Slaves as Laborers

Use of Slaves to Build and Capitol and White House 1791-1801, by Bob Arnebeck

Part One: Stumbling to a Slave Hire Policy Part Two: Slaves in Skilled Trades Part Four: Slave Use by Private Contractors Part Five: Slaves as Servants

Part Three:

The Use of Slaves as Common Laborers

Most of the slaves used in the construction of the public buildings in Washington between 1792 and 1801 served as common laborers, moving building materials and assisting skilled workers. I have not been able to find any contemporary description of exactly what they did. However, from documents and letters in the commissioners' records, now in the National Archives, one can get some idea of their work and their working and living conditions. There is virtually no information on the slaves' masters in the Archives, save their names, sometimes where they lived, and the amount of money they received for hiring out their slaves to work in the city. Monthly payrolls and time sheets in the National Archives provide the most vivid commentary on the slaves. There we see the slaves' name, though only first names even when the slaves had last names, their wage, which was the same for all the hired slaves, and, on some of the payrolls, the name of their master who got all the money.

It is a national shame that these payrolls have not been collected and published. I photocopied many of them as I did research for my book Through a Fiery Trial: Building Washington 1790-1800, Madison Books, 1991. However, while I included as much information as I could about the use of slaves in the city, I did not have the time to do the painstaking analysis of payrolls and accounts that the government's exploitation of these African Americans demands. After Congress created a commission recently to examine this issue, I had high hopes that all the documents would become readily available and better minds than mine would extract the story of these slaves from them. As I write this in early 2007, I find little new material available and I live far from Washington and am unable to go the National Archives. But I still think it is worthwhile to examine what I have collected and share what I have learned.

That said, I don't want to imply that the fog with which we view this is all the fault of not devoting enough time studying the documents in the Archives. The men who built the city, and the women who shared the experience with them, seemed to have had a knack for ignoring slaves. The three presidentially appointed commissioners in charge of the project made the decision to hire slave laborers on April 13, 1792. They did not specify the number nor require any skills. They asked their employee Captain Elisha Williams, who had been supervising a skeleton crew of white laborers retained after most of the men hired by L'Enfant were fired (see Part One of this essay), to hire "good labouring negroes" and gave the masters the responsibility of "cloathing them well and finding each a blanket," and took on the responsibility of "finding them provisions and paying twenty one pounds a year wages," about $60 which, of course, went to the master. (The dollar system of money was just coming into use and most transactions in Maryland and Virginia were in the old Pounds, Shillings, Pence system with, in Maryland, a Pound worth about $2.66.) There was another important proviso: masters would get less "If the negroes absent themselves a week or more." This helped insure that the slaves hired out were reliable and not prone to runaway, and I've found no evidence that the commissioners' provided their overseers with whips, chains and shackles, or took any precautions to guard the slaves.

At a meeting of the Commissioners at George Town on the thirteenth Day of April 1792; Present Thomas Johnson, David Stuart & Daniel Carroll Esq. The following resolve was made and a copy thereof handed to Capt. Williams. The Commissioners resolve that to hire good labouring negroes by the year, the masters cloathing them well and finding each a blanket, the Commissioners finding them provisions and paying twenty one pounds a year wages. The payment if desired to be made quarterly or half yearly. If the negroes absent themselves a week or more, such time to be deducted. (Commrs. Proceedings)

By April 1792, President Washington had determined the sites of the Capitol and President's house, but an open design competiton for both buildings had not been concluded, so there was no demand for slaves from the architects nor the construction superintendants. So what did the commissioners want the slaves to do? On April 14, 1792, the day after the commissioners ordered the hiring of slaves, they ordered Williams to build a lumber yard 100 feet by 120 feet by 100 feet; to grub the post road "down a breadth of two perches in the avenue from the palace to the Capitol"; and "If Capt Williams negroes come," the "best axe men" were to be sent to work for Andrew Ellicott, the chief surveyor of the project. Ellicott was a Maryland Quaker who did not support slavery and there is no evidence that he requested slave axe man. Even the grubbing of the post road wasn't necessarily to be done by slaves. In their order to Williams the commissioners held out the hope that the work could be contracted out on a piece work basis, not by slaves hired for wages. To me, this indicates that the commissioners only had a foggy idea of what the slaves would do.

During the Founding Era, 1776-1801, there was a shortage of labor and capital. That made all plans problematical. So in place of budgets and work plans, the nation's leaders put their faith in mechanisms to assure an outcome befitting a rising empire. Nine months after hiring slaves, the commissioners did not report on what the slaves did. They only commented on the success of that policy with off-handed phrases suggesting that having slaves put forces in place that improved working conditions. In a January 5, 1793, letter to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson they reported that the slaves "we have employed this Summer have proved a very useful check & kept our Affairs Cool." By a "check" that meant cooling the wage demands of free workers. I examine the genesis of this policy and its immediate upshot in the Part One of this essay. At the same time that they wrote that to Jefferson, the commissioners were hiring a Massachusetts speculator named Samuel Blodget to oversee operations in the capital-to-be. Blodget was a young man who had spent most of his life in the environs of Boston, London and Philadelphia. The supervision of slaves was a novelty to him yet in discussing the use of slave labor, the commissioners only wrote "we may have a good many Negro Labourers none so good for cutting before the Surveyors and none better for tending Masons." (Comm to Blodget 5 Jany 1793)

In 1792 and 1793 the commissioners did not specify how many slaves they wanted to hire, save for throwing out figures, 25, 30 or 40, that they wished could be hired to hold down the cost of operations at their Aquia, Virginia, stone quarry. (As I explain in Part Two of this essay, I can only account for their hiring five slaves to work the quarry.) I am not sure how many slaves were hired in 1792 and 1793 for work in the city. In January 1794, as work progressed on the first floor of the White House and the foundation of the Capitol, they instructed Captain Williams to hire "40 Negro laborers" for the year.

I found a December 1794 payroll for the laborers working under one overseer, Thomas Hardman, and a December 1794 time roll for laborers working under another overseer, Bennett Mudd. From them we can count 40 slaves, and learn their first name and who owned them.

On the Hardman payroll for December 1794, we find 14 slaves on a list of 27 laborers. All were paid the same wage, $5 a month:

James Cafery Labr.

Jonas Breeden Do.

Joseph Calender Do

Alben Hardman Do

Robert Drury Do.

Covetin Lewis Do.

Francis Nebel Do.

William Smith Do

Gustavus Higdon with George Fenwick

Rezin Talbert Do

Ruben Gibson Do.

Jerry Holland Do.

Joseph Johnson Do.

N Tom Miss A Diggs

N Dick Do.

N Frank Wm D. Beall

N Peter Middleton Belt

N Liverpole Richd. Brown

N Dick Miss McGruder

N Manuel Olley Scott

N Will Mary Simms

N Nace Alex Chisley

N Gererd Ewd. Plowden

N Tony Do

N Jack Do

N Tony Jas. Stone

illegible

In Bennett Mudd's time roll for December 1794 we can count 26 more slaves.

Time Role for December 1794

Bennett Mudd	overseer	90 shillings/0 pence	# of days absence and span of dates
Thos. Smith	cook	52/6
John D Doran	M scow	60/	3 25-7
Wm. Bateman	M scow	"	"
John Bradman	"	"	1 5th, 25-7"
John Doran	Labr	45/	3 25-7
Francis Smith	"	"
Enoch Bryan	"	"	1 25th
Mich Crain	"	"	3 25-7
Richard Hazel	"	"	4 8-10, 25
Henry Bateman	"	"	2, 25, 27
Geo Love	"	"	3, 25-27
Joseph Rock	"	"	4, 5, 25-7
Albin Fenwick	"	"	4, 24-27
John Leatch	"	"	12, 1st to 13th; 3, 25-27
Wm Long with Mr. FEnwick	"	60/	6; 5th, 8th, 25th-29
Richd Bannister	Labr	45/	14; 1st-5,9th-13, 24-27
James Crook with the Sawyers	"	60/
N Newton --- Beall	"	45/	4, 24th-27
N Davy "	"	"	2. 25-6
N Jim -- Alen or Alex -----	"	"	?
N Dick "	"	"	6, 23d-27
N Richard "	"	"	7, 22nd-27
N Charles - John Cleare	"	"	15, 12th-27
N Stephen "	"	"	"
N Charles - Ign Boon	"	"	7, 1st, 23-27
N Jacob - "	"	"	6
N Moses - "	"	"	7
N Moses - Edw Plowden		"	6
N Len - "		"	7
N Jim - "			9
N Arnold - "			3
N Jim - "
N Anthony - Joseph Queen			6
N Jack - Miss A Diggs			5
N Jacob - Geo Fenwick			17
N Jack - Middleton Belt - Monthly			4
N Guss - Barnard O Neall			16
N Harry - "			5
N Geo - Mr. Clegett			6
N Dick - Capt T Boucher Monthly 30/			4
N Bob - Gustavus Scott			9
N Kitt - "			6
N Bob - Barnard O Neall Monthly			21

In most of these rolls in the National Archives the slaves are always at the bottom of the list. On these lists the names of the 26 slaves are prefaced with N for Negro. At the time the word Negro was synonomous with the word slave. The roll also gives us the owner of the slaves, the wage and the number of days absent that month. Since the year's term of service ended for most of the laborers in early January, we can assume that many left to return to their plantations for Christmas.

Both rolls clearly show that free laborers were hired on the same terms and worked under the same overseers. Indeed on July 30, 1794, the commissioners noted in their proceedings that Williams "is directed to keep the yearly hirelings at work from sunrise to sunset particularly the negroes." This suggests that some of the "yearly hirelings" were white. (That the slaves were singled out, I think, only signifies that they did not pocket the money they earned, and thus might be less prone to exhaust themselves from dawn to dusk.)

I found another document in the Archives called a "return of laborers" dated December 29, 1794. That return reported that there were 76 laborers then working. Unfortunately, the return does not break them down by race. But the Hardman and Mudd roles do list the free laborers who were paid the same wage as the slaves. There are 13 free workers on the Hardman role and 13 on Mudd's role. The "return of laborers" does give us an idea of what some of the laborers did, but mainly it groups them by their terms of hiring: 37 were hired for the year, with their time up between January 1 and 7, 1795; 26 were hired by the month; 7 worked with the surveyors; 6 unloaded stone at the Funkstown quay (roughly at the end of 21st Street NW); that brought the total of laborers to 76 total. The return also noted that two overseers were paid 10 Pounds a month, and one overseer earned at 8 Pounds a month and fed himself. Perhaps the 10 laborers I can't account for worked for that other overseer.

Thanks to a letter in the commissioners' files in the National Archives, we know that at least one of the free workers, Jerry Holland, was an African American who worked with the surveyors. In January 1795, Walter Rye, evidently a supervisor on the surveying crew, attached this note to the December payroll:

Pay Jerry the black man at the rate of $8 per month, for his last months services, he is justly entitled to the highest wages that is due to our hands - being promised it and the best hand in the department - Dorsey excepted.

I'll return to Jerry Holland, but there is much more to try to learn about the slave laborers, including where they were housed, how they were fed, and what medical care was provided. But first let's chart the growth and decline of slave hire and find out what we can about the masters who hired out their slaves.

While there seems to have been no written evaluation of the policy of hiring slaves, the commissioners attested to the benefits of slave hire by increasing the number of slaves they hired. They may have been influenced by two factors other than the performance of the slaves. In late 1794 they were offered the services of thirty slaves, and, to secure a long sought piece work contract for stone work at the Capitol, they needed to supply more laborers to tend those masons who agreed to work and be paid only for what they did and not the time spent on the job.

An enterprising overseer approached the commissioners offering his own services along with a large number of slaves he had arranged to hire. A letter from William Deakins, the commissioners' treasurer, introduced the commissioners to John S. Slye, and attested to his supplying laborers for the Potomac Company, then extending the navigation of the Potomac beyond Little Falls just west of Georgetown:

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

The commissioners soon hired Slye, but I am not certain how many of the slaves hired in 1795 were brought by him. On January 29, 1795, the commissioners reported to the president with their usual imprecision that "About 100 Labourers are engaged for the year at 60 dollars each." In 1794, they only had 37 yearly hires.

