![Sample our Language & Literature journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5941/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Language-Literature.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The phrase “chattel slavery” evokes a narrative of the Atlantic slave trade as people with African heritage were stolen, forced to labour under abhorrent conditions, and were powerless to prevent their children being sold away generation after generation. However, slaves were not the only people held in a chattel status through the course of American history. Both Indentured Servants and Convicts were held as chattel, albeit a temporary form. This essay suggests that historians of both slavery and unfree labour need to untangle the word chattel from the word slave – for a person who is chattel is not always a slave (and a slave is not always chattel). I argue that terminology is crucial, and that analysis of the semantics of the word chattel shows how current word usage does not match with actual word meaning, which has repercussions in the current political climate.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Jennie Jeppesen is an Early Career Researcher interested in the ways in which the private or public control over convict labour in the American and Australian Transportation systems (1611–1840) changed convict lives and experiences. In particular, she is interested in the intersections and influences of gender and race and how this further impacted on individual convict lives.
Notes
1 “Queen Anne County Judgement Records, 1732–1735,” 162.
2 Fictional narrative based on the “Freedom Petition of Hercules Kent,” Maryland State Archives (hereafter MSA): Queen Anne County Judgement Record, 1732–1735, MSA CE450–6.
3 In the Australian context of Transportation, slaves from Jamaica were sent to Australia to serve their sentences and became free at the same times as white convicts. For examples, see: “Document II: John Brunker and Mary Ann McGreery”; Pybus, Black Founders; Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom.
4 Jeppesen, “To Serve Longer According to Law”; Foster, “Felonious Women.”
5 Jeppesen, “To Serve Longer According to Law”; Jeppesen, “Necessary Servitude”; Jeppesen, “From Whips to Wages.”
6 McCormac, White Servitude in Maryland 1634–1820, 3–4:111; Morris, Government and Labor in Early America, 412; Allen, The Invention of the White Race, vol. 2, chaps. 4–6; Lancaster, “Almost Chattel”; Nasson, Britannia's Empire, 33; Horn, Adapting to a New World, 272; Smith, Colonists in Bondage, 233; Ziegler, Harlots, Hussies, and Poor Unfortunate Women, 18; Parent, Foul Means, 146; Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra, 125; Donoghue, “Indentured Servitude in the 17th Century English Atlantic”; Jeppesen, “To Serve Longer According to Law.” Christine Daniels wrote that as the American master “could not legally presuppose the rights to the labor of the bastard children of their servants […] that servants were not chattel” as a result. Daniels, “Liberty to Complaine,” 222. However, she goes on to say some servants were at risk (such as convicts and servants without contracts). For a critique of Daniels see: Showmaker, “Corrected Above Measure.”
7 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 8; Tomlins, Freedom Bound.
8 Jeppesen, “White Slaves’ Myth.”
9 Riches, “White Slaves, Black Servants”; Jordan and Walsh, White Cargo; Phillips, Without Indentures; Phillips, White Slave Children. For a more complete list, see the work being done on this topic by Liam Hogan: Hogan, “Debunking the Imagery”; Hogan, “Reviewing the Fallout”; Hogan and Reilly, “The Irish in the Anglo-Caribbean.”
10 Allen, The Invention of the White Race, 2:20; Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Vol. II C: 302; Hening, Statutes at Large, 1810, Vol. 2: 511.
11 Jeppesen, “Necessary Servitude.” It is important to keep in mind that slavery is not a static institution. Antebellum slavery is not identical to earlier 1600 or 1700 slavery. It is reasonable to argue the chattel slave worsened over the years, even as the chattel servant remained in an earlier form of chattelhood.
12 Sapir, “Language as a Historical Product: Drift.”; Sapir, “Language as a Historical Product: Phonetic Law”; Hamilton, Leskovec, and Jurafsky, “Cultural Shift or Linguistic Drift?”
13 Literal meanings of words and the meaning of the way they are combined.
14 Lyons, Language, Meaning, and Context, 39, 42; Dressler, “‘Enimies to Mankind’,” 353, fn11.
15 Elbourne, Meaning, 8; Wierzbicka, English, 4. Boulton, The Anatomy of Language, Chapter 4.
16 Oksaar, “Sociocultural Aspects,” 258; Withington, Society in Early Modern England, Chapter introduction.
17 Lyons, Language, Meaning, and Context, chap. Definitions; Pulman, Word Meaning and Belief.
18 Withington, Society in Early Modern England, 6. David Wooten disagrees with some of Withingtons conclusions here, but his work was unavailable to me by deadline.
