The quest for indentured workers

When they looked to Europe for workers, the president and the commissioners yearned for stonecutters because "the few here have us under command as to terms."

Actually the quote I used in the book was “could command their price.” The quote above comes from the October 1794 letter from the commissioners to James Greenleaf that I scanned below. I didn't use it in the book because it gives the impression that there was a dire shortage of stone cutters. Here is a payroll from December 1794. http://archivepayrolls.blogspot.com/2014/12/payroll-for-stonecutter-december-1794.html  

There were plenty of stone cutters. The importance of the letter is not as a description of reality but as a projection of the commissioners' idea of the best of all worlds. Beginning in 1792 http://founders.archives.gov/?q=Correspondent%3A%22Commissioners%20for%20the%20District%20of%20Columbia%22%20Correspondent%3A%22Washington%2C%20George%22&s=1111311111&r=26and not petering out  until 1796, the urge to get indentured workers from Europe was sung with many refrains. This is how it went in the letter to Greenleaf:

...You know the state of our funds and how necessary it is to make the most vigorous exertions in the course of next year.... The work before us and the period in which it is to be done urge us at this moment to enter into very extensive contracts if the state of our funds permitted, among others we deem it indispensable to procure a number of Stone Cutters. They are not to be had in this country. The few here have us under command as to terms -

How did the yearning for indentured workers relate to slave hire? It wasn't racism because there were no African American stone cutters available. The commissioners' yearning exposed their fear of free workers. Indentured workers were not slaves but in order to get passage to the New World they signed away their freedom for a limited term.

While planning monumental buildings for the ages, President Washington and the commissioners thought in the short term when it came to hiring the men to build it. The money they paid for indentured servants went to sea captains, just as the wages for hired slaves went to their usually faraway masters. Wages paid to free workers generally stayed in the area.  But far more important than building a local economy was checking the demands of free laborers. That is how the commissioners justified slave hire in 1792. In the 1794 letter below they put it this way:

- We see no means so likely to check the exorbitant prices of building as the arrival of a number of Tradesmen and Labourers at the City of Washington and this check will be more effectual if a proportion of them are under terms of service for a time part to yourself and others to the Commissioners....

Ironically, this mean approach continued even as the commissioners thought the investments of James Greenleaf guaranteed financing of the city until 1800. He was going to Europe to get a loan to support his own operations and the commissioners'.  The commissioners were giving him advice, if not a warning, to join them in their check-the-demands-of-labor policy. In that regard, Greenleaf operated on the opposite principle and made generous contracts with workers and his salaried employers. See  http://capitalslaves.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-dazzling-greatness-of-james.htm

As it turned out, Greenleaf didn't get a loan and soon went bankrupt. No indentured workers were hired on the commissioners' account. Here is my transcription of other parts of the letter and, below the scans of letter discussed in this post, there is another letter to Greenleaf of the same date somewhat thinking out loud about indentured stone cutters: http://capitalslaves.blogspot.com/2015/12/gardens-for-workers.html

we therefore request you will on your arrival in Europe pursue immediately such measures as will most probably insure the obtaining of a number of men who have been bred to cutting and laying free stone, among them there should be some who have been in the practice of stone carving in the same line....

We will engage to pay not exceeding thirty Guineas per annum (we think L20 Sterling high) and for maintenance (clothing excepted) for as many years as you can obtain them for, not exceeding four years and not under two at least. We agree that you should pay their passage to the City of Washington on account of the Commissioners, they allowing 1/3 of their passage money to be deducted out of their Wages annually for three years or 1/2 for two years. It will be necessary that the terms and obligations should be fixed with precision so as to leave no difficulties on their arrival.

With respect to the Stone Carvers there is such a difference both in execution and taste, that it may be necessary to leave this to the chance of your procuring them to come over on their own risk with regard to the price for their service, but on a certainty of being very liberal according to their respective merits - from 3 to 6 at least of such persons will be necessary, we mean such as would be qualified to take each of them in charge a number of Stone Carvers & cutters. Some of them should be capable of cutting Capitals of the higher order.
We would extend our views further if not constrained by considerations already mentioned, and desire you to have procured a number of suitable tradesmen and labourers on the best terms you can, but fear this must depend on the success of the Loan - if favorable you will do so in this as you will for yourself

Stone sawing: machine, slaves or skilled workers?