We cannot assume that when the commissioners report 100 Labourers that they were all slaves. It bears noting that most of the laborers working for the Potomac Company, the other major public works project in the area that was trying to open navigation of the river west of the city, were white. In the on-line George Washington Papers there is an image of a 1786 payroll for that company, a long list of 64 mostly Irish men (from Patrick O'Hara to Daniel Brian) and two women, a nurse and a washer-woman. A 1794 letter to President Washington suggests that at least 60 of 150 laborers working for the company were slaves hired by the year, and the letter suggests they were prized primarily because they could replace whites who wilted in the summer heat:

Geotown Feb 19, 1794 Sir, Knowing it will give you pleasure to hear of any thing favorable to the Navigation of the Ptom. I take the Liberty to inform you, we have now 150 Labourers employed at the Little Falls, under industrious overseers, and either Capt. Gilpin or myself see them at least once a week and the work goes on equal to our most sanguine expectations, we shall begin to fix the locks early next month & I am fully of opinion by the 1st of August the canal and locks will be compleat for boats to pass through.... - with some difficulty we have obtained about 60 Negroes for the year. They will be a good standby, when the sickly season comes on, when the whites will leave us -- William Deakins, Jr.

There is no evidence that the slave laborers working on the federal buildings were on standby for hot weather. As I noted in Part Two, they became essential as sawyers. The 1794 return of laborers notes their work with the surveyors, and moving stone at the quay. As early as 1793 the commissioners lauded their ability to help the stone masons. In January 1794, the commissioners offered their hired laborers to masons who would do piece work. As I noted in Part Two of this essay, the Irish emigrant and former indentured servant at Mount Vernon, Cornelius McDermott Roe (in one 1797 letter Washington referred to him as "my Cornelius," even though he had left Mount Vernon in 1791), contracted to do the stone work at the Capitol on a piece work basis. His friendship with Washington was probably less important than his friendship with his fellow Irishman James Hoban who was superintending the construction of the White House. He offered to do the work for so many shillings for each perch of stone laid, provided that the commissioners provided laborers to tend the masons.

It took McDermott Roe about a year to assemble his crew of masons, and then work began in earnest on the walls of the Capitol in the Spring of 1795. It bears remarking here that a "labourer" was not necessarily a slave nor an African American. Ambrose Moriarty was listed as a common laborer in 1797. In a June 20, 1799, letter to the commissioners asking for a temporary house on the Capitol grounds, a prerogative of several skilled workers and contractors, he wrote: "I have formerly been employed in attending masons and other work for the public." However, the general impression was that slaves helped the masons. As I noted in Part Two, the first supervisor of the masons' work in the city, Collen Williamson, was replaced after these piece-work contracts were made, and he sued go get his job back. He recalled the 1795 changes in a June 9, 1797, letter to President Adams, describing McDermott Roe's crew as "about thirty men beside negro's attending them."

An Englishman named John Dobson also made a piece-work contract in December 1794 for doing stone work at the Capitol, and it is more interesting than McDermott Roe's contract because it gives more detail about what the laborers he wanted would do: "hoist & haul stone on to the scaffolds." (I quote the contract in full in Part Two of this essay) In the contract Dobson refers to "a sufficient number of labourers," but when work actually began, in their accounts, the commissioners called them Negroes. They made a note on August 4, 1795: "John Dobson - Hire Negroe from public works $40."

Before continuing to give some idea of how many slaves the commissioners hired and what they did, we might learn something by asking why, when Slye offered to bring 30 slaves to the job, McDermott Roe's claimed he would be unable to find laborers to help his masons. I think it reflects the differing ways Americans and Irishmen used slaves to buttress their schemes. By bringing slaves to the job, Slye attested to the confidence gentlemen and ladies in the Potomac Valley had in him because usually only they had enough slaves to hire out. By not bringing slaves to the job, McDermott Roe drew an easily perceived distinction between skilled masons and those who could only attend them. As I noted in Part Two of this essay, the masons he hired turned out to be lacking in skills, but by being paired with a black man, to racist white gentlemen like the commissioners at least, an inexperienced Irish mason looked like he must know what he was doing.

The increase in the number of slaves hired was not that notable, largely because more free, white laborers, many of them skilled, had come to the city. By August 1793 Washingtonians began touting the advantages of their nascent city:

By a Census of the inhabitants of the city of Washington, taken on the 12 inst, it appears, that the number exceeds 820, and that for the last six months there has not the death of either man or woman taken place in this city; it is to be observed, that of the above number a great proportion are artists in the different branches of building, and from the different parts of America & Europe, the climate agrees with their constitutions, and they enjoy in this city equal if not superior health to what they have experienced in any part of the continent. Signed in behalf of the inhabitants of the city of Washington, and at their request, James Hoban, Colin Williamson, Elisha O Williams (Records of Columbia Historical Society, "Origins of Federal City", p 78)

In 1794 private building began in earnest, and men looking for work could come to the city and find a hotel, stores and hamlets of wooden houses. Those houses were probably not well built because by Presidential decree all buildings had to made of brick or stone, and wooden house were allowed only on the promise that they would be torn down when Congress moved to the city in 1800. Then in 1795 President Washington understood the mistake he had made and allowed wooden houses that a man could raise a family in.

In his letters to the commissioners, Washington encouraged them to help build the city by getting workers to settle in the city. But he didn't discourage the commissioners from hiring slaves. The commissioners only used their labor policy to build the city by offering skilled workers lots in lieu of a portion of their wages, a somewhat half-hearted encouragement. But the $6,000 or so in yearly wages to laborers didn't contribute to building the city. The slaves' wages went to their masters in Georgetown and out lying counties. There was no boost to the local economy. I think a case can be made that the commissioners felt it prudent to limit the size of the working class in the city, and thus relied more on hired slaves who would return to farflung plantations once the city was made ready for the federal government. After all they originally hired them to "cool" wage demands. They used slave hire as a strategy. They succumbed to the prejudices of the day that too many of the lower sort would keep better people away, and it was on those better people, bidding up the price of building lots, that the commissioners pegged their financing. That said, the commissioners remained eager to get emigrant laborers. The local doctor hired to treat the hired slaves alerted the commissioners of the availability of Dutch indentured servants. The commissioners seemed eager to get them and wrote to a ship's captain in Baltimore:

Mr. Crocker has shown some propositions of yours to the board respecting the importation of Dutch servants - We are very desirous of procuring forty or fifty good Laborers & will readily give nine guineas p man for servants who are stout & healthy & capable of labor & will indent themselves to serve two years from the time of their arrival here. It will not be material to us at what time they are delivered, as we cannot expect them during the present building season & will take them at any time previous to the commencement of the public buildings in the next year.

This seemed to be the only way to contain costs as much as slave hire allowed them to contain costs, with the fillip that "Dutch servants" would be a more valuable addition to the community than either black or white Americans or Irish of the laboring class. Nothing came of that effort to get the Dutch.

So when a series of mishaps put the financing of the building into jeopardy, slave hire became and remained a necessity. The summer building season of 1795 was highlighted by the collapse of the walls of the Capitol that forced the commissioners to scale back their plans. Instead of building the Capitol as designed, they would only complete the north wing. Their scheme to finance the building had also failed when speculators renigged on scheduled payments for the thousands of city lots they bought. The commissioners turned to Congress for a grant of money or at least a loan guarantee. This forced the commissioners to share more information about their operations. Indeed they sent one commissioner, Alexander White, who had been a former congressman, to Philadelphia to lobby Congress for funds.

I've found no evidence that the use of slave laborers became an issue in congressional deliberations of the problem. The two commissioners remaining in Washington, Scott and Thornton, sent long letters to White with information and arguments. In a December 31, 1795, letter they underscored their solicitude for slave masters:

It is impossible to meet the daily occurances of the city without money; many balances remain due for Services rendered, and a quarterly hire of the black labourers; should the masters meet with difficulties in obtaining the wages of last year at the very moment we are advertising for 120 labourers for next year we shall certainly go into the market with bad grace...,

That is an amazing use of the word "grace." But it suggests that to get the sympathy of the gentlemen in Congress, the commissioners highlighted the hardship faced by slave masters. (Read more of the letters between White and the other commissioners about his lobbying.) However, I have found no evidence that White used this argument in Philadelphia. Indeed most of the documents he had printed explaining the needs of the commissioners did not mention the use of slaves. Reports made in Washington, especially those made by Hoban, did list slaves seperately, but in Philadelphia documents lumped the cost of "labourers and overseers" together, no characterization of the race of the laborers.

The lobbying effort didn't force the commissioners to be explicit about what the laborers did, or evaluate their productivity. Instead they appealed to the mindset of the late 18th century and explained how the slaves fit into a stable process which would get the job done if adequately financed. At least that's how I read the portion of a March 17, 1796, letter quoted below that the commissioners sent to President Washington:

....You have already been informed that our finances would scarcely permit us to go on to the close of the building season, since then very partial fresh supply having been obtained. We have been very much crampt in our affairs during the whole winter. It has been usual to keep the freestone cutters, carpenters and sawyers at work during the winter, and without such a regulation, it would be impossible to make much progress in setting freestone during the summer. There have been engaged at the Capitol during the winter in cutting free stone twenty-five hands, in the carpenters hall and sawing fifteen, laborers to attend them twenty; At the President's house, stone cutters twelve, carpentry hall thirteen, labourers to attend them ten; Labourers to attend the surveyors six constantly. The labourers not necessarily employed in attending the stone cutters, carpenters, sawyers and surveyors have been employed in opening and clearing such streets and ways as are most necessary for immediate use...

It seems in this late 18th century way of looking at work, one only need list the number of men at work, rather than be explicit about the work itself, to prove that progress was being made. The phrase opening and clearing such streets and ways as are most necessary for immediate use sounds good but the commissioners lack of specificity proved to mask an misunderstanding of the task at hand. In 1800 control of work on the city streets would be largely taken away from the commissioners because after 9 years of their supervision Pennsylvania Avenue was a unusable. The allocation of the slaves, 20 working with the carpenters at the Capitol, 10 working at the President's house, six with the surveyors and rest clearing streets, seems to be a system of sorts. But there is evidence that there was no effort to train laborers for specific tasks, other than those 15 identified as sawyers. (I discuss the slave sawyers in depth in Part Two of this essay.) In late 1796 the commissioners bristled when a master wanted to take away his slaves, but he could take them as long as he supplied two other slaves:

4 October 1796 Sir, We have received your Letter of yesterday's date, and have no objections to your withdrawing from the public service the two men Tom & Joe, now at the President's house, provided you place there at the same time, two substitutes at the same price. The public works might suffer by taking away any of the labourers, at this Season, very materially - We are, Sir, yrs, G. Scott, W. Thornton Mr. E. J. Millard

This letter suggests, in this case at least, that one slave was as good as another, and no premium was placed on what familiarity Tom and Joe might have gained with the work.

It may well be possible to learn more about the experiences of the slave laborers by closer analysis of all the payrolls. For example, there may have been a system in which slaves rose from working on clearing streets, to indoor work like attending carpenters. But I doubt if the commissioners could think in those terms. One exceptional letter in which they do talk about efficiency shows that to them efficiency meant only using fewer slaves for a given task, not using all slaves more productively. As noted in Part Two of this essay, William O'Neale, tried to rationalize the unloading of stone by having a quay built so that stone from scows would be loaded directly onto carts. The commissioners celebrated that efficiency in a January 29, 1795, letter to the president:

... contracts have been entered into with Gentlemen of character and fortune, who have also given security within the state for the delivery of 5500 tons of good scrabble free stone at the yards where wanted within the present season, for 6500 tons for next season. the stone to be such as our workmen approve. This stone will be delivered at 7/6 per ton less that it has hitherto cost us. We are also relieved from the heavy burthen of having our Labourers perpetually called off from their several employments to assist in unloading crafts & carts....

