Commissioner Johnson solved problems with slaves

"The commissioners blamed Cooke and Brent for making deliveries after the hired slaves were sent home for the year."

quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 83

"The commissioners placed their next ad in the fall of 1794, angling for sawyers to work through the winter just as Hoban wanted."

quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 102

I should have written Commissioner Thomas Johnson because in the record, it appears that Johnson was alone when those decisions were made. Indeed the hand writing in the official record is Johnson's not the usual clerk's. Usually at least two of the three commissioners signed such orders.

I think this one page in the record, written by Johnson, bares his approach to work in the city. The nagging problem of amassing building materials to put in the hands of skilled workers was best solved by the use of slaves. True, the first order objects to stone deliveries after the "discharge of laborers hired by the year," but that reflects the reality. All the laborers were not slaves.

The last item on the page is a draft for a help wanted ad. It makes no mistake about the nature of the help wanted: "a number of slaves to labor in the brick yards and stone quarries for whom generous wages will be given." Not "to whom" but "for whom." Masters stood to profit not the slaves doing the work.

In the fall of 1794, getting tree trunks sawed into lumber had been a problem for almost two years. Judging from this ad, the commissioners realized that in Maryland slaves did most of the sawing. The commissioners did not like to recognize that slaves had skills. They hired them to keep down the price of labor and didn't want slave masters to think they could get more money out of them. This ad does not explicitly say "slave sawyers," but coupling sawyers with laboring slaves makes pretty clear that the audience for the ad was masters, not free workers. It also showed that grudgingly the commissioners realized that slaves had at least one skill warranting a higher wage.

Mitchell to Commissioners

"The negroes I hired from St. Mary's would not answer"

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 120, from a letter to the commissioners from brick making contractor John Mitchell: 

This blog has obvious deficiencies as a documentary edition of the correspondence of the commissioners tasked by President Washington to ready a capital city by 1800. I had neither the time nor money to photocopy every document, and even in the case of this important letter, I saved my money by not photocopying the whole document. I won't transcribe the documents presented in this blog for two reasons: in hope that the readers eyes will become obsessed with old handwriting as a portal for discovery and to preserve the iconic potential of the document.

In Slave Labor in the Capital I explain the problems the contractor John Mitchell faced. Suffice it to say here that apart from informing my take on brick making in the city, the phrase "negroes I hired from St. Mary's" establishes a basic point in my book. Slaves hired to work on the public buildings came from as far away as St. Mary's County, Maryland. In the commissioners' proceedings it is also clear that the slaves Mitchell found one wanting had first been hired by the commissioners and sent to Mitchell who then assumed the burden to pay for them. He sent them back and I did not find exactly how that played out in the commissioners' accounts, though certainly the master or masters got their $60 a year for each slave.

The circled number 41 notes the chapter in Through a Fiery Trial where I used this letter as a source.