"The commissioners first sent to Charleston where there was reportedly a working stone sawing machine. With one horse one man could work four saws. In October 1796 a contractor tried to get it to work, but some brass fittings were wrong, and no one really knew how to run it. So the commissioners ordered their overseer Bennett Mudd, to have "four negro laborers sawing freestone at President's house." They had no particular slaves in mind, any four would do. There are no payrolls in the records showing if any were employed or if they got extra wages like the slave sawyers got."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 94

Because I could not find any payrolls nor any other mention of the stone sawing machine, I didn't speculate in the book on who did the bulk of stone sawing. Since the quality of the stone work was so important, I assume that skilled stone cutters or stone carvers prepared the stone before the masons set it, but it seems the initial cutting of the facing stone could be done by machines or unskilled laborers.

Leonard Harbaugh who signed the letter below seemed to have been the contractor most familiar with machines. He sold cranes to the commissioners when he first came to the project in 1792. He came to the city from Baltimore where slaves were used but in payrolls submitted to commissioners when he built the executive office in 1800, he only listed a few slave laborers and no skilled slave workers. Of course, those buildings were made with bricks. Unfortunately his letter gives no hint about whose labor a successful stone cutting machine would replace and we don't know if the commissioners' order for four slaves to saw stone was an effort to replace free laborers or supplement a crew of slaves already sawing stone. By the way, the only workers ever depicted working on the Capitol were a stone cutter and stone sawyer, both depicted as white. You can see that in the background illustration of this blog.

Did work plans for 1797mark a change in the role of slave laborers?

"Outlining the work program for 1797, Hadfield told the commissioners to hire 'an additional number of laborers... as the setting of stone and laying of bricks will require more hands.' Hadfield was raised in a British family with an antislavery view, but he needed good workers. Hired slaves helped drive the work...."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 95

The words sometimes used to describe workers on the Capitol and White House were imprecise despite payrolls clearly separating the different building crafts, and separating those skilled workers from laborers. That imprecision has allowed commentators to exaggerate the exploitation of slaves. But, I think, a close look at the those imprecise words shows that workers referred to as "hands" were not necessarily slaves.

From a historian's point-of-view, the young British architect George Hadfield was too vague in his planning. James Hoban has left us plans with far more detail that make clear that he was using slaves as carpenters and laborers. The March 28, 1797, letter scanned below shows that Edwards the stone carver was the man of the hour. Hadfield wanted "one or two" stone carvers hired to join him and added that preparing the facing stone "ought not to be left to common workmen."

Here Hadfield was making a distinction between stone carvers and stone cutters. Even though the latter were better paid than masons, carpenters and brick layers, to young Hadfield they were common workmen.

His request for more laborers can be read to say that he needed more laborers to set stone and lay bricks. But it is clear from payrolls and other documents in the commissioners' records that slave laborers were used to tend stone masons and brick layers. His imprecise sentence is better interpreted to mean that more laborers will be needed because more "hands" meaning masons and brick layers will be needed. It is hard to imagine that a young British architect who dismissed stone cutters as "common workmen" would use the words "hands" to mean slaves. He was unfamiliar with slave labor and would probably not use such a familiar word to refer to slave labor.

So what I find interesting in his letter is that he doesn't distinguish slaves at all. Yet when he asked the commissioners to hire more laborers, he must have realized that he was in effect asking them to hire more slaves which leads me to believe he was confident they could well tend the masons and brick layers. He was in effect endorsing the commissioners use of slave labor, which didn't prevent the commissioners from firing him for other reasons. (In another post I will share letters showing that Hadfield had no confidence in the mostly Irish brick laying crew.)

Christmas 1794

As far as I could tell when I did research in the National Archives, overseers and foremen began consistently keeping payrolls and time roles in December 1794.  I photocopied all I could find for that month, time roles for laborers and stone carvers, and payrolls for stone cutters and carpenters.

According to the time role for laborers, the cook Thomas Smith and the overseer Bennett Mudd worked on Christmas Day, as well as a free laborer named Francis Smith. No one else worked that day. Everyone else was marked absent. Of course, time rolls give no idea if the meal Thomas Smith prepared on Christmas Day 1794 was in anyway different from what he usually did with the salt meat and Indian meal which was the laborers' and overseers' common fare.

But special or not, we learn something about the city in 1794 if we use the information we have to figure out who might have been around to partake of that Christmas dinner.

In conjunction with Obama's Inauguration in 2009, the National Archives shared a photograph of the time role of overseers and laborers at the President's house. It gives graphic evidence of the hired slaves working on the public buildings.

You can see the free workers on the top of the list and the hired slaves at the bottom. An "N" prefaces the slave's one name and the master's name comes after that. 