One has to pause over the way the commissioners phrased this happy development. WE are also relieved from the HEAVY BURDEN of having our LABOURERS assisting in unloading; a reminder of who was really doing the work of the city.... the commissioners!

There was a general rise in wages in 1797 and in their solicitation for laborers in 1798 the commissioners raised the yearly wage to $70. They also changed the conditions of employment. They would hire laborers by the year, but also for nine months beginning in March for $60:

WANTED for the present year at the public works in the city of Washington, A Number of Labourers: For whom seventy dollars per annum will be given, or sixty dollars from the first of march to the twentieth of december next. They will be found with every thing but clothing and attended by a physician at public expense, when necessary. If they absent themselves a week or more such absent time will be deducted. For the commissioners, Elisha O Williams, Washington, January 5, 1798 (January 20, 1798 Washington Gazette)

Of course, there was a seasonal rhythm to the work in the city, and less hands were needed in the winter months when stone was not set and hence no need for laborers to attend the masons. But I've not seen any evidence that prior to 1799, when work began to wind down, that the commissioners ever thought they had too many slaves.

It is difficult to get a perspective on the commissioners use of laborers. I think a case can be made that they employed far fewer than they needed. Since he crossed the powers-that-were and paragons still, Washington and Jefferson, L'Enfant's skills as a project manager have been denigrated ever since. He is, however, the only man to draw up a comprehensive work plan for the city (See Part One of this essay). He did have several years experience as an architect supervising workers building and restoring houses and buildings in New York City. He was also, at this time of his life before he lost favor, a gregarious man adept at collecting information, or, put it this way, inspiring men to share their knowledge with him. In his work plan he had a ratio of roughly 3 laborers to 1 skilled workers. Under the commissioners' ad hoc plans, I would estimate that ratio at one to one. L'Enfant recognized that there had to be a large number of laborers to ease bottlenecks when stone, bricks, lumber, etc., had to be moved and, when not needed for that work, laborers were to clear, level, and landscape the public grounds, dig a canal, and bring the infrastructure to a point of completion so that the potential of the city plan was apparent. The commissioners narrowed their concerns solely to having the Capitol and President's house built up enough to accommodate the federal government scheduled to move to the city in 1800. As became notorious, when the government came to the city, the infrastructure was almost nonexistent and, because of that, the reputation of the city as a swamp or a wasteland was born.

Even though the plans approved by President Washington required more building, especially at the Capitol, the commissioners prided themselves on reducing their work force, including the number of slaves employed, once their limited goal was in sight. One can get a sense of the commissioners misplaced emphasis on efficiency in a January 23, 1799, letter to George Blagden, who supervised the stone work at the Capitol. The commissioners saw idle slaves and wanted to make work for them. Instead of improving the city, they made them rearrange the stones:

as our labourers are not now engaged we wish you to have what stone you want for the completion of the stone work at the Capitol taken out from the rest of the stone, and placed somewhere by itself in safety....

In March 1797 John Adams became president. Did pressure from Adams, who was not a slave holder, have anything to do with the drop in the number of slaves used? Perhaps the commissioners feared pressure because they misrepresented the nature of the work force when they wrote to Adams. In a November 25, 1797, letter to him pressing for more money, they explained:

...for more than six weeks past the extensive operations of the city, in which generally not less than two hundred mechanics & laborers are engaged, have been carried on without money. Full two months arrears are now due to all engaged in public employment. The workers in free stone and wood have been accustomed to continue their labor during the winter and much delay would arise from a discontinuance of their work. It is also now the season for laying in to best advantage the necessary supplies of provisions and materials for the next summer. Though hitherto no substantial injury has arisen from our want of money, the scene must soon change. Mechanics and Labourers are seldom in a situation to give long credit; they will soon grow very importune in their duns; and painful must be the situation of their employer, who are not able to satisfy their just claims....(Commrs. letterbook, pp. 180-1)

Of the two hundred mechanics & laborers almost all the laborers, around 90, were slaves hired from their masters for $60 a year or for $5 a the month. So when the commissioners wrote that Mechanics and Labourers are seldom in a situation to give long credit, they should have blushed.

In a January 1799 newspaper ad the commissioners only offered to hire 25 laborers, at $70 per annum, a far cry from the 120 they wanted in 1798 when they hired 90 slaves. As we shall see, the commissioners had to scramble to get laborers as they tried to do their part to get the city ready for the arrival of the federal government beginning in the summer 1800. But by that time, the cabinet secretaries were put in charge of much of the project.

I have read press reports in which a scholar estimated the total number of slaves hired by the commissioner, roughly 400, which I think is high. The total number is not important. One was too many. More important is to try to get a grip on how the slaves were treated. If the commissioners had relied exclusively on free workers, wages, work, and housing, would have been the extent of their concerns. By hiring slaves they were also obliged provide food and medical care. Below I will examine how they managed. I will also examine if the slave and white laborers, who received the same wage, did the same jobs, or if the slaves were discriminated against. But first I share what I've been able to learn about the masters who hired their slaves out to the commissoners.

Their Masters Who Pocketed the Slaves' Wages

From the payroll and time roll above we learn the names of the masters who owned the slaves hired out in 1794 to Captain Williams, the commissioners' agent. Edward Plowden should lead the list since he hired out 8 of the slaves listed above: Moses, Lin, Jim, Arnold, another Jim, Gererd, Tony and Jack. Edward Plowden, actually his first name was probably Edmund, lived in St. Mary's County, Maryland. According to the 1800 census, Plowden owned 64 slaves. The Plowdens were the leading family of that county some fifty miles down river. I think Joseph Queen, who hired out Anthony, also lived in St. Mary's County. Miss Ann Digges, a member of another prominent Maryland family, hired out three slaves, Tom, Dick, and Jack. She lived in Charles County, Maryland, just west of St. Mary's County. Ignatius Boone of Nottingham, in nearby Prince George's County also hired out three slaves, Charles, Jacob and Moses. Fined for selling liquor without a licence in 1792 and filing for bankruptcy in 1801, he was not of the cream of the so called Free State. I'm not sure where James Stone lived but in 1795 he had someone else collect the money due to him for slave hire. Which suggests that he wasn't a local.

The image above, a receipt from Thomas Baden for wages he received for the work of James Stone's three slaves in 1795, was photographed at the Archives by Alexis Rice and Ka’mal McClarin of The University of the District of Columbia and Howard University, who, it is said "plowed through records at the National Archives," and the The U. S. Capitol Historical Society shares their findings on their web page at http://www.uschs.org/04_history/freedom/dchc_00.htm . The document suggests that the name of the slave illegible in the payroll above was either Salisbury or Jacob.

So we can be certain that the money paid out for slave hire for at least 17 slaves went to people who lived outside the District of Columbia, and undoubtedly other owners listed in the payroll and time roll also lived far away. The policy of slave hire sent money that could have stayed in the city to outlying plantations. Eventually Plowden did buy a lot in the city, something he could well afford. He probably received upwards of $500 a year from slave hire and lots in the city sold for as little as $150 with easy terms for payment.

Some of the slaves hired in 1794 were undoubtedly from Georgetown. Middleton Belt lived their in 1794, and the names Beall and Magruder are associated with the city. President Washington appointed Gustavus Scott to replace Thomas Johnson as a commissioner in the fall of 1794. Scott moved to Georgetown and hired out Bob and Kitt. George Fenwick worked on the surveying crew, and I suspect that the slave he hired out, Jacob, was one of the slaves working with the surveyors. Clegett, probably James Claggett, Bernard O'Neale, and Middleton Belt, all lived nearby and now and then did work for the commissioners.

The payrolls in the National Archives allow us only to speculate on the meaning of the convoluted way some slaves appear to have made it to the city. Slave hire could have been very straight forward: at the end of the year, quarter or month, the commissioners paid the master the wage the slave earned. However, the actual receipt for the wages often shows someone else collecting the money. Then the monthly payrolls often have an overseer signing for the slaves wage, as the payroll below shows.

Overseers and Labourers at the Capitol month April 1797

Samuel N. Smallwood	25 days	112/6	5/8/2	Samuel N Smallwood
James H. Hollingshead	"	"	"	James H. Hollingshead
John Dorin	"	60/		John X Dorin
Randall Smallwood	21			Saml N Smallwood
Daniel "	14			"
Peter Owens	16			"
Jno Hollingshead	22			James H. Hollingshead
Charles "	22			"
Osten "	17			"
Benja "	22			"
Benja Burnes	22			James Burnes
William "	20			James Burnes
Peter Short	20 1/2			Peter X Short
Joseph Howard	21 1/2			Joseph X Howard
Jerry Neale	21			Saml N Smallwood
Jerry Downs	22			Benjamin Downs
Stephen Daunt	19			Joseph Daunt
Garot King	20			Rich King
Thomas Humphreys	19			Jane Scott
Lewis Boone	9			Ignatius Boone
Thomas Wood	22			Saml N. Smallwood
Josias Burrow	"			Edw Burrows
Thomas "	"			Edw. Burrows
Peter Heard	"			James B. Heard
Abraham Blake	12			James H. Hollingshead
Isaac Blake	19			"
John Leach	25			John X Leach
James Sherding	22			James Sherdon
Henry Spalding	23			Henry X Spalding
Jacob Sampson	22			Jacob X Sampson
Amerous Morarty	7			Saml N Smallwood
John Dent	22			John Dent
Dennis Thompson	22			Charles Thompson
Josh Wilson	4			Joshua Wilson
George Parker	22			Samuel N. Smallwood
Isaac Parker	25			"
Robert Parker	8			"
Nace Parker	21			"
Davy Wilson	20			Joshua Wilson
Wm. Keating	20			Wm. Keating
Anty Kennedy	10			Anthony Kennedy
Jarrot Gibson	12			Jarrot Gibson
Stephen Simms	8 1/2			Stephen Simms
Charles Groves	"			Saml N Smallwood
Joseph Jarber	7			Joseph X Jarber
Michl Dant	6			Saml N. Smallwood
James Jackson	6		0/13/10	James X Jackson
John Fenwick	6	"	0/13/10	B. Fenwick
Jack "	"		0/13/10	B. Fenwick
Geo. Davidson	"		0/13/10	John Dawson
Dyson Tippet	1		0/2/3	Dyson X Tippet
Jane Short	25	"	2/17/8	Jane X Short

Overseer Samuel Smallwood signed the pay receipt for twelve workers. Overseer James Hollingshead signed for six. I interpret the list this way: Randall and Daniel were slaves owned by Smallwood. Hence line four signifiies Randall, slave of Smallwood, wages received by Smallwood. Line six signifies Peter, slave of Owen, wages received by Smallwood who presumably had a separate arrangement with Owen for hire of the slave. This becomes more apparent further down the list where four slaves owned by a Mr. Parker, George, Isaac, Robert, Nace, had their wages received by Smallwood who, one can presume, then paid Parker. One exception in the roll above is Ambrose Moriarty. Smallwood signed for his wages in this payroll but in other payrolls he signed, using his signature, not an X, for his own wages. In this case, Moriarty only worked 7 days that month, and perhaps Smallwood acted out of friendship. Several masters signed for receiving their slave's wages, e.g. James Burnes signed for Benjamin and William. Edward Burrows signed for his slaves Josias and Thomas. Further complicating the payroll is that indentured servants had the same status as slaves so when Jane Scott received the wage of Thomas Humphreys, he might have been indented to her.

