1. Very old; aged: "They were always chippering and chatting to each other, like a pair of Antiquated house-sparrows" (Harriet Beecher Stowe).

2. 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, s:Uncle Tom's Cabin "I was a fool, it's a fact, to let any such Brangle come up," said Legree; "but, …

3. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act III, Scene 1,[1] […] fasten your ear on my Advisings: 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Volume II, Chapter 21, p

4. THE MINISTER'S WOOING HARRIET BEECHER STOWE Let the new bourgeois tyrants cuddle and Cosset the serpent that shall bite them, as did the salon ladies of the old regime

5. In the 1830s opposition to slavery grew from the Abolitionist movement, whose leaders included William Lloyd Garrison who published an anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator and Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote a famous novel about a slave called Uncle Tom's Cabin.