In doing this blog post, I stumbled on a good way to share this photo. I use the "original size" of the photo which, of course, doesn't fit into the neat dimensions of the blog. But you can scroll down and see the names of the free and slave workers at their actual size. Use the bottom bar on the blog and move it to the right and see which days the men worked. You can align the right edge of your device with "25 Thursday," Christmas Day, and see that for all but three men, it was a day off. You can also see who worked on Christmas Eve and who continued working after Christmas.

I used this time role as an illustration in Slave Labor in the Capital. It is a fundamental document about the founding of Washington. For one thing it shows that there was no work on Sunday. Work on that day was not even listed as an option. In my book, I pointed out how the information on it shows that most of the hired slaves stopped working a few days for Christmas. Their yearly hire was up. 

The few slaves who worked after Christmas likely had owners who lived nearby like Middleton Belt's Jack and James Claggett's George, The last day of three of Edward Plowden's slaves was the 22nd and they didn't work again in December. They were taken back by to St. Mary's County. (His slave named Arnold did work after Christmas. There is no telling why.)

There is another time role of the laborers for December 1794 kept by another overseer, Thomas Hardman. It shows the axemen and others who worked with the surveyors. The Archives didn't share a photo of that so a scan of a photocopy I took in 1989, when I collected documents as I researched my book Through a Fiery Trial, will have to do. There is no gap in the list between free and slaves workers, but again the slaves are marked with "N." 

Here is a close up of the portion of the time role listing the hired slaves. No one listed on that time role worked on Christmas Day.

Jerry Holland, the second name on the list below who was a free black, worked on Christmas Eve and then had 3 days offs. Scroll down from that mark on Christmas Eve and you can see that 4 hired slaves also worked then, including Peter, another of Middleton Belt's slaves. Five of the slaves had their last day on December 20th, including three of Edward Plowden's slaves who faced a long trip back to St. Mary's County. Seven of the free laborers worked on Christmas Eve.

Counting the men who worked on Christmas Eve and after Christmas, then Thomas Smith might have prepared Christmas dinner for 34 laborers including 14 hired slaves.

As far as I can tell from what records we have, the slave and free laborers worked together and ate together, or at least ate the same food. Payrolls show us another thing they shared. The free laborers were illiterate, too. When they signed for their pay, they made their mark instead, even the cook Thomas Smith.

That Christmas dinner probably included others. Another December time role that I photocopied was not so detailed. But it shows that at least one of the four stone carvers working at the President's house had to have worked after Christmas. He was marked for working 24 days. And another worked 22 1/2 days had to have been around too. (My photocopy cut off their first names, but they were all free, skilled workers and well paid.)

In 1794 Washington was little more than a work site. Hired laborers had to be fed and given a place to sleep. Slaves were hired from masters on that condition and free laborers did not make enough money to afford a home. Skilled workers who made two to three times as much money as the laborers were also given free housing. There is evidence that many of them got rations from the laborer's cook, though there is no record of how many were fed in December 1794. 

We also have the payroll of the carpenters at the President's house, and from that we can see that at least 11 of them were around on Christmas Day, including 5 slave carpenters. It would be more accurate to say two slave carpenters, Harry and Tom, and three teenage apprentices who earned just a bit more than laborers. These slaves belonged to James Hoban who superintended construction and Peirce Purcell who was the foreman at the site. Like all masters, they collected the wages of their slaves.

Then there were the stone cutters. It is fair to say all eyes were on them as they prepared the sandstone for setting at both buildings. There are 32 stone cutters listed in the December payroll. (When scanning the photocopy of this payroll that I made at the National Archives, the size of my scanner forced me to cut off 5 names: Thomas Barth, Frederick Necks, Thomas Dollar, George Jacob and David Waterston. Those 5 are listed in the appendix of Slave Labor in the Capitol where I list the names of slaves, their masters, as well as free workers.)

Of those 32 stone cutters, 20 worked enough days to suggest they were around on Christmas Day, though to suggest that skilled stone cutters would break bread with common laborers is pushing the spirit of Christmas a bit far. Then again, the laborers hauled the sandstone to the work sites. The stone cutters depended on them.

In my book, although all these documents informed my narrative, I don't mention Christmas Day 1794. But December 1794 might be a good starting point for another book about building the capital. That book could try to discover who all the men listed were and what became of them. But a key to learning more about these men is for the National Archives to photograph and share all the payrolls, time roles, and other documents, and put them on-line.