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.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Newspapers ad for "Laborers"

"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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