That said, all my speculations should be checked out if the full record of slave hires is ever published. We do know that slaves Smallwood owned worked in the city. In late 1797 he protested when his slaves were laid off by the commissioners:

November 13, 1797 Hon. Gentlemen, I take the Liberty of presenting you a few lines concerning of my Labs that are wrought at the Capt [Capitol] by the month and now are discharged. Gentlemen, I hope you will take it in Consideration and Grant me that Liberty of taking them in again by the Month as I my Self are Employed by the month. If I can't prevail on you Gentlemen to take them in again, It will Certainly take my own Wages to Support them this winter as they are not one Days work to be had Gentlemen. Your Compliance will greatly Oblige your most Obedient Hum Servt Saml N Smallwood Captl Hill

Smallwood oversaw the work of his own slaves. In one case a white labourer worked in the same crew as a slave he owned. Thanks to the gleannig of those two students mentioned before, we know that in 1795 James Hollingshead owned at least two slaves who worked on the public buildings, Abram and Charles.

And it appears that Abram, or Abraham, and Charles were working under Hollingshead in the 1797 payroll I copied, except that Abraham in that payroll was owned by Blake, likely the same James H. Blake, who signed Hollingshead's receipt in 1795. Since Blake became a mayor of Washington, appointed by President James Madison, there is biographical information on him and evidently around 1795 he left Georgetown to live in Virginia. Hence, he needed Hollingshead to return the favor in 1797 and collect the money for his hired slaves.

All that said, I've seen no evidence that the men who acted as middlemen made much money off it. As already mention John S. Slye approached the commissioners for an overseers job with thirty slaves ready to hire: his friends, he says, have engaged to hire to the city thirty valuable Negro Men Slaves for one year. A March 1, 1799, newspaper notice informed the community that Slye had filed for bankruptcy so his acting as a middle man for slave hire evidently wasn't the way to wealth and security.

Most of the slaves working in the city didn't have such a cozy relationship with their masters. It strikes me that in the context of the public work in the city, we might think of slaves as a kind of certificate of deposit and the commissioners acting as a bank. The father of the Brent sisters, Robert Brent, died in 1790 and it appears his will, or because of his not having a will, divided the slaves that made up his estate between his children, who were then in their twenties. The sisters Mary, Elinor, Teresa, Elizabeth, and Jane, assuming they didn't have land to work (perhaps that went to their brother Robert,) could either sell their inheritance or invest it, so to speak, in the system of slave hire. Assuming Mary's able bodied slave Charles was worth $300 on the slave market, by getting $60, then $70, a year from the commissioners, Mary was getting 25% interest on her investment, and, of course, still owned the principal.

Seen in this light, we can appreciate why there seemed to be no interest on the part of the masters in seeing their slaves acquire skills as they worked in the city. Why complicate the handsome return they were getting? This dovetailed with the commissioners' primary reason for using slaves, to keep down the wage demands of white laborers. The commissioners thought they were getting something on the cheap, and the masters thought they were getting an incredible return on their investment. In those days 6% was considered a good return, if not the maximum conscionable one.

When researching my book, I copied the slave hire chits for 1795 and 1798, which I think were notes made by the commissioners' clerk, based on the payrolls, that he used to draw up receipts and accounts for wages paid. I apologize for the confusing format but the list below gives some idea of how many masters the commissioners dealt with and how many slaves each of those masters hired out, and from it we can further verify my reading of the commissioners' payrolls. In the payroll above "Peter Heard" sounds like a likely name for anyone, but, as one of the chits shows, in 1798 the commissioners paid a man named Heard for the hire of a slave named Peter. Likewise a man named Daunt was paid for the hire of a slave named Stephen. So the Stephen Daunt in the payroll above was very likely a slave owned by Joseph Daunt.

In the 1795 chits I copied below many of the slaves were listed on the December 1794 payroll I copied above. We see William Dent Beall's name in full and his slaves Davy, Frank and Newton. We find that the Miss Magruder noted in the payroll was Mary Magruder, but in January 1795 she evidently hired out a different slave, not Dick but Oliver. Alex Chisley's slave hired out was Nace in December 1794, but Mich and Dick in 1795. In October 1795 a Susannah Johnson profited from the city in a major way, hiring out five slaves. And at the end of the year a female slave was hired to the commissioners, though the December 2, 1795, chit doesn't say what she did, only to: "pay to Burton Ennis for use of Catherine Green negro hire."

President's house; Jack - July 9- Jan 95 4m 12 d Wm Pearce

N Abraham Robert Young L 21

Jan 95; N Oliver Mary Magruder

to Jasper Jackson for Ns Josiah and Pompey

Wm Dent Beall for N Davy, Frank, Newton

Ignatius Boone for Moses, Charles, Jacob

Jane Stone N Saulsbury, Tony, Jacob

Alex Chesley N Mich & Dick

12/2/95 pay to Burton Ennis for use of Catherine Green negro hire

Jack, Dick, Tom 6 months from A. Diggs $79.33 cap for Dick and Tom

10/6 Suzannah Johnson: Basil, Peter. Nace. Will, Tom, Isaac

Thomas Bond - Ned Harry $5 per month

2/11/95 hire of four male slaves to work at president's house Barn ONeall $23.04

for Dec. - Belt's hire of Jack at President's House 18 days at 45/ - 1/11; Peter at Capt. 21 days 1/16 - $8.98

I also copied chits in the commissioners records for 1798. What can we learn from comparing those 1798 notes to the payrolls and notes we have for 1794 and 1795? Four years later, Middleton Belt was still hiring out Jack and Peter. The Magruder slave hired out in 1798 was named George, and there was no sign of Oliver or Dick. James Stone's Saulsbury, Tony and Jacob were still working and now joined by Thomas. Ignatius Boone may have hired out a completely different slate of slaves, instead of Moses, Charles and Jacob, he hired out Stephen, George and Robert, but it may have been a different Boone. Mary Simms, now spelled Semmes, was still hiring out Will. And there was a Simms hiring out Sam and Moses. We also see which masters hired out a number of slaves, though we don't get the slaves' names in the all of the chits. Samuel Smallwood hired out five slaves; as did Joseph Queen; Barber hired out four, as did Jackson;. One of the Jackson slaves was named Francis. In 1795 Jasper Jackson hired out a Josiah and Pompey. Among the 1798 chits I saw Plowden listed for three slaves, which would represent quite a change because he hired out 8 in 1794.

April - June 98 Peter and Jack from Belt

April - July 98 Peter - Heard

May - Aug 3Ns - Douglas

- Sept, Will - Semmes

July-Oct 3 Ns Blake

July-Oct George - Magruder

July-Oct, Stephen - Dant

July - 13 Aug Peter - Belt

July - Oct Jack - Belt

July 5 months Bob, pres. house; 6 months Charles pres.house, Cartwright

July - Oct Stephen - Boone

July-Oct, George Robert - boone

July - Oct 3 N's, Plowden

July- Oct 5 N's Capitol - Smallwood

July - Oct Wm, Edward - Smallwood

July - Oct Peter - Heard

July- Oct 3 N's Brent

July - Oct Robert, Henly, John - Simpson

July - Oct Sam - Burch

July - Oct Adam, Sam, Cato - Douglas

July - Oct Jacob, Saulsbury, Toney, Thomas - Stone

" Nathaniel - Carr

" Joe - Lynch

April - Oct Sam, Moses, - Simms

July - Oct Francis - Jackson

" 5 N's, Queen

" 4 N's - Barber

" 4 N's -Jackson

" George - Causin

Oct - Jan, Daniel, Henry, Robert, Davenport - Smallwood

" William, Stephen - Smallwood

" Stephen - Carr

" Nathaniel - Carr

" 4 N's - Stone

" Bob, Charles - Cartwright

" Jack - Belt

1798 for year Ignatius - Beck

" Wm. Joseph, James - Blake

" Davy, George -Matthews

" 5 N's - Queen

" Dick, Jacob, Will - Renitzel 1/2 year Amos

The commissioners estimated that they had 90 slaves hired that year. Counting individual slaves noted in the above chits we can account for about 68 of them. These chits also help us get a better grip on Samuel Smallwood's operations. On the April 1797 there were two slaves that seemed to be ones that he owned: Randall and Daniel. In the 1798 chits we can glean the names of William, Stephen, Daniel, Henry, Robert, Davenport, and Edward belonging to Smallwood, five of them, it seems, working the Capitol under his direction. It seems highly unlikely that Smallwood would be able to earn the capital needed to buy that many slaves. So is this evidence that he collected the money for these slaves, took a percentage, and then forwarded the remainder to the slave's owner? If so, then his discomfort when his slaves were laid off in November 1797 was disingenuous, as he could have sent the slaves back to their real owners. But no matter what the actual situation was, his owning slaves and maintaining them was completely dependent on the work on the public buildings. How did that effect the relationship between master and slave when it had to be obvious to the slaves that Smallwood's escaping bankruptcy was totally dependent on their labor?

As I mentioned, the commissioners records tell us little about the masters themselves. In the 1798 chits we find new names like Cartwright, Beck, Carr, Douglas, Burch, and Simpson. Carr, at least, became a prominent name in the city. Were the others masters of out lying plantation finally lured to the easy money to be made in Washington? Or, did they also buy lots in the city, plan to move and build there, and hired out slaves not only for the money but to demonstrate to the powers-that-be that they aimed to make a name for themselves in the city? Men who seemed to profit off slavery seemed to make a good impression on the powers-that-be and voters who, of course, were all white males. I have mentioned James Blake and Samuel Smallwood several times. Both were future mayors of the City of Washington. Smallwood was the first elected mayor.

In my notes I also made a list taken from an account of the payments to slaves owners, no names attached. At the time slaves earned $5 a month for their master, however, only 14 of the 36 of the entries were in multiple of five dollars. It seems the payment to each master varied quite a bit which suggests that keeping track of what was due for the slaves' labor was not easy work.

Jan 9, 1796, paid negro hire $23.47, 5.00, 10.00, 1.00, 49.67, 13.33, 56.83, 13.33, 19.33, 39.50, 7.00, 13.67, 4.00, 30.00, 15.00, 15.00, 30.00, 15.00, 15.00, 15.00, 30.00, 13.33, 11.17, 15.00, 5.50, 46.00, 20.33, 28.00, 37.33, 57.17, 5.00, 15.00, 53.00, 27.50, 15.00, 131.67/ total 902.13 (36 entries)

The wages paid to masters was reduced if their slave was absent over a week. Some payments might reflect deductions for medical expenses, or new shoes. I found two receipts documenting the purchase of shoes for some hired slaves, a gesture the commissioners could well afford because they simply billed the slaves' masters, who were supposed to clothe the slaves, 12 shillings 6 pence for one pair of shoes, roughly a week's wages. But there may have been something else involved. A July 7, 1796, receipt from a man named Delphey, perhaps an itenerant shoemaker who made shoes for several slaves, shows that all the slaves belonged to women. Six of the slaves belonged to the Brent sisters, daughters of Robert Brent of Charles County, Maryland. Twenty-six year old Elinor owned David and Charles; twenty-four year old Jane owned Silvester; and twenty-two year old Elizabeth owned Gabe and Henry. Teresa Brent owned Nace. Then Susannah Mills owned Jery and Clinton and Elizabeth Thomas owned Fielder and William. The item in the receipt read "to 1 pare shoes for Jery, property of Susah Mills 0 12 6." One wonders if a slave being a property of a lady made the commissioners more solicitous of his comfort, or if ladies were more oblivious to the needs of their slaves, or if the women worried about the wellbeing of their slaves and were persuaded that having the commissioners deduct the cost of shoes from what they would receive for their slaves' labor was the most convenient way to finance this improvement in their slave's condition.

Compound buying shoes with the daily problems housing, feeding, and treating the slaves for medical problems, and the complications of the seemingly simple expedient of hiring slaves becomes apparent.

Housing the Slaves

Masters sent their slaves to the city with the understanding that the commissioners would take care of them. The commissioners assured masters that their slaves would be housed, fed, and provided with medical care. Even the slaves hired from masters in Georgetown most likely moved into the quarters for hired laborers in the city. Getting to the work sites from Georgetown was not easy and the schedule of work in the city from dawn to dusk was not conduscive to commuting. I have never run across a description of where the hired slaves slept. On the day before the commissioners asked Captain Williams to hire slaves in 1792, they contracted with a carpenter named William Knowles to build a temporary building on the President's square, 50 x 24 feet, plank and groove, with a 9 foot wide entry. This may have joined a cluster of smaller buildings that, back in January, the commissioners asked Williams to have built. The dimensions of the larger building seem to describe a barn more than a barracks, but a barn seems a likely place to have slaves spread their blanket at night.

