Public carts probably manned by hired slaves

"...the commissioners still maintained what were known as 'public carts,'...."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 83

Well, I think they did. I found no payrolls for carters but I think that means that laborers manned the carts probably to do both the heavy lifting and drive the carts. This letter from Lewis Deblois written in 1796 suggests that. He asks to commissioners to send an overseer and a "public cart" to retrieve some stolen lumber. There are payrolls for overseers and they were invariably called overseers of the laborers.

This letter is also interesting because it accuses Alexander Leslie, an associate of Daniel Carroll of Duddington, the main land owner on Capitol Hill, of the thefts. Evidently at that time there was no knee jerk racist reaction of blaming blacks for any thefts.

The letter also shows that despite the many slaves in the area getting work done was not as simple as whipping them into line.

In the 1800 census Daniel Carroll is listed as owning 25 slaves. The bridges to make Pennsylvania Avenue east of the Capitol passable were made of logs that came from Carroll. We can easily imagine Carroll's slaves cutting, preparing and delivering the logs. Or can we? Deblois writes "but for the want of 150 dollars (which would complete the bridges) the cost of the logs with the labor of hauling and laying will shortly be lost." That suggests that the project stopped once there was no money to pay workers evidently mostly, if not all, common laborers. The commissioners could not spare theirs nor could Carroll spare his without more money.

Deblois owned a store served by the avenue and the letter was probably as much to remind the commissioners to finish the project as it was to save the logs. However, there was a remarkable degree of distrust between land owners and the commissioners and between fellow land owners. I hope my book Through a Fiery Trial makes that apparent. The number 59 written on top of the photocopy of the letter I scanned refers to the chapter in an early draft of that book that used the info in Deblois's letter. The snarling between land owners is actually developed in chapter 60. You can get a taste of William Tunnicliff's rivalry with Deblois in this blog post.