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, March 23, 2015

How the commissioners made a profit off slave laborers

"Here, too, the commissioners charged the contractor sixteen dollars a month for the hands."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 148

I was unable to find any explanations for the labor policies of the commissioners. They did not write about it nor did anyone else. The records do show that in 1795 they let contractors use their laborers to tend mason for $60 a year, exactly what it cost the commissioners to hire a labor for a year from his master. In 1799 they upped what they charged contractors to $16 a month, about $10 more than they paid a slave's master. 

The scan below is an example of that. We can't be certain the laborer that Emory got was a slave, but it is hard to imagine a free worker allowing the commissioners to profit on his labor to such an extent.



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