in
patriarchal society? If so, then these characteristics brand them as
chattels; but on the contrary, if no record is found of their being
sold, (the buying we have already reasonably accounted for;) if the
children of these servants were reckoned free, if they and their
children could inherit property, then even American slave law and custom
declare them free persons, and not chattels personal.

Take the case of Hagar. We read, Gen. 16:1, she was an Egyptian
"handmaid, maid-servant," perhaps one of those referred to in Gen.
12:16. Abraham, at Sarah's instigation, makes her his concubine. The
usual bickering of Eastern harems ensues. Hagar leaves the tribe, is
sent back by the angel, Ishmael is born, and this son of a slave (?) is
regarded not only as free, but heir of the house of Abraham. Years pass,
and the wild, reckless Ishmael is seen ridiculing Isaac, his puny
brother and coheir. At the sight, all the mother and the aristocrat
again rise up in Sarah, and she cries out to Abraham, "Cast out this
bondwoman and her son, for he shall not be heir with my son, even
Isaac;" and Abraham, so far from regarding them as chattels personal,
and selling them south, sends off the wild boy to be the wild, free
Arab, "whose hand will be against every man, and every man's hand
against his."

Take the case of Bilhah and Zilpah, given by Laban (Gen. 29:24, 29,) as
handmaids (#AUMAU#) to his daughters Leah and Rachel. Gen. 30:4-14.
They become Jacob's concubines, and bear him four sons--Dan, Naphtali,
Gad, and Asher. Here the case is plain; the mothers are "servants," they
have children, and these, instead of being (as in similar cases daily at
the South) "reputed and adjudged in law to be chattels personal," are
recognized as free and equal with the other sons, Reuben, Judah, &c.,
and become, like them, heads of tribes in Israel. In these cases,--and
they are all which relate to the point at issue,--either the status of
these servants _did_ or _did not_ decide that of their children. If it
_did_, then, by the laws of chattelism, the children being free prove
the mother (though servant) to be free; if it _did not_, then the mother
was held only by feudal allegiance, while the children were always free.
In either case the conditions of chattelism did not exist; they were not
slaves, but free persons in the same condition as members of wandering
Arab and Tartar tribes to this day.

Did the second fundamental condition of chattelis