How to buy the book

You can order at History Press as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other on-line retailers. I will send you a signed copy for $23, a little extra to cover shipping. I will send you both Slave Labor in the Capital and Through a Fiery Trial for $40. Send a check to me at PO Box 63, Wellesley Island, NY 13640-0063.

My lectures at Sotterley Plantation in St. Mary's County, Maryland, on September 23, 2015, and the DAR Library on December 5 are now blog posts below listed under book talks. The talk I gave at the Politics and Prose Bookstore on February 28, 2015, along with Heather Butts, author African American Medicine in Washington, was taped by the bookstore. Take a listen.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Stone cutters in 1798

"When they looked to Europe for workers, the president and the commissioners yearned for stone cutters because they feared those already in America 'could command their price.'"

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 85

The commissioners viewed stone cutters as their most problematical employees. They commanded the highest wage and the progress of the buildings depended on how fast they could prepare stone for the masons to set on the walls. In 1795 one commissioner, William Thornton, proposed buying slaves and having them trained as stone cutters. His fellow commissioners didn't react to his proposal and the payrolls below show that in 1798, the peak of slave hire by the commissioners, no slaves, nor free blacks for that matter, cut stone for the commissioners either at the President's house or Capitol.




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