"The commissioners blamed Cooke and Brent for making deliveries after the hired slaves were sent home for the year."
quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 83
"The commissioners placed their next ad in the fall of 1794, angling for sawyers to work through the winter just as Hoban wanted."
quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 102
I should have written Commissioner Thomas Johnson because in the record, it appears that Johnson was alone when those decisions were made. Indeed the hand writing in the official record is Johnson's not the usual clerk's. Usually at least two of the three commissioners signed such orders.
I think this one page in the record, written by Johnson, bares his approach to work in the city. The nagging problem of amassing building materials to put in the hands of skilled workers was best solved by the use of slaves. True, the first order objects to stone deliveries after the "discharge of laborers hired by the year," but that reflects the reality. All the laborers were not slaves.
The last item on the page is a draft for a help wanted ad. It makes no mistake about the nature of the help wanted: "a number of slaves to labor in the brick yards and stone quarries for whom generous wages will be given." Not "to whom" but "for whom." Masters stood to profit not the slaves doing the work.
In the fall of 1794, getting tree trunks sawed into lumber had been a problem for almost two years. Judging from this ad, the commissioners realized that in Maryland slaves did most of the sawing. The commissioners did not like to recognize that slaves had skills. They hired them to keep down the price of labor and didn't want slave masters to think they could get more money out of them. This ad does not explicitly say "slave sawyers," but coupling sawyers with laboring slaves makes pretty clear that the audience for the ad was masters, not free workers. It also showed that grudgingly the commissioners realized that slaves had at least one skill warranting a higher wage.
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