Hoban's estimates of expenses and use of phrase "Negro carpenters"

In 1796, when Hoban made a list of workers needed to finish the White House, he listed "Negro carpenters..."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 107

I found two "estimates" written by James Hoban, judging by the hand writing, that both project the use of hired slaves. While it is important to note estimates, we can't assume that those estimates came to pass, especially in regards to slave hire. Both the documents below are long, and both the reduced and original size versions are difficult to read. Circa 1989 the photocopy machines in the Library of Congress were worse than most and all were bad.

The second, and longer, document scanned below estimates the cost "for the hire of 100 Negros" at 22/10/0 a year for each, or, by my calculations, $59.85 a year. The next line estimates the cost of their daily subsistence at 12 pence a day. That meant the annual estimate for slave hire 2250 Pounds was not that much higher than the annual subsistence of 1875 Pounds.

What I also find notable in the second estimate is that the listing of hired slaves comes after the estimate of stone deliveries. In late 1794, slave use in Hoban's mind may have been tied closely to getting the stone from the wharves to the buildings and then up onto the walls. What is also notable is that there is no mention of the monthly hire of slave or free laborers. We know that laborers were hired by the month because they are listed as "monthly hires" in December 1794 payrolls.

I think that by listing the hire of 100 slaves at so cheap a rate, Hoban was making just the kind of hopeful simplification of the work ahead that the commissioners wanted. There would be a large number of tractable and cheap laborers on hand. Actually getting them was another matter. I think I have evidence that when the commissioners wanted to hire 120 slaves in 1798, they hired 90. So I think a rough estimate that 1/4 of the laborers were free (including some free blacks) is a good one.

In the rest of the second document (which consists of two scans sine I had to cut my photocopy of the original in two to get in onto my scanner,) there is no mention of "Negros" when mention is made of stonecutters, or mention of carpentry, sawying, brick laying, etc.

I think the first document the more important one. In it Hoban estimates how much it would cost to raise the White House from its "present state to the top of the cornices." Hoban estimates 13 "laborers" needed to attend the stone setters and "shed." The stone cutters worked in the shed. So here I think he is accepting the reality that some laborers were free. He didn't call them Negroes.

In the rest of the document he does use the word Negro and describes the reality of the work crew as the payrolls from early 1795 show: below the 12 carpenter he lists, he lists 5 Negro carpenters. Those were the slaves he and his foreman at the White House owned. By segregating them he can show that they cost about two shilling less, about 25% less, than free carpenters. Was he presenting an argument for the hire of slave carpenters? If so it fell on deaf ears because in November 1797, the commissioners banned the hire of slave carpenters.

Finally, when he estimated the wages of sawyers, he didn't note "Negro" sawyers even though he had advertised for them and by August 1795 would exclusively use them. This supports the suggestion I make in my book that Hoban came up with the idea of extra wages for hired slaves to do sawing in August. In January he estimated that each pair of sawyers would be paid 15 shillings a day. As it turned out when he started using slave sawyers it cost  him 2 shillings, 25 cents, in extra wages a day for a pair plus the $60 a year or 22 Pounds paid to the master for each slave. He saved a good deal of money by using the hired slaves as sawyers. This suggests that prior to using slaves, he always paid free laborers or used contractors. The free sawyers could have been free blacks and the contractors likely used slaves.


You can get the context for the report in Through a Fiery Trail, chapter 36. Taking a closer look at the document, I realize now that I misdated it in Slave Labor in the Capital. But the point remains. The document shows that Hoban thought of slave carpenters as an integral part of his crew and the commissioners knew it.