A rare description of how work was done

I make the point in my book that there are few descriptions of how the work was done in the commissioners' records. I suggest that this had nothing to do with suppressing the work done by slaves because there were few description of what free workers did either. I think the reason for this lack of communication was that the skilled workers and their supervisors feared that sharing information would only lead to the commissioners butting in on business they didn't understand.

Beginning in the winter of 1792-93, James Hoban tried to educate the commissioners on the need to do work then in order to prepare for the start of the building season in the spring. The commissioners stayed with that program until the fall of 1797 when they found what they thought was evidence of workers loafing.

So in the late fall of 1798, Hoban wrote to the commissioners describing the work several carpenters were doing that he feared the commissioners might find suspicious since the carpenters were divided up to work in the many just finished rooms of the Capitol. Hoban wanted them to make temporary windows so that the rooms would be protected from winter cold and still let in the light allowing the work to continue as long as possible during the shorter winter days. Then the carpenters could prepare the walls for plastering in the spring.

The letter has nothing about the use of slaves, but learning about all workers helps us picture where the slaves did work because as laborers helping the skilled workers they could wind up anywhere even the cold dark rooms of the Capitol that first winter after they were all covered.

Fixing the wharf crane: the very short stories told by receipts

A cart was sent all the way to Commissioner Johnson’s iron-works in Western Maryland to bring iron castings for the crane at the wharf where stone for the Capitol was unloaded.

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 83

Building a narrative of the work done based on accounting receipts is more akin to archaeology than history. One would prefer a letter explaining the problem and the solution. Why did the crane need the castings? was it busted and for how long? how big was the crane and was it all made of iron?

A 1794 receipt for a hauling contractors tells three stories in as few words as possible: hauling plank from Funks Town, hauling stone from "Greenleaf's buildings" and hauling the iron castings for the crane at the Eastern Branch wharf.

We can't prove that slaves did any of this work but we can easily picture hired slaves unloading and loading the carts. Thomas Johnson owned slaves so probably the slaves at the iron-works loaded the castings that they probably had a hand in making.                                                                                              

The Dazzling Greatness of James Greenleaf in 1794

"Morris was the most famous of the speculators, famed as the Financier of the American Revolution. But in 1794 Greenleaf had the most cash on hand and directed their operations in the city. Only 28 years old in 1793, he had dazzled Europe and America by making huge profits when speculating with Dutch banks on the American Revolutionary War debt."

To help run his Washington operations, James Greenleaf hired his brother-in-law William Cranch. Cranch was also the nephew of Vice President John Adams. In a letter to his father written shortly after arriving in Washington, Cranch described Greenleaf's coterie of French advisers and then extolled Greenleaf. Both Greenleaf and Cranch were from Massachusetts. Cranch replaced Nathaniel Appleton who was too sick to continue working for Greenleaf in Washington. Greenleaf met the Frenchmen during his travels from Europe to the US.

Stone masons quit and a lecture on employee relations

"Plus, the easier way to build the workforce was not by advertising for slaves but by using the network of friends and relations that free workers had."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 71

"Observers were impressed by the 'spirit' with which the masons worked. Since one story of a stone building had  to sit at least a year before the second story was added, the masons expected to begin work at the Capitol. They didn't expect to be told by the commissioners that they had to work under McDermott Roe and that those whose wages were due to be renegotiated had to work by the piece."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 89-90

Letters written by the commissioners, President Washington, and Secretary of State Jefferson can give the impression that there was a shortage of workers in Washington and that workers from Europe had to be recruited. In reality there was no shortage of workers. The press to recruit emigrants arose because since they could be legally bound to pay off their passage money, they would be cheaper than free workers already in the country or emigrants who paid their own passage.

When the commissioners changed the way of paying mason, many of them quit and left the city. Benjamin Stoddert, the Georgetown merchant and speculator, wrote to the commissioners chiding them for spreading disaffection that would stop the flow of workers to the city: "The report of such men will have more affect upon the minds of mechanics than everything that can be said in contradiction from authority the most respectable."

