable, because man did not make land. A man cannot "make" a chattel or product of any kind whatever without first appropriating land, so as to get the ore, wood, wool, cotton, fur, or other raw material. All that men ever appropriate land for is to get out of it the natural materials on which they exercise ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... 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
... costume and hair-dressing—for the dolls had no wits of their own to begin with, and were not expected to say clever things, as the President's consort was, after she had lost hers in the crush of the aforesaid mob, who eyed her freely as an appendage to their chattel, the man they had bought by their votes, and put in the highest seat in the Republic. No! she was not provided with an escort to the White House. She did not know three people in Washington beside her relatives, and, looking forward to creeping into the palatial East Room at her uncle's ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... economy itself cease to guide us when they touch moral government. So long as labor is a chattel to be bought and sold, so long, like other commodities, it follows the condition of supply and demand. But if, for his misfortune, an employer considers that he stands in human relations toward his workmen; if he believes, ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... Christians is available for the outside world and yet not within reach of needy brethren? It would be easy for each church to organize within its membership a loan society and use the money supplied by the well-to-do for the accommodation of those temporarily embarrassed. Sometimes the chattel mortgage sharks collect one hundred per cent, or more and the banks, which are established for the purpose of making small short-time loans, usually collect twenty to thirty per cent. Why should a church member be driven to these extremities ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... up so sorrowfully for their sons to be buried in, far away from home. They thought their cause was right. There were many good masters. And again there were bad ones. Whiskey is always a cruel tyrant and is a worse evil than chattel slavery. We were often stopped on our trip by southern troops, in the Territory and Texas, and then again by northerners. We passed over the Pea Ridge battle ground shortly after the battle. Oh! the horrors of war. We often stopped at houses where the wounded were. We let ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... fainted had been revived and lashed again. He had been in the dungeon ninety days at a time. He had experienced the torment of the straightjacket. He knew what the humming bird was. He had been farmed out as a chattel by the state to the contractors. He had been trailed through swamps by bloodhounds. Twice he had been shot. For six years on end he had cut a cord and a half of wood each day in a convict lumber camp. Sick or well, he had cut that cord ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... Ayesha, or Aisse, the Circassian maid, when at last her "owner" returned to Paris to fall under the spell of her radiant beauty and to claim her as his chattel, bought with good gold and trained at his cost to adorn his harem. In vain did Aisse weep and plead to be spared a fate from which every fibre of her being shrank in horror. Her "master" was inexorable. "When I bought you," he said, "it was my intention ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... developed form 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 Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... Such remnants of cheerfulness as were in her I attributed to the Parliamentary duties which kept you out of her sight for so very many hours daily. I do not like to think of the fate to which the free and independent electors of West Odgetown have just condemned her. Only, remember this: chattel of yours though she is, and timid and humble, she despises you in her heart. I am, dear Mr. Pobsby-Burford, Yours very ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... sentenced 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 the Atlantic. The price paid to the British ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... the 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 ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... three documents. "I see," he said, "you are only the caretaker really, the brewer having an assignment of the lease and a chattel mortgage on ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... and loosened his sword, but young Selim had thrown himself at the Marabout's feet, sobbing out entreaties that the maiden's life might be saved, and assurances that he was a staunch believer; while his father, scandalised at such an exhibition on behalf of any such chattel as a female, roughly snatched him from the ground, and insisted ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... speckle the landscape and crowd the market-place; men would note a promising heifer or a well-proportioned steer, and say: "Ah, that one comes of good old Clover Fairy's stock." All that time the picture would be hanging, lifeless and unchanging, beneath its dust and varnish, a chattel that ceased to mean anything if you chose to turn it with its back to the wall. These thoughts chased themselves angrily through Tom Yorkfield's mind, but he could not put them into words. When he gave tongue to his feelings he put matters bluntly ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... Section Two, Article Six," Erskyll objected. "There shall be no chattel slavery or serfdom anywhere in the Empire; no sapient being of any race whatsoever shall be the property of any being ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... as to favor the employer in every instance, and he does not scruple to get all out of the industrial slave that he can; which is, in the main, vastly more than the slave master got, as the latter was at the expense of housing, feeding, clothing and providing medical service for his chattel, while the former is relieved of this expense and trouble. Prof. W.E.B. DuBois, of Atlanta University, who has made a critical study of the rural Negro of the Southern States, sums up the industrial phase ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... rejoicing that his chattel had golden hair and was comely beyond comparison with all other women he had ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al |