James Hoban, who supervised the construction of the President's house, lived on site in a brick house. In 1797 a Frenchman investigating the city for foreign speculators counted the number of brick and wooden houses on each city square, and found a concentration of 20 houses on the President's house square, with 6 made of brick and 14 wood. One had to go a mile to the west, to Georgetown, to find as many houses so close together. Since work was winding down on the President's house in 1797, it is safe to assume that these 20 houses were built by the summer of 1793 when work on the building began in earnest. The French investigator did not signify if any of the houses were used by slaves. In 1797 there were only three wooden house and one brick house on the Capitol square. Judiciary Square was the other likely place for slaves to be housed, and there, the French investigator saw six wooden houses. We know that one of those was a hospital for the laborers that on April 23, 1794, the commissioners ordered Hoban to build. This was to be a temporary wooden building and when the commissioners had somebody inspect it as winter came on, it was found wanting, "not sufficient for the sick there is no upper floor, neither is there any more than the weather boarding on the side."

This suggests that the slaves might not have been well housed, but there are no other complaints in the commissioners' records. With slaves from promenient Georgetown families in the crews, not to mention two slaves hired from Commissioner Scott, and, at least for one month, a slave hired from Commissioner Thornton, the hired slaves were probably sufficiently housed without overcrowding.

And what did the slaves think? From the payrolls above we see that slaves from the same owner were often separated. For example, Ann Digges' Tom worked under Hardman and her Jack worked under Mudd. Perhaps this separation continued after work. Was separating slaves from the same owner an effort to defeat conspiracies to escape?

I looked hard for it, but found no evidence that the commissioners bought shackles, or designated anyone to guard the slaves after working hours. They did have night guards for the public buildings, but that was primarily to guard against theft of building materials. According to the agreement masters made with the commissioners, usually spelled out in the advertisement seeking slaves to hire, when slaves didn't show up for work for over a week, the wage paid to the master was docked. Thus is made sense for masters to only hire out reliable slaves.

The overseers were not expected to watch the slaves after working hours. Of all the men employed as overseers, Samuel N. Smallwood alone wrote to the commissioners about the problems he faced. While his letters suggested he was a poorly educated young man, he was related to one of the richest men in Maryland, William Marbury, and that may have emboldened him to complain while other overseers grinned and bore their problems. He wrote two letters to the commissioners asking for a raise. In both he complained more about the food which is neither palitabel nor Constitutional than he did about the demands of overseeing slaves.

Commissioners of the City of Washington, Gentlemen, In Consideration of my past Services and present ------, I take the Liberty of presenting you a few Lines to give you and Information of my Dissatisfaction for the same in the first instant relating to my Diet which are nothing more than Salt meat for Breakfast Dinner and Supper which is neither palitabel nor Constitutional and to bye tea Sugar and other Vegitables out of Fifteen Dollars you must reasonably suppose Gentlemen will reduce that to a mear nothing and Fifteen Dollars Gentlemen suppose it to be in truly Clear is not an Object to Induce a man to take on him Self the Cares troubles and Confindments that I have on me which Causes me to take the liberty of Informing the Hon Board that I am not therewith Content which I am willing to Still remain for twenty Dollars per month which I hope Gentlemen you will allow me I hope Gentlemen you will receive the above as a most respectful Detail of matter hear with me and give it your most sincere Consideration and Dispense to me as soon as Justice to the Publick and Satisfaction to your most Obt. Sert. Saml N Smallwood March 7, 1797

I am not sure what Smallwood means when he writes of the Cares troubles and Confindments that I have on me. He wrote again a year later soliciting a raise. In that April 1, 1798, letter he pointed to the large number of hands he had to oversee, increased by the dismissal of another overseer, but that didn't seem to be a problem. The management of the labouring department has been under the direction of two overseers ever since the Capt began until the present season tho business appears as hard to manage as it ever was, but I conceive that I can do the hole business myself by using greater exertions which I always took a pleasure in doing for good of the public. Once again he is more specific about his diet, and his accommodations. I hope Gentlemen will likewise consider my bad accommodations you may rest ashored that my living are very hard. It is said I have so much and Found but it cannot be cauld Found where there is only meat and bread alone - a man cant live on that where there is aplenty of other vigitibils and to have these things to buy out of my wages it reduces it to a mear nothing. Added to all that, "after bell rings" at the Capitol, when everyone else's worked was done, he simply had too much paper work to do arranging for paying the wages of the laborers. In a nutshell, Smallwood's grievance was that he was fed like a slave, and, after work was done couldn't enjoy the leisure the slaves had.

Washington, April 1st, 1798 Gentlemen, I once more take the liberty of presenting you a few lines in the following manner viz In the first place to shew you gentlemen that my wages are not ---- to the tasks that are confered upon me at the Capt building. The management of the labouring department has been under the direction of two overseers ever since the Capt began until the present season tho business appears as hard to manage as it ever was, but I conceive that I can do the hole business myself by using greater exertions which I always took a pleasure in doing for good of the public but Gentlemen I hope you will take this in to consideration and if you think my wages are adequate to this task after taking this in your consideration I will then rest in content. I hope Gentlemen will likewise consider my bad accommodations you may rest ashored that my living are very hard. It is said I have so much and Found but it cannot be cauld Found where there is only meat and bread alone - a man cant live on that where there is aplenty of other vigitibils and to have these things to buy out of my wages it reduces it to a mear nothing - Gentlemen if I did not think that I earned better wages I would not solicit you on this subject. I ever have done in all my power for the ---- of the Publick and I hope it will ever be my determination so to act. Its likely gentlemen you may think my wages are as great as and overseers can get on the country in a farm but a man in this place as myself have I suppose three times the hands to manage as and overseer on a farm. Likewise I have a great deal of troubel in making out return of the Labr and paying of the monthly labr that I do all of nights after bell rings which I hope you will gentlemen conceive that I am deserving of and addisionnal to my present wages. no more at present only remain your most obd & humb servt, Saml N Smallwood

One can read these letters and not realize that Smallwood was overseeing slaves.

Another letter Smallwood wrote to the commissioners does hint at possible trouble with the slaves, but the circumstances were exceptional. In Part Two of this essay, I mentioned the ill-feeling between the Irish carpenters at the Capitol and the English supervisor there. At the height of the tension, Smallwood, who was American born with English heritage, complained to the commissioners in a June 5, 1798, letter that his safety was in jeopardy because he feared the Irish faction would incite the slaves to attack him.

that I am to be insulted in this manner I shall wish to quit the publick works for in my opinion I am not safe in my situation for how do I know but a certain class of peopel may entice even the blackis to commit depredations on me. I am not prepard to meat this as my dew, attention is required at this place there fore I beg you to pay amediate attention too as my situation requires protection from you, I remain your most obedient humble servant, Samuel N Smallwood, Capt Hill

The commissioners didn't react to his fears, and, it seems clear to me, that Smallwood couched his letter so melodramatically only to impugn the Irish, a certain class of peopel, not the slaves.

In both the letters quoted above, Smallwood gave his place of residence as Capitol Hill, which makes sense because that is where he worked. Were the slaves he oversaw housed on Capitol Hill too? Did his fear of being attacked by "blackis" arise because they were housed next to him? Arguing against that are the observations of the Polish count Niemcewicz who attended church services at the Capitol in 1798. He wrote in his diary:

The 20th of May I went to the chapel, situated by the Capitol in the top of a shed where they saw marble. The congregation was composed of 200 people, as many men as women, all very decently dressed although for the most part they were only laborers working on the Capitol. The women, mostly farmers' wives or wives of the inhabitants and officers of the town, were very healthy, very white-skinned, very pretty. The sermon was given by a promising young priest. (Under Vine and Fig Tree, p. 82)

In this context, when he wrote "laborers", I think he meant the masons and carpenters, contrasting them with the farmers, inhabitants and officers of the town. I also think, since as I discussed in Part Two of this essay, Niemcewicz was unique among the visitors to the town in noticing slaves in his written recollections of his visit, that if slaves had been at the service, he would have noticed, and if slaves had lived on the Capitol square and had not attended the service, he would have noticed.

Feeding the Slaves

Feeding the laborers was a much greater headache for the commissioners than housing them. Since there is no mention of a kitchen or dining hall in the commissioners' records, I think the slaves were fed their three meals at the job site out of "cambooses" operated by cooks hired by the commissioner. The time roll above lists Thomas Smith as the cook for Bennett Mudd's men. In latter payrolls Jane Short is listed as a cook. In 1794 there was no organized markets in the city. Agents of the commissioners, usually Captain Williams, contracted for salt beef or pork, and for flour or cornmeal. This service was not exclusively for the slaves. Other laborers ate the "public provisions," even the white overseers. In the letter quoted above, Smallwood complained of being fed "only meat and bread alone." In another letter he was more particular, dismissing a fare of "nothing more than Salt meat for Breakfast Dinner and Supper which is neither palitabel nor Constitutional."

The commissioners tried to make contracts with the lowest bidder rather than rely on established merchants in Georgetown and Alexandria. As a result there were frequent crises over delivery. As they increased the number of slaves they hired, they had to make larger contracts and as they ran out of money what they thought they saved by hiring slaves was overshadowed by the increased expense of feeding them.

It is interesting to note that laborers confined to the hospital on Judiciary Square may have been fed better fare. In 1794 the commissioners' order to Captain Williams "to purchase 12 blanket rolls for hospital, porrengers, pots, fresh provisions rice sugar and vinegar may be occasionally wanted."

Medical Care

As I noted in the Part One of this essay, George Washington thought the failure to find slaves to hire for the Potomac Company in 1786 arose because, "an idea is entertained by the proprietors of them, that the nature of the work will expose them to dangers which are not compensated by the terms." One way for managers to show their regard for the well being of their workers was to provide medical care. A 1786 payroll listing the white indentured servants working for the Potomac Company also listed a nurse, Margrett Cosgrove, and presumably there was a doctor around to give her orders. Evidently L'Enfant didn't hire a nurse for his crew but on January 10, 1792, just as they fired most of the men L'Enfant had hired, the commissioners noted in their proceedings that they paid Dr. Charles Worthington of Georgetown for "physick" for medicines for the workers.

In early 1794 the commissioners hired a doctor and nurse to attend sick workers, and built a hospital on Judiciary Square. I'm not sure what prompted this level of care. The August 1793 census quoted above that highlighted the good health of workers in the city -- the climate agrees with their constitutions, and they enjoy in this city equal if not superior health to what they have experienced in any part of the continent -- was made in part to counteract a report in Philadelphia newspapers that the "flux" was widespread and deadly around Georgetown. Within a month Philadelphia experienced a deadly yellow fever epidemic that reportedly killed upwards of 5,000 people by the time it ended in November. There was widespread evacuation of the city and some doubt as to whether Congress could meet there as scheduled in early December. The federal government was back in business by early December, but the epidemic hampered the efforts of those in Philadelphia conspiring to keep Congress from moving out in 1800. Promoters of the new capital realized that to maintain what advantage they gained due to Philadelphia's epidemics (the city was struck again in 1797, 98 and 99), they had to keep workers in the city healthy.

I'm not sure if the commissioners hired a doctor more in response to actual sickness, that flux epidemic, for example, or to set up a mechanism to counter rumors of disease in the city, just as populated port cities, Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Baltimore, were doing by creating committees or boards to oversee their city's health. On April 18, 1794, when they offered Dr. Worthington the job of caring for sick laborers for a fee of 20 Guineas, about $100, a year, they called him the "city physician." This suggests the commissioners had an eye more to protecting the city's reputation. Worthington declined the offer. The contract they made with Dr. John Crocker stipulated a fee, as well as the number of laborers he was expected to attend. This suggests they were simply eager to provide treatment for men in order to get them back on the job.