19 Harrison, “When the Convicts Came,” ix.
20 Harris, The Linguistics of History, 3–5, 7. I should note, that not all-round blue berries are blueberries.
21 Vendryes, Language, 195.
22 Newman, A New World of Labor, 2; Snyder, “Marriage on the Margins,” 143. For more on Gold Coast slavery see: Greene, “Daughters of the Trade”; Shumway, “Castle Slaves.” For more on slaves in Latin America see: Blanchard, Under the Flags of Freedom; Schloss, Sweet Liberty; Martin, History of the Colonies of the British Empire.
23 Klein, Slavery in the Americas, 38.
24 Yalom, A History of the Wife; Wegner, Chattel or Person?; Brown, “Chainging the Marital Rape Exemption,” 658; Martin, Battered Wives, 27, 71, 89; Helgren and Vasconcellos, “From Chattel to Breeding Wenches.”
25 Philip D Morgan argues that servants were not chattel because they were not held in perpetuity. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 299.
26 Gibbons, Forensic Linguistics.
27 Chattel is separated into “real” and “personal” – real being land and personal being moveable objects. In this chapter, we are talking about personal chattel. Manley, Nomothetas, sec. “cattal.” Black, A Law Dictionary, 2nd ed, 194. Dickson, Analysis of Kent's Commentaries., 113. Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution, Vol. 2: 174; Black, A Law Dictionary, 194. See also Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 280–283. “Chattel (noun): An item of Personal Property that is movable; it may be animate or inanimate; an item of personal property which is movable, as distinguished from real property (land and improvements).” In Aristotle, the Greek word for property was either ktema/ktesis when applied to personal property, and ousia when applied to real estate. Many thanks to Nicole Davis and Tim Parkin for these translations.
28 Bouvier, A Law Dictionary, 2:333, 394. This qualified chattel also applied to “real” chattel, as in the lease of a property see: Nelson, An Abridgment of the Common Law, Vol. 2: 800–802. In some cases, “real” qualified chattel was also applied to “Body of the Ward” (children): Manley, Nomothetasr, sec. “catalls.” Also 1616 Bullokar “Chattels real are wards.” As quoted in Murray, A New English Dictionary, Vol. II C: 302. For some of the these in the time period of Virginian settlement see the chattal/cattal entry of these works: Blount, Nomo-Lexikon; The Law-Latin Dictionary; Cowell, A Law Dictionary; Rastell, Les Termes De La Ley.
29 Kent, Commentaries on American Law, 202.
30 Blackstone, Commentaries, Book 1, Chapter 14.
31 Kent, Commentaries on American Law; Dickson, Analysis of Kent's Commentaries.
32 Vlassopoulos, “Greek Slavery,” 119.
33 Ibid., 121. Interestingly, Aristotle uses slightly different terms for property in his argument that slaves were property – ktesis and ousia. It is unclear at this stage if he means something different by each use of the word. Many thanks to Nicole Davis and Tim Parkin for their assistance with the translations from the original Greek. Aristotle, Politics a Treatise on Government, Book 1 Chapter IV. See also 1753 Richardson Grandison (edition 7) 263; 1832 Austin Jurisprudence I xv 400, Definitions of chattel of slaves or bondmen, chattelization and chattelism, all cited in Murray, A New English Dictionary, Vol. II C: 302–303.
34 Michel et al., “Quantitative Analysis of Culture.”
35 It should be noted I did run these later searchers with the date range 1600–1750 to determine if the statistical number was so small as to not appear on a longer dateline, but no instances of “chattel slavery” were found by the Ngram tool in this time period – the results were thus not included as images for print.
36 Pettit, “Historical Time in the Age of Big Data”; Pechenick, Danforth, and Dodds, “Characterizing the Google Books Corpus”; Younes and Reips, “Guideline for Improving the Reliability of Google Ngram Studies”; Gooding, “Mass Digitization and the Garbage Dump.”
37 All quoted in: Cunliffe, Chattel Slavery, 1, 3, 6, 7, 10.
38 “The National Archives | Exhibitions & Learning Online | Black Presence | Rights.”
39 I have performed all further searches from 1750 because, as shown above, the term “chattel slave” doesn't appear until then.
40 Morgan, Slave Counterpoint, 8.
41 “Queen Anne County Judgement Records 1732–35,” 162.
42 A Samuel Langton had a shipment in 1724, which would fit the timing of when Kent would have been transported, however it arrives in South Carolina rather than Maryland. Minchinton, The Trade of Bristol, 18.
43 “Chester Quarter Sessions.”
44 “Transportation Bonds.”
45 “Voyage 16083, Union Sloop.” Notice however that his last name is spelled with a D rather than a T. This could be transcription error by the Queen Anne Court in Kent's case, or a different individual. Other Langtons, in particular George, were active in the slave trade in the 1730s.