Digging must be paid daily

"For contractors one virtue of slave hire was that masters were accustomed to getting paid quarterly or even at the end of the year. Nicholson’s next storekeeper reported that he had to pay 120 workers every week. Given Nicholson’s growing reputation for not paying up, many workers demanded a day’s wage in advance. Those men were probably not slaves."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page 125

In the papers of James Greenleaf, Robert Morris and John Nicholson, the three speculators who went bankrupt as they tried to build houses in Washington from 1794 to 1796, we can get insights into building practices at the time. Letters written by their agents and contractors in the city rarely mention slaves. They were not adverse to slavery. Most of them had slave servants. They simply did not have the time or resources to set up a slave hire system which entailed feeding and housing slaves and maintaining the confidence of masters that they would be paid.

The July 4, 1796, letter below explained to John Nicholson that getting houses built to meet a contract with Daniel Carroll of Duddington required money in hand even to start building because "digging the foundation must be paid daily... as it is done by the lower order of people." They had a hard life and could not even wait for weekly wages.

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How much was the work the hired slaves did worth?

"The laborers’ job then was to get it from the stone yard or stone workers’ sheds using the stonecutters carts. As the masons built up the foundation walls, the laborers used pulleys to get stone down to carts next to the wall and then pushing the carts to the masons and under their instructions lifting it so they can set it in place. Inclined planes and poles to leverage the stone probably helped. Laborers probably also brought mortar to the masons and perhaps mixed it. There was a horse driven machine to mix the lime. When a horse wasn’t available the hired slaves did all the work. That seems a plausible explanation of what the slaves did. No one described it at the time."

 Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 87

Going through the documents I copied for this blog, I found a better short description of how the laborers helped the stone masons. John Dobson, an Englishman, made a piece work contract with the commissioners describing the prices for all the types of stone work necessary all on condition that the commissioners provide laborers "to hoist and haul stone onto the scaffolds." That quote is at the bottom of Dobson's letter. I copy that letter at the end of this post. Unfortunately for all the figures in it, Dobson's letter doesn't help us estimate how much the work of the laborers tending masons was worth.


While there was little written about what the hired slaves actually did, and no estimate of how valuable they were to the project even though they were hired as a cost saving measure, we can get answers to those questions by looking closely at what was written about skilled workers. Thanks to the commissioners forcing their masons to get paid on a piece-work basis, a group of masons estimated the value of "sufficient attendance" that is to say, having laborers tend masons. They offered to work for 4/6 per perch of stone laid without "having all the materials laid down convenient to the building" or for 3/6 per perch with that help. So they valued the work of the laborers who tended the masons at one shilling, roughly 13 cents, for each perch laid.

Since the masons also offered to work for 11/3 per day, we can estimate that a mason generally laid 3 to 4 perches of stone a day. One perch of stone wall is 16 ½ feet long, 18 inches high and 12 inches thick. So a day's work for a mason and the laborers attending him entailed moving and setting 10 to 12 slabs of freestone. The North Wing of the Capitol was 120 x 126 feet and 70 feet high.