As in most things they did, the commissioners did not evaluate the success of their policy, apart from noting when it became too expensive. Dr. Crocker left no description of what he did. He did move into a house next to Judiciary Square where the temporary hospital was. Indeed judging from one note in the commissioners accounts, facing the threat of smallpox, the slaves looked out for themselves. The commissioners asked Crocker to inoculate ten of "Slye's labourers" for smallpox at "their request." This may be one of the most important bits of information I gleaned from the commissioners' records and I regret that I don't have a better citation. Other than the request of the slave sawyer Moses that he be sub-hired to John Templeman so he could go down river with his crew and be nearer to his home plantation in St. Mary's County, that I discuss in Part Two of this essay, this is the only suggestion in the records that the slaves made requests to improve their lot.

A month after this March 5, 1795, order to Crocker, he was replaced on April 27 by Dr. Brown who was to get "$1.33 per head for all laborers engaged in public employment." In September 1795 they paid Dr. Brown $21 for inoculating laborers. That expense was no object to the commissioners because they deducted the fee from the wages they paid to the master, 17 shillings six pence (or about $2) in the case of Alexander Scott's slave Emanuel, who worked at the Capitol. However, the commissioners made some sacrifice since inoculation entailed preparing the patient with medicine in hopes that when he was exposed to smallpox he would have an easy course of the disease, and, of course, while he was sick, he had to remain in isolation. Obviously there was some general alarm about the disease, but evidently it wasn't rampant in the area. The contractor Mitchell worried that his hands might get the disease if it was introduced to the area by inoculation. The commissioners didn't penalize the master for the time the slave might have been in isolation. In their 1796 newspaper advertisement soliciting "120 good laborers", the commissioners offered masters $60 for the year, accommodations, and "attendance by a physician and no deduction for sickness."

Actually, it would have been more accurate to say that sick laborers were visited by a physician, especially after Crocker, who lived next to the hospital decided to change professions and recommended William Brown as his replacement. Crocker didn't relinguish his conveniently placed house. So sick laborers were attended on a daily basis by a nurse hired by the commissioners at $10 a month, who was the sole member of the staff of the hospital at Judiciary Square. For the first year a Mrs. Chloe LeClair was the nurse. Then for most of this period, from the end of 1795, until 1799 when the hospital was closed, Mrs. McMahan (or McMahon) was in charge. In my notes I have Mrs. LeClair getting $20 for two months work on July 10, 1795. By November 1, 1795, Mrs. McMahon was getting $10 a month. At the end of her service, the doctor then in charge commended her in a January 9, 1799, letter:

Dear sir, Mrs. Mc Mahan's attendance at the hospital of the commissioners, in the quality of nurse for the month of December 1798, like the whole of her services has been faithful to the interests of the commissioners, attentive to the wants of their labourers, & reflects credit upon her as a nurse. Please to consider this as a certificate of the faithful discharge of her duty not only for the month of December but during the whole of her attendence since I have been in office, Fred. May

The correspondence that the commissioners had with the doctors who attended the laborers at the hospital was usually about the doctors' fee, and, unlike the letter above, doesn't give us any feeling for how the slaves were treated. But the letters do raise the question of whether white and black laborers were both treated in the hospital, or if it was only for slaves. In 1795, when calculating the fee for the doctor's services, someone noted in one of the account books, now in the National Archives, that from May 1, 1794 to May 1, 1795, the "average of Negroes attended by Dr. Crocker" was 72. He also attended 43 white laborers. Crocker's contract required his "attending the Negroes and such of the white men as we have generally paid the Doctor for attending." For that service he was paid $166.13.

Since Crocker lived near the hospital, it makes sense to assume that for his convenience sick white laborers were brought there along with sick slaves. We can also speculate on what the man inspecting the hospital in late 1794 meant when he noted that there wasn't a second floor. Was that needed to allow for segretation of the races, of diseases, or as living quarters for the nurse? After Crocker left, while Nurse McMahan remained at the hospital, I don't think Dr. Brown and his successor Dr. May lived nearby. May, I think, lived on Capitol Hill, and so it might have been convenient to visit white laborers there. I found a note in a receipt for payments to a carter in the city, that he was paid for taking slaves to the hospital, but not for taking laborers, some of whom might have been white. (I don't want to suggest that Dr. Crocker by virtue of his living near the hospital was in anyway more sensitive to the needs of sick slaves than the other doctors, or necessarily liked slaves or found virtues in slave labor. As noted above, in 1795 he alerted the commissioners to an opportunity to get some Dutch laborers, who if procured would have cut the need for slave hire in half.)

In late 1798 the commissioners decided they were being over charged by Dr. Frederick May, and in their effort to justify not paying him, the commissioners made much of the race of Dr. May's patients. Judging from his subsequent career, May was the only real doctor who worked for the commissioners. He was the only one who remained a doctor the rest of his life, and though from Massachusetts, he remained in the city the rest of his life. The commissioners submitted his bill to Dr. Coningham, who ran the brewery in the city. Their November 22, 1798, letter suggests that at that time the blacks were the only patients the doctor treated at the hospital:

Dr. Coningham, The Board have just received the account of Dr. May, which amounts to $268.50 for half a year, and the former year by contract was only ten shillings per hand, per annum for the Blacks about ninety being employed at the public works. The Board are not only desirous of doing justice to individuals but to their Trust, and they are therefore under the necessity of submitting the doctor's account to an independent judge - such we think you, and request you will favour us with an opinion of the reasonableness of the charges and the necessity of such constant attendance, considering the number of sick stated by the returns to have been in the hospital. PS By a verbal report from Captain Williams, who has enquired into the number of sick during the above time, he has been informed that there have been from two or three to eight or nine and the average about 5 or 6 - The Board agreed to pay 50 cents per visit.

I am not sure exactly what the average number of sick means. I assume 5 or 6 a week.

We probably should not read too much into this exchange, but it was rare for the commissioners to refer to "Blacks." Usually they talked about their "labourers" or "hands." It's possible they were appealing to Coningham's prejudices. Judging from an ad he placed in the newspaper on September 25, 1800, Coningham was not sensitive to the feelings of slaves. In the ad he offered a $10 reward for the return of his slave Adam, who, he claimed was persuaded to run away:

by an infernal bitch his wife Fanny, belonging to Mr. Robert Young, Nottingham, he has his fiddle with him on which he is fond of scratching in negro assemblies

This style of addressing the race problem seemed to attract favorable attention. I've already mentioned two future mayors, Blake and Smallwood, who first came to prominence for their managing slaves. In 1805 a Memorial to Congress from delegates appointed by various sections of the District of Columbia to change the District's laws, was "signed by Cornelius Coningham, their President." So it's possible that the commissioners harped on the blacks May treated to flatter Coningham's prejudices against slaves and get him to agree that May was asking too much for his services. (I haven't found Coningham's reply to the letter.) Left unsaid were the number of white May might have attended and whether they were among the number of sick stated by the returns to have been in the hospital.

Races Working Together

Whether the white and black laborers were both treated in the hospital, might indicate whether the white and black laborers slept together in the same barracks when they were healthy. Since the doctor "attended" both races, it seems they probably did sleep in the hospital together. During a yellow fever epidemic at about this time in Baltimore, whites were treated in a hospital but blacks were not. Of course that was a civic situation as opposed to what we might call a work camp situation. I wouldn't be surprised if the commissioners decided they had to provide better treatment for slaves they hired, out of respect for their masters, than they provided to white laborers who agreed to work for the same wages and conditions as slaves. Lowering oneself to work for the same wage as slaves might not have been good for a white man's reputation.

As the commissioners often described, many slaves worked under the close supervision of skilled white workers, but what about, as a letter from the commissioners to the president already quoted out it, the The labourers not necessarily employed in attending the stone cutters, carpenters, sawyers and surveyors [who] have been employed in opening and clearing such streets and ways as are most necessary for immediate use. Did these white and black laborers do the same thing, or, for example, was the white laborer Ambrose Moriarty always employed to attend Irish masons, and black laborers, only, assigned to the drudgery of clearing streets?

In December 1796 two extraordinary crews were formed to cut timber for the public buildings, one for the President's house and one for the Capitol. These were extraordinary because the slaves working got one shilling a day, say 13 cents, as a extra wage that they could keep themselves. (In Part Two I explain how this seemed to be a common practice for rewarding slave sawyers.) There is a striking difference between the two payrolls. One appeared to be all black and the other was integrated about 50-50.

Working under two whites, a supervising carpenter, John Brown, and an overseer, Bennett Mudd, were 21 slaves.

Cutting wood for President's house Dec 1796 Jan 1797

John Brown	carpenter	21 days	2/6		2.12.6
Bennett Mudd	overseer	4	2/6		0.10.0
Jerry	sawyer	13	1		0.13.0
Moses, Queen	sawyer	22	1		1.2.0
Anthony	sawyer	24	1		1.4.0
Tom	sawyer	13	1		0.13.0
Moses, Plowden	sawyer	10	1		0.10.0
Jess,	sawyer	11	1		0.11.0
Jack, Belt	labourer	17	1/		0.17.0
Nero	labourer	17
George		28
David		6
Dick		16
Jack		16
Charles, Goldsmith		17
Nace		12
Harry		17
Charles, Rentzell		17
Jack, Beaven?		28
Sear?		28
Basil		28
Jim		11
Jacob Butler		3

The 18 man crew cutting timber for the Capitol for one shilling a day included several whites.

Acct of Labo Time that Wrought agitting of Timber for Capitol December 1796 and January 1797 at one shilling a day

Oliver Jackson	13 days in December	11 Days in January	1 pound/4 shillings/0 pence
Jacob Broome	11	20	1/11/0
Peter Short	21	20
Gabrial Coall	11	00
John King	11 1/2	20
John Lach	15	15
Thomas Burnet	4	15
John Cook	16	18
John Brown	4	00
Charles Golesmith	4	00
John Beltt	0	2
John Jeamstone ?	0	3
Jerry Mills
Jacob Stone
Orston Fenwick
Toney Plowden
Richard Barber
James Bonde

These are not easy payrolls to read since in many cases the first name of the slave is followed, without a dash or comma, by the last name of the slaves master, e.g. Toney Plowden is the same Tony owned by Plowden who was on the payroll for laborers in December 1794. However, we know from other payrolls of laborers that some of the men listed were whites like John Lach or John Leatch or John Leach as he is listed elsewhere. On other payrolls we find Peter Short marking an X for his own wages, likewise Gabrial Coall, John King, Thomas Burnet, John Cook, and John Brown. Then, beginning with Charles Golesmith, the men are probably slaves. Charles was owned by Goldsmith. Again, publication of all the payrolls like this in the National Archives will firm up my analysis, or prove it off base. Unless all those men with first and last names happened to be free blacks, which is possible, then the payroll of the Capitol timber cutters shows blacks and whites working together for the same bonus of 1 shilling a day.

Perhaps there is another thing about these payrolls worth discussing. Do they suggest that some whites preferred working with slaves, and that slaves may have preferred working with certain whites? The commissioners had little contact with laborers, or skilled workers. Only one, Daniel Carroll, gained a reputation for keeping an eye on things. The others kept to the commissioners office, which was between the work sites. Despite the urging of President Washington, not until late in the 1790s did one of the commissioners, William Thornton, move to the city. Most of the commissioners' orders regarding the laborers went to Captain Williams, but because he got a salary, we can't be certain how many days or hours he was on the job. He lived in Georgetown so wasn't in a position to give the constant oversight we generally assume slaves required, especially when working away from their home for a year.

