chattel slave
Human as commodity
A chattel slave is a person legally classified as property—owned, bought, sold, and inherited like livestock or furniture.
The term distinguishes this absolute form of bondage from other types of unfree labor such as indentured servitude or debt peonage.
Chattel slavery was the system practiced in the American South, the Caribbean, and Brazil, where enslaved people had no legal personhood and their children were born into the same status.
A Virginia planter in 1820 might own forty chattel slaves and bequeath them in his will.
- bondageInvoluntary subjugation to another
- shacklesMetal bonds for prisoners
- plantationLarge-scale farming operation
- field handAgricultural labor worker
- auctionCompetitive public sale
overseer · chains · property · servitude · cotton · cotton fields · whip · forced labor · freedom · freedom papers · abolition · bondsman · manumission · auction block · sold down the river · human cargo · branding · escaped
chattel slavefreeman
Unchained person with rights
freedman · property owner · slaveholder · freewoman · master
chattel slaveindentured servant
Contract-bound unpaid laborer
tenant farmer · sharecropper · contract worker · serf · peon
chattel slavewage earner
Paid labor participant
independent contractor · entrepreneur · capitalist · employer · proprietor
chattel, chattels, slave, slaves, slavery, slavish, slavishly, enslaved, enslave