Getting "Hands" from Britain

First, I apologize for the state of the letter below. The microfilm copy machines of late 1980s weren't very good. Then my copy was roughly stored for all those years. Secondly, the letter doesn't mention slaves or laborers. In it the commissioners write to a Mr. Traquair who was a master stone cutter in Philadelphia recommended to them by Secretary of State Jefferson as a man who could arrange for indentured stone cutters to come to the city from Britain.

I share the letter because in describing the "50 plain stone cutters" that they want, they describe them as "hands." "...to furnish the work with many good hands from Britain -- Cutters of Plain Stone" is how the commissioners put it. I have heard estimates of the number of slaves hired by the commissioners swelled by historians who equate the word "hands" with slaves. This letter makes clear that "hands" referred to workers skilled and unskilled.

This principal error of others studying the use of slaves is that they ignore how the master class regarded free laborers. In this letter the commissioners show how anxious they are to temporarily enslave skilled workers. That's what indenting workers to pay off their passage money amounts to. This letter was written at the same time the commissioners wrote to Jefferson and their newly hired superintendent Samuel Blodget bragging on the benefits of hiring slave laborers. Clearly what they had in mind as they began construction was to amass a docile crew of workers. The American system of slavery answered their need for docile laborers but they couldn't buck the free market in skilled laborers.