James Hoban and his assistants lived in temporary brick houses on the President's square. As I discussed in Part Two of this essay, Hoban and his assistants owned slaves and hired them to work as carpenters at the President's house. Hoban certainly was the leader of the Irish workers in the city, and as head of the militia could be said to be the principal man in the city, given that the commissioners probably left the city around 3pm when it was customary for gentlemen to have their dinner. The only evidence I have that Hoban may have established some rapport for the slaves in the city is rather oblique. I've already quoted the letter from Samuel Smallwood, the American born overseer with English heritage, who complained to the commissioners in a June 5, 1798, letter that his safety was in jeopardy because he feared the Irish faction, then consolidating control of work at the Capitol, would incite the slaves to attack him.

So the Irishman James Hoban who then supervised all the work on the President's house seems to have been very comfortable working with and had confidence in slave labor. He may have preferred them to whites. The crew cutting timber for the President's house was all slaves, with six slave sawyers on the list. These were the slaves Hoban supervised every day.

The only reason I can think of to explain why the slaves got a shilling a day for this work is that Hoban thought it a necessary enducement to get timber which was then in short supply. Judging from their proceedings, one of the main reasons for hiring slaves in the first place was to cut trees. The day after the commissioners ordered the hiring of slaves, they asked Capt. Williams to identify the "best axe men" and send them to Andrew Ellicott who was surveying the streets. Just as we can credit Hoban for putting skilled slaves to work in the city, as carpenters and sawyers, as I discuss at length in Part Two of this essay, he seems to be behind all the extra wages given to slaves. I've found no evidence that the slaves attending the masons or moving the stone ever got a shilling a day to keep for themselves.

Liquor was also used to get more out of workers. On October 31, 1796, a half gallon of whiskey was provided to laborers "taking raft out of water at the Hotel Bridge." On June 12, 1799, laborers boiling plaster of paris got a half pint of whiskey a day. By the way, the slaves cutting the timber also got a liquor ration. On November 30, 1796, according to their proceedings, the commissioners authorized ten gallons of brandy for the hands cutting timber for the President's house. These incentives, I think, were created by the fine hand of James Hoban. When Hoban replaced Hadfield as supervisor at the Capitol, within a month the men working on the roof of the Capitol received a ration of liquor. However, I can't be certain if the slaves attending the carpenters working on the roof got their share, but there is a body of circumstantial evidence that Hoban tried to take care of the community of working men, white and black.

When the commissioners summoned two women who ran a disorderly house just off the President's square, James Hoban came with them. He was their landlord. He apparently sided with the commissioners and the disorderly house was pulled down, but he evidently tolerated such lively neighbors before the commissioners blew the whistle. It's likely a number of hired slaves lived in his neighborhood too, and perhaps spent that shilling a day they earned for special work for grog from a shop that paid rent to Hoban.

There is other evidence that workers were not separated by race as they worked. In the National Archives, I was able to identify three free black laborers. A man listed as Free Cesar, or Cesar Hall, another listed as Free Isaac, or Isaac Butler, and Jerry or Jeremiah Holland.

Thanks again to those students' work in the Archive, I can share the top portion of a payroll for September 1795 showing Free Cesar:

Or in this case noted as Negro Caesar Free. "1R" I think means that he was down for one ration a day. I have a copy of the November 1795 payroll at the Capitol which is interesting because it did not have Free Cesar on it. But it does have another laborer we know was African American, Jeremiah Holland.

Capitol Overseers and Labourers November 1795

John S. Slye, overseer	25 days	112/16 a month
Samuel Orme, overseer	25 days	ditto
Samuel Higdon, overseer	25 days	90/
Walter Smith D	25 days	60/
Hezekiah Powell 1R	24 days	60/
John Truax D	25 days	60/
Walter Williams D 1R	24 days	60/
Joseph Elser	22 days	60/
Stephen Simmes D	25 days	60/
Richard Wise D 1R	24 days	60/
Jeremiah Holland	25 days	60/
Alben Hardman D	25 days	60/
Rezin Talbert D	20 days	60/
George Bertly D 1R	24 days	60/
Jack-Ann Digges	25 days	60/
Bob- E. Plowden	25 days	60/
Nace - Clement Newton 1R	24 days	60/
Ralph - ditto 1R	24 days	60/
Joseph - ditto 1R	24 days	60/
Tom - Benj. Fenwick 1R	24 days	60/
Harry - ditto 2R	23 days	60/
Joe - ditto	20 days	60/

Cesar remained in the city because in a January 16, 1799, payroll both a Cesar Hall and Isaac Butler are noted as "free laborers" at President house. That note was made, I think, so that people would not assume that their black skin meant they were slaves. Jeremiah Holland is the free African American worker who looms largest in the records in the National Archives, though there are only a few brief mentions of him. I've already quoted the letter which allows us to identify his race:

Pay Jerry the black man at the rate of $8 per month, for his last months services, he is justly entitled to the highest wages that is due to our hands - being promised it and the best hand in the department - Dorsey excepted.

As far as I could tell from my study of payrolls in the National Archives, Jerry Holland never got that promised raised. As the payroll above shows, later in the year he left the surveying department and worked as a laborer at the Capitol with 19 other men and earned the same wage, 60 shillings a month, as the slaves earned for their masters.

While Jerry Holland never seemed to be paid more that the common hired slave, he advanced his career. He remained on the payroll at the Capitol through the winter even when the work force was trimmed. Then in April 1798 he was listed in a payroll as the commissioners' servant. And finally in 1800 there was a work order for a chimney to be put into Jerry Holland's house, which suggests to me that he was allowed to live in one of the many so-called temporary buildings that the commissioners had built over the years to house skilled workers. It is unfortunate that we don't know more about Jerry Holland because his trajectory is significant. A free African American lauded for his talents was not taught a building trade, or elevated to a position of supervising laborers. He became a servant. To the people who controlled the development of Washington the best use of a talented African American was as a servant, not as a craftsman practicing the skills they needed to build the city. Although it is tangential to the question of what slaves contributed to the building of the Capitol and President's house, in part five of this essay I will explore The Use of Slaves as Servants in the City of Washington 1791-1801.

1800

When Abigail Adams moved into the President's house in November 1800 she complained about many inconveniences that diminished the delight of moving into, by far, the the largest house in America. The roof leak, the rooms were hard to heat and firewood difficult to find. Workmen needed to make things work or make things more comfortable did not keep their appointments. Then looking out of one window, she could see a dozen slaves with four carts moving dirt from the yard under the supervision of a white overseer. She decided two New Englanders could have done the job as quickly. Eight of the slaves leaned on their shovels while the carts were away. While she was not impressed with the appearance of the slaves, she saved her harsher comments for the white overseer. She did not connect the slaves and overseer in her yard with the magnificent stone building that afforded a vantage from which to watch them. I quote most of the letter she wrote to Cotton Tufts below.

columbia city of washington Nov 28th Dear Sir, I feel as tho I was much further removed from all my friends and connections in the State of Massachusetts than one hundred and fifty miles from Philadelphia could make. We have indeed come into a new part of the world and amongst a new set of inhabitants. It is a city in name, and that in a wilderness, a beautiful spot by nature - but it must be commerce and the introduction of a more hardy and industrious race then its present inhabitants to build up and arise it to any degree of respectability; the effects of Slavery are visible every where; and I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labour of 12 negroes from my window who are employed with four small Horse carts to remove some dirt in front of the house; the four carts are all loaded at the same time and whilst four carry this rubish about half a mile, the remaining eight rest upon their shovels; two of our hardy N. England men would do as much work in a day as the whote 12, but it is true Republicanism that drive the slaves, half fed and destitute of cloathing or fit for ---- fare, to labour, whilst the owner waits about idle, tho his one slave is all the property he can boast. Such is the case of many of the inhabitants of this place from the Susquehannah to this City. The great road is through woods until all at once you rise a large Hill and enter the City of Baltimore, which is populous and appears about half the size of Boston, but no sooner do we leave the city than we are again enveloped in woods. Here and there a thatched cottage without a glass window peeps out from under the gloom inhabitated by blacks, the children as nature sent them into the world. The lower class of whites are a grade below the negroes in point of intelligence and ten below them in point of civility. They look like the refuse of human nature; the universal character of the inhabitants is want of punctuality, fair promises - but he who expects performance will assuredly be disappointed. You will be surprized to learn that in a country thus abounding with wood, we are in distress for want of it - at no price can cutters and carters be procured to supply the demands of the inhabitants - no provision was made previous to the coming of congress to supply them. Briesler has used his utmost exertions and is out every day, and all day, to provide us a daily supply. He was taken in, like every other person, by promises and assurances of supply in season. We are lawless, six foot of wood is sent one for a cord, and no redress to be had, and nine dollars for that, as to provisions we have had a good supply of that, by sending daily to Georgetown which is one mile and a half. The public offices have sent to Philadelphia for wagons and wood cutters. There are very many articles I should have provided if I had known the State of things as I do now, but as my residence here may not be but for a few months, I shall bear and forbear. All but freezing, the weather here has already been as intensely cold as I ever knew at the same season with us....

With the project in its 9th year, Mrs. Adams might well expect that there was an established way of doing things in the city, and that the inefficiency she saw exhibited outside her window was typical and proved that the southern way of making and improving a city was no match to that of the North. We have no way of knowing who those slaves were outside her window and if they indeed might have been among the number who sawed the wood and moved the stone to make the White House. However the confusion in the public works at that time is well documented. It had nothing to do with the use of slaves, and Mrs. Adams's husband shares some of the blame.

In a January 1799 newspaper ad the commissioners only offered to hire 25 laborers, at $70 per annum, a far cry from the 120 they wanted in 1798 when they got 90 slaves and a number of white laborers I have not been able to determine. This reflected the end of stone work at both the President's house and Capitol. Although the south wing of Capitol and Rotunda had not been built, because of their difficulties financing the project, the commissioners contented themselves with housing both the Senate and the House in the north wing of the Capitol. Of course, it was not up to the commissioners to open the city and prompt the government to move down from Philadelphia as required by the Residence Act of 1790. The President and Congress had to make that decision. Upon taking office in 1797, President John Adams decided that constitutionally he only had to be in the capital when Congress was in session, which back then ranged from 4 to 7 months a year. So he left Philadelphia for all of the summer and much of the fall, and worked at his home in Massachusetts. Having no great attachment to Philadelphia, and knowing that his winning the state of Pennsylvania in the 1800 election was problematical, Adams had no qualms about moving to Washington, especially after advisors pointed out that his demonstrative support of the new capital might win him the state of Maryland. So in June 1800, he took the long way from Philadelphia to Washington, going through Frederick, allowing himself to be seen and feted by more Marylanders than if he came more directly. Once in Washington, he had only good things to say about it. Then he quickly returned to Massachusetts.

Adams had two sources of information about the capital, his nephew William Cranch who lived there, and his Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Stoddert, a Georgetown merchant, who, in 1790 and 91, flush with enormous profits from speculating in the Revolutionary war debt, bought much of the land between Georgetown and the future site of President's house. Over the years Stoddert had differences with the commissioners. Like most proprietors, he thought they did things too slowly. By virtue of being the first Secretary of the Navy and organizing a force that performed creditably against the French navy in the Quasi-war from 1798 to 1800, Stoddert earned a respectful modern biography. However his political and administrative career was relatively short, and when he left office in 1801, he spent the last decade of his life failing to stave off bankruptcy as he tried to market his real estate in Washington. I bring this up to make two points: despite living in Maryland, he was not tied to the slave economy, and despite his success organizing the navy, he was not necessarily up to the task Congress delegated to him in 1800. The commissioners petitioned Congress once again for more money, this time to plaster, paint and furnish the public buildings and make the city more habitable with such conveniences as paved sidewalks. Congress recognized the need but had lost confidence in the commissioners, so, at the suggestion of Stoddert, they appropriated the money to a committee formed by the four cabinet officers. Obviously Stoddert, who alone of those four officers knew anything about the situation, became responsible for the money.

