"Middlemen soon got involved in the slave hire process. In November 1794, a month before the slave hire contracts were finalized at the first of the year, John Slye offered to bring thirty "valuable Negro men slaves" owned by friends on the condition that they get sixty dollars a year for each slave and the commissioners would hire Slye as an overseer."
Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 30
The letter below is from William Deakins who acted as the treasurer for the commissioners and also for the Potomac Company. He knew Slye from the Potomac company. Slye came to work for the company with recommendations as to his own character and with "hands." I don't think we can assume that those "hands" were slaves. Slye worked as an overseer at the Capitol for at least two years. I am not sure which slaves Slye brought to the Capitol but it might be possible to find out because those slaves asked the commissioners for inoculation against small pox and if they had been inoculuated, the payment to those masters would have been docked.
Gentlemen
The bearer Mr. John S Slye wishes to be employed as an overseer in the city, and in order to get him into your employ, his friends, he says, have engaged to hire to the city thirty valuable Negro Men Slaves for one year at 60 dollars a year for each. Mr. Slye had letters of recommendation to me from Mr. Forbes and Mr. Southern. when I was director of the Poto[mac]. Company and he was employed for one year with twenty hands which he brought with him on the Potomac Company's works. If you have a vacancy for an overseer, it may be an object to get Mr. Slye with the number of Labourers he can bring, which he says are valuable slaves.
William Deakins, Jr.
Nov 14, 1794
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