46 Kimmel, “Chapter 4 – Blacks before the Law in Colonial Maryland.”
47 “Queen Anne County Judgement Records 1732–35,” 163.
48 “John Baptist” Lower Norfolk County Wills and Deeds C 1651–1656, f. 8; “Degroe” Lancaster County Orders 1655–1666, 369 and Lancaster County Deeds 1654–1668 337; “John Keratan” Charles City County Deeds Wills Orders 1655–1665, 604–605, 617–618; “Casor” Northhampton County Deeds Wills 1651–1654 f. 226 and 1655–1668, f. 10; “Philip Gowen” McIlwaine, Minutes, 411; “Edward Mozingo” McIlwaine, 316.
49 Many thanks to Teresa Foster who pointed out this case to me. “Queen Anne County Judgement Records 1730–1732,” 337–338.
50 MSA: Queen Anne County Court Records, 1734.
51 There are other court cases where people ARE forced into servitude to “pay-off” their debts. In this instance, the seizure of all of her goods (which were in many cases undervalued) paid off her debt to the court, and thus she remains free.
52 “Queen Anne County Judgement Records 1735–1739 (Part 2),” 253. “Queen Anne County Judgement Records 1744–1746,” 254. Mary Meredith T from Shropshire 1734. Coldham, The Complete Book of Emigrants, 546.
53 Hening, Statutes at Large, 8:136.
54 Ibid., 133, 140. Many slave freedom petitions arose due to the knowledge of a white female ancestor who was most likely a servant with a mulatto child bound out. See Brown and Sims, “To Swear Him Free”; Snyder, “To Seeke for Justice,” 2011.
55 Hamrick and Hamrick, Northumberland County, 261. In another case in New York, parents placed an advertisement looking for children who had been sold without their consent. Morris, Government and Labor, 321. “Northampton Order and Wills 1683–1689,” 111; “Accomack County Deeds Wills and Orders 1663–1666,” 87; “Accomack County Order and Wills 1671–1673,” 118–119, 121.
56 Snyder, “To Seeke for Justice,” 2011; Snyder, “Sexual Consent and Sexual Coercion”; Snyder, Brabbling Women.
57 Newman, A New World of Labor, 13.
58 The grandchildren were eventually freed. Brown and Sims, “To Swear Him Free,” 96.
60 Snyder, “To Seeke for Justice,” 2011, 128–129, 136–138.
61 Ibid., 146.
62 Dressler, “‘Enimies to Mankind,’” 359, 364–368, 370. Many thanks to Nicole for allowing me to view the proof copy of this article.
63 See for example Michael Jude who was sentenced for life and arrived in Virginia by the Justitia in 1744, William Hambleton for life Transported on the Rose in 1755, James Billian Transported for life aboard the Greyhound in 1756, John Hands Transported for life on the Tryal 1766 or Thomas Smith a lifer aboard the Justitia in 1767 Coldham, English Convicts, 24, 118, 119, 248. None of the sale records for these convicts has yet been discovered.
64 Virginia Gazette, 22 October 1736.
65 http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17350702-28-defend219&div=t17350702-28#highlight; http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17350911-34-defend229&div=t17350911-34#highlight; http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=OA17350922n10-2&div=OA17350922#highlight; American Weekly Mercury, 22 June 1738, Issue 964, 3.
There are other suggestions of life sentences – Mary Carleton was transported for life to Jamaica, but she set herself up as a prostitute in Port Royal. It is unknown if she was owned by someone else or free. Cordingly, Life among the Pirates, 160. See also Ann Terry who is pardoned and “transported for life” Old Bailey online t17440510–8 as is Mary Smith who arrives on the Tryal in 1755. Old Bailey online t17550702–17 Catherine Davidson Oldbailey online t17480907–53.
66 Except after 1769, when the children of convict women COULD be pre-supposed by the master of said convict. Jeppesen, “To Serve Longer According to Law.”
67 Foster, “A Shameful and Unblessed Thing”; Jeppesen, “Necessary Servitude,” Chapter 4.
68 Virginia Gazette, 4 April 1751, Virginia Gazette 19 September 1766. “There is no disembodied service” Patterson, Slavery and Social Death, 24.
69 “This distinction was neither important nor obvious” Jordan, The White Man's Burden, 29.
70 Donoghue, “Out of the Land of Bondage,” 949, 951.
71 Boulton, The Anatomy of Language, 103.
72 As quoted in: Schleifer, A. J. Greimas and the Nature of Meaning, 1.
73 Vendryes, Language, 199.