Stoddert, however, had to work with the commissioners, which no one had ever found easy even when those gentlemen agreed among themselves about what had to be done. Now with someone else dispensing the money, any semblence of unity among the commissioners ended. Ever an opportunist, William Thornton made the boldest play to win Stoddert's confidence. He wrote a letter to him on January 30, 1800, on the need to do more to make the President's house presentable. Since most of Stoddert's lots were near the President's house, it was widely held that he preferred development in the western end of the city. Of course, Thornton had long been zealous in support of the Capitol which was based on his award winning drawing of 1793, but he bought a lot near the President's house. To underscore his concern for the western end of the city, he ended his letter to Stoddert by offering to landscape the President's house grounds himself: "I have offered to do all in my power in laying out a garden and other conveniences if my colleagues will only allow me two or three common laborers....."

I've found no evidence that Thornton did anything, but the way he planned to rely on common laborerers, who would likely have been hired slaves, suggests the role the hired slaves were expected to play in the commissioners' deadline year. If problems arose with the plastering, painting, door hanging, window installation, ditching, paving and landscaping, the few hired slaves they had were thrown into the breach. On March 25, they ordered Smallwood to let "Mr. Bond have 4 laborers for 2 or 3 days to reload stone at the Capitol to be worked up for hearths." On June 12 they were alerted that there was "difficulty in attaining hands to move boxes scattered around treasury building." On September 2, the commisioners sent one of their laborers to work with Clephane who had the contract to paint the interiors of the buildings. They also sent laborers to work with Kearny who had the plastering contract. A man named Dove won the contract to dig the cellar for the building next to the President's house for the War Department, and he may have employed slaves. On February 18, 1800, a Hugh Densley advertised for for "20 good hands for plastering the President's house" starting March 1. Slaves often did plastering but Densley's expectation that he could get the hands within two weeks suggests he was after free not slave labor.

In October Stoddert looked askance at the pits, debris and rundown temporary housing on the President's square and ordered the commissioners to tear down the houses. The commissioners issued the order and the carpenters who lived in the houses walked off the job, explaining that they now had to find new housing to take care of their families. Stoddert, who back in 1794 had pleaded with the commissioners not to dismiss workers when so much work had to be done, immediately recinded the his order and talked to the carpenters, allowing them to stay in the houses until the job was done. As for clearing up the square, in an October 24 letter to Stoddert, the commissioners pledged to hire more hands.

the few workmen who had quitted their work having returned the same day on which we had the honor of yours of the 22d, it seems to us unnecessary to take up any further measures respecting them. We shall however direct a communication to be made of the contents of your letter to such of these workmen as are in the temporary buildings, as have quitted the works. We shall in the mean time increase the Hands by every means in our power and shall have six additional carpenters to day at twelve o'clock

The newly hired carpenters were not slaves. The payrolls for carpenters, which swelled in late 1800, only listed free workers. I am not sure if the new Hands were slaves or not, but they could have been the twelve slaves that Abigail Adams watched from her window. On November 11, a few days before she arrived and two weeks before she wrote her letter quoted above, the commissioners wrote to Stoddert that would have "an Overseer and twenty good Labourers" available in "a few days."

If we did not have Adams's damning critique of how the slaves were used, one might suggest that the commissioners' hired slaves were essential to get the buildings and city ready, but there is simply no evidence to support that. In the spring of the year the commissioners dismissed the cook Jane Short since there were only about 12 to 14 slaves to feed. Much of the work that year was done by contractors, some hired by James Hoban, usually from Baltimore. There were slaves in Baltimore and it's possible contractors coming from their brought slaves with them, but I've seen no evidence for it. I only found two instances in which the commissioners appeared to have given extra wages directly to slaves for work done in the final year of the project. On July 8, 1800, some laborers were paid $5.60 for sawing soap stone. And according to a January 17, 1801, note in the commissioners' accounts, they paid $5.33 to "Jasper Jackson's black people and other blacks."

Because of their limited funds the commissioners did not pave streets, only the footways connecting the public buildings, and Georgetown to the President's house, and the stone pavement was only three feet wide. They contracted with William Lovell to do the job and I was not able to find payrolls in the Archives which might show if slaves were used. However, judging from the ads he put in the newspapers to hire crews for building projects, Lovell liked to use slaves. The commissioners relied on Samuel Smallwood to use the hired laborers to do the attendent ditching. However, because so few laborers had been hired, new ones had to be found. On May 22, 1800, Smallwood put an ad in the newspapers soliciting "6 or 8 good strong laborers by the month for public works used to handling the spade and ditching." I was unable to find the payrolls so can't be sure if he found slaves to hire.

So far my summary of the new dispensation caused by Stoddert's being in control doesn't suggest that President Adams bears any blame for any confusion that might have caused Mrs. Adams to criticize the slave crew in her yard. But one of the priorities of the Adams administration was to create a strong navy. Thanks to tax increases, including a tax on windows, the administration had the funds to build six navy yards and six frigates. Well knowing the problems the city faced in getting ready for the federal government, Adams and Stoddert might have prudently postponed construction of a navy yard in Washington. Instead they went at it full bore. Indeed more money was spent on the Washington navy yard than on the ones in Boston, Portsmouth, New York, Philadelphia and Charleston. The prominent Maryland Federalist William Marbury was put in charge as "Navy agent" and to oversee the work he hired Lewis Deblois, the son-in-law of Adams' old friend Tristram Dalton, a former senator from Massachusetts who moved to Washington to form a merchant house with New Hampshire born Tobias Lear former private secretary to President Washington. Work on building a wharf began in the winter of 1800, by the fall it was mired in scandal and, thanks to the newspaper controversy generated by that, we learn something about the laborers employed by the government at the navy yard. (I didn't look for any payrolls for the project that might remain in the Navy Department records.)

Deblois caused a scandal when it was learned that he took a cut out of all the wages of the men hired to build the wharf for the yard. Marbury paid Deblois $2 a day as well as $1 a day for the laborers he hired. But Deblois only paid the laborers 75 cents. Marbury complained that he was "pocketing something even from the poor blacksmith." Deblois defended himself by claiming that he made up the $1 a day for laborers in the liberality of his provisions which included "roast beef, boiled beef, light bread, jonny cake, whiskey two or three times a day."

Even 75 cents a day was a high wage for laborers. In January 1800, the commissioners loaned eight laborers to the contractor finishing the War Department, a small brick building flanking the President's house. They were paid 4 shillings six pence a day, or about 50 cents, probably the highest wage slaves earned for their masters, but they only worked for one to three days:

Return of Days Wraught by Labs at the War Office Jany 1800 To 4 Labourers 2 days a piece belonging to Bent Fenwick at 4/6 per day; to Henry Climonds 3 days 4/6. Stephen Munroe 3/4 days at 4/6, Anthony Quinn 1 1/2 days 4/6, Davey Smallwood 2 days 2/3 Sam N Smallwood

These were not skilled workers because a boy, ten year old Davey Smallwood, worked with them at half the wage which his cousin Samuel received.

To my knowledge no one at the time criticized the Adams administration for building the navy yard, nor do historians. The new city needed housing and landscaping, but the common sense of the day was that any building increased the value of lots and that in turn would attract investment and men looking for opportunies to make money. Of course, there seemed to be this caveat to that common sense boosterism: any activity was for the good, unless it was paid for by the commissioners. Their imperative remained to spend as little as possible. One reason they raised no objection to the navy yard project is because the government paid $4,000 for the land, cash the commissioners desperately needed. Their latest loan from the State of Maryland had the preposterous condition that the commissioners pledge their own personal security, which none of them were really in a financial condition to afford. So not only did they dismiss skilled workers as soon as they thought they could, they layed off Elisha Williams who first hired the slaves in April 1792, and they even tried to layoff Superintendant Hoban. Both were salaried employees. The commissioners planned to rely on contractors and on overseer of the laborers Smallwood whose wage they raised from -- to $30 a month (7/25/99 commrs proceedings). Williams left quietly. Hoban, who also had been working since 1792, did not have a difficult time convincing the commissioners that they could not do without them.

Then Smallwood drifted away from the project because of the navy yard construction. According to one of Deblois's letters defending his handling of the laborers, in August Smallwood had "30 to 40 men carting dirt" to the navy yard wharf. Then, it seems, soon after Smallwood got a foothold there, Marbury fired Deblois and hired Smallwood to oversee the project. While Deblois's laborers certainly made too much to be slaves, given that Smallwood had made his career overseeing slaves, it is likely most of the 30 to 40 men hauling dirt were slaves. Why they couldn't have been landscaping the President's house instead remains a mystery to me, though it certainly reflects on the crippled reputation of the commissioners and perhaps on the failure of the cornerstone of the commissioners' labor policy since April 1792, which was hiring slaves. Keeping labor costs low might payoff for a while, but eventually the work has to be done right. A policy dependent on the caprices of slave masters, and relying on workers displaced from familiar surroundings with no clear future prospects, virtually guaranteed that a First Lady, herself a shrewd manager of farm labor, would look askance at the workers in the federal city.

In Part Two I suggested that since slaves were easy for whites to blame, and because slaves were not blamed for failures like the collapse of the Capitol walls, that indicated that there were no slave stone masons. In the controversy between Marbury and Deblois over the work at the navy yard, the closest anyone came to mentioning slaves was Deblois's description of how Smallwood first came on the scene with "30 to 40 men carting dirt." However in this case I don't think slaves would have been made an issue because, while Scot masons would have no compunction about denigrating slaves, a northern gentlemen aiming to prosper in the city might. As we shall see in Part Five, soon after Deblois came from Massachusetts he bought a slave. Instead Deblois tarred Marbury with nepotism and suggested that he had been vilified only so Marbury could appoint his "relation" to his job. Indeed Smallwood and Marbury were second cousins.

This brings a conclusion to what I currently know about the use of slave laborers during the construction of the Capitol and President's house between 1791 and 1800. However I continue the essay in two more parts. In Part Four I examine the use of slaves by private builders, and in Part Five I examine the use of slaves as servants. There should be a Part Six that should be an examination of the subsequent use of hired slaves for federal projects like the Navy Yard, and for the work completing the Capitol. I can't write that part because I didn't research slave use much beyond 1801. And that might have its advantages. I think it would be a mistake to find continuity between how the commissioners used slaves and how they were used in Washington after 1800. Finding that continuity would suggest that slave use in the national capital was inevitable, and the main point of my essay is that it was not. The twisted logic of the commissioners that using slaves "cooled" the demands of free workers, created what became a regional tradition. The traditions of the region did not force a policy onto the commissioners.

Thomas Jefferson's passion for architecture guaranteed that work would resume on the Capitol, as it did in 1803. The need for many repairs would have also guaranteed that work would resume. Jefferson's passion for economizing so that the national debt could be reduced guaranteed the continued use of hired slaves. For example Jefferson assigned the highest priority to a dry dock in the city where he could mothball navy frigates, thinking that much cheaper than having them under sail. He wrote to Latrobe on November 2, 1802: "...we have little more than 4 weeks to the meeting of the legislature, and there will then be but 2 weeks for them to consider and decide before the day arrives (Jan. 1) at which alone any number of laborers can be hired here." Jefferson well knew that masters preferred to hire out their slaves by the year. Even in the 1820s an observer of the city complained that slaves were hired to work on the Capitol with their wage going to masters outside the city, thus cheating the city of that economic stimulus.

An essay on work Washington awaits its historian. He or she might start with an article in the May 15, 1803, National Intelligencer purporting to be a census of professions in the city in 1803:

lawyers		4
hack drivers		4
ministers		3
hair dressers		2
schoolmasters		5
hatters		9
dentists		1
gardeners		2
clerks		50
merchants		21
stone cutters		16
carters		18
taylors		17
gentlemen		15
carpenters		63
printers		19
labourers		82
bricklayers		18

There was no indication of the race of these men, presumably only whites were counted. Servants, footmen, butlers, etc., who were probably all black, were not counted. One could argue that the men in the building trades listed, 197, is a fair estimate of the number it took to build the public buildings, plus up to 100 slaves. But in 1796 the commissioners estimated that there were upwards of 750 men ready to work in the building trades in the city. Most were building private houses. Were there many slaves working on these private projects?

Part Four: The Use of Slave by Private Contractors