"So while the commissioners' resolutions called for 'good laboring Negroes,' the ads placed in the newspapers often dropped the word 'Negro.' It's likely that Carroll advised Captain Williams to make the change so it was clear that Irish could still apply. Other free workers found jobs as laborers too, including free blacks."
Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 48
The example I give below is an ad for hiring laborers in 1798. The phrasing of the ad makes it clear that the men wanted were slaves. One doesn't say "For whom...." to free workers. One says "To whom...." One would say "if you absent yourself...." not "if they absent themselves...." So perhaps I read too much in the ad not having the word "Negro", but the fact remains that about a quarter of the laborers hired were free men. In the appendix of my book, I list the names of around 120 all presumably white, and 5 men I am pretty sure were free black laborers.
In the portion of the newspaper I scanned, I included a curious on-going feature "Further extract from an old Manuscript," which pokes fun at the commissioners. Unfortunately that anonymous critic never got around to discussing the commissioners' slave hire policy.
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