We the under named Masons, who were induced to come from different parts of the continent to the Federal City, under expectations of meeting with good wages, but who now find ourselves out of employ, certainly from no fault of our own, after having been a considerable time engaged in the Public service, performing our work faithfully and to the full satisfaction of our employer, beg leave to offer our services to the Publick on either of the following conditions.
We will build the foundation of the Capitol to the height required with rough stone, in a workman like manner which we are qualified to do, at 4/6 per perch - having all materials laid down convenient to the Building - And if found with sufficient attendance we will do the same for 3/6 per perch - Or we will work at 11/3 per day. But no man who is a Tradesman will submit to work under those who are not. We therefore cannot work under McDermott Roe & cannot help thinking it very hard that we should be told we must work under him, or be discharged, after having worked so long for the publick without complaint against us.
We have heard assigned as a reason for the change which has taken place in the manner of conducting the Public work - that the Masons who were at work at the Capitol - idled their time and did not do their duty. This is not true, whoever may have made such representations to the commissioners - Let the work done this Spring be fairly estimated and it will be found that each Mason employed fully earned his wages, allowing the rate per perch at which McDermott Roe has contracts - with this wide difference in favor of the masons - that their work will stand the test of the severest examination, and McDermott Roe's is totally unfit for such a building, and must be undone or the House will be ruined, which we are willing to prove. It is also said as a reason for the change, that the masons refused to work without their wages were raised from 10/ to 11/3. This is not true, the Masons said not a word about their wages until after they were told by Mr. Hoban that those who did not choose to work under McDermott Roe might go about their business - They were well satisfied to continue as they had done for twelve months before at 10/ a day. - But after being discharged they had a right without any imputation upon them to hold their future services at what they thought proper
Robt Brown, James Maitland, John Delahunty, Thom? Maitland ( ?, 1794)

"Liberty" in the yard

To get some idea of the working conditions of the slave laborers, we have to consider the working condition of free skilled workers. In 1799 the commissioners investigated reports of carpenters loafing on the job and fired several. In the letter below one of the fired carpenters asked to be reinstated. He admitted "that every man in the yard took whatever Liberty almost he pleased as the main thing was to keep time," but he worked more than others.

Obviously there was no "liberty" for slave laborers in the same sense that free carpenters enjoyed it, but it likely that the slaves at the work site also got to "keep time" rather keep up a hard pace of work. As far as I can tell, Tompkins wasn't rehired nor did he get a hearing, as was accorded to the Master Carpenter Redmond Purcell. 

April 9 , 1799

 Gentlemen, I beg leave to write a few lines to you. Informing you of my present situation Which I hope you will take into consideration. I am discharged from public service and do not know for what. I have been informed it was for not doing my duty in planing shingles. Gentlemen, I acknowledge that there might been more work done than was but it was so general that every man in the yard took whatever Liberty almost he pleased as the main thing was to keep time. But even the Charge which was against me is a very gross mistake for I believe I dressed as many shingles on the time I was at work as any man their. But I was not dressing shingles more than three or four weeks. I hope Gentlemen you will take this in your consideration that I have purchased a [building] lott of you and being thrown out of work now at this dull time it will render me unable to fulfill my contract with you and support my family and if I am discharged for not doing a full days work every day, every carpenter might be discharged for the same reason. Gentlemen you will think proper to reinstate me again I dare say their will be no more complaint against us I expect their will be more regularity with the carpenters. If the Gentlemen should not think proper to put me to work I hope they will allow me a hearing. I conceive myself as much injured although I was a journeyman as if I was the master carpenter. James Tompkins

Ethnic rivalries

"As the sawyers worked in the sawpit, twenty-one carpenters prepared the roof for rafters, working under the supervision of Redmond Purcell, who came from Ireland with Hoban. He tried to prove to the commissioners that the Englishman Hadfield was incompetent, which would have left Hoban the only man in town qualified to supervise construction at the Capitol."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, page106

That there were ethnic rivalries among the workers does not necessarily tell us anything about race relations. But there are more letters alluding to the ethnic rivalries than there are letters even mentioning the slave workers. A man cannot do anything about his ethnicity just as he can't change his race. I suggest that since ethnic tensions boiled over and there is no evidence that racial tensions did, then the latter were not a problem.

Redmond Purcell wrote the letter below at the peak of his feud with Hadfield and in it he tried to regain favor with the commissioners by showing that Scots, Americans and even a Englishman supported him, as well as Irish. I share it because it shows that my discussion is not based on my analysis of the workers ethnic background. It shows that everyone then was aware of the ethnic backgrounds of the workers.

Who gets paid when there is no money?

"In November 1797, they had not paid their workers since September. With funds so scarce, Hoban's padding his salary thanks to his slaves' work may have angered free workers."

 Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 109

A major frustration of  my research was not finding any explicit statements of policy in regards to paying for hired slaves. In September 1797 the commissioners could not pay their workers. In the following letter they alerted Hoban at the White House and Hadfield at the Capitol and told them to tell the workers and then prioritized who would get paid first once money became available.

Obviously slave masters had the least need of the money. They had no current expenses for the upkeep of the slaves they hired out. The commissioners paid workers by the month. In the letter they give paying them priority over quarterly "salaries." At this time the master's of many hired slaves were paid every quarter. But "salaries" may have referred only to what supervisors, like Hoban and Hadfield, and the commissioners got paid. The letter also mentions "small debts to laborers and people residing at a distance." Did that refer to the shilling a day paid to slave sawyers and money owed to masters, many of whom lived outside of the city?

I am afraid that the root of my problem is that the commissioners, in this case William Thorton and Gustavus Scott simply did not have that firm a grasp of the work force and they were careful to only make generalizations. They rarely got down to specifics in their letters. But in November they did ban the hiring of slave carpenters. Since all who had been hired belonged to Hoban and his friends, I raise the possibility that the lack of money contributed to the commissioners banning the slave carpenters. Or put it this way in the context of this letter: despite being paid a quarterly salary, Hoban still was among those first in line to get paid because he received the money paid to the slaves he hired as carpenters. All speculation, of course, but I think looking at the issue from many angles helps us get a feel for what was going on.

In making the photocopy I cut off the bottom line of the first page below

Horses and hauling contractors

"One contractor supplied wagons drawn by four horses at four dollars a day, two horse carts for two dollars a day and a single horse cart for ten shillings a day."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capitol, pages 80, 81

That contractor was Joseph Dove and the source of that information about carts was a March 31, 1800, letter that he wrote to the commissioners which I scanned below. The reason for the letter was to ask for more money since the cost of food had doubled since those rates for hiring wagons were established in 1793.

The commissioners' records have many letters that invite a page or two of commentary which I couldn't expound in the book. I noted the information in this letter mainly because it is one of the few references to horses used in the city and I thought it important to establish that horses were there to do the hauling essential to getting building materials to the building sites. 

If Dove had complained that the higher cost of living made it more difficult to feed his slaves as well as his horses, I would have made much more of the letter, but he didn't. The simple reason for that may well be that he didn't use slaves. According to the 1800 census Dove owned 3 slaves, but his household had 5 white children 10 years old or younger so those slaves may have been house servants under his wife's orders and not on Joseph Dove's work crew.

It is easy to assume that as the city grew more whites began to rely on slaves, but Dove's letter reminds us of the inflation at the time that added to the burden of owning slaves doing non-agricultural work. The cost of feeding them rose while, as Dove points out, what they earned for their master remained the same. So assuming Dove struggled just to get by on the short term, he might have preferred hiring free laborers as needed rather than spend the capital, which he probably didn't have, to buy an able bodied slave that he would have to feed every day as long as he owned him.

The commissioners dis their carpenters, May 1798

"...the motley set we found here...."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 92

The commissioners had little respect for the workers they hired. In the winter and spring of 1798, the carpenters and their supervisors faced their biggest challenge: framing the roof of the Capitol. Only the challenge to framing the White House roof the year before gave them any experience. I hope to share other letters showing the demands the roof job put on carpenters. They had to buy new tools for the job and they were helpless without the muscle of the laborers, most of them slaves, but they were challenged in ordering about laborers as unfamiliar with what had to be done as the carpenters. Adding to the crisis, the carpenters had lost confidence in the superintendent at the Capitol, George Hadfield. It was at this time that the Polish tourist Niemcewicz opined that only the slaves worked at the Capitol. That reflected the low morale of the free carpenters.

The reaction of the commissioners to that crisis was to try to use it as an opportunity to cut the wages of carpenters and dock the pay of carpenters that Hadfield and James Hoban, the superintendent at the White House, thought incompetent.

The commissioners had banned the use of slave carpenters beginning in December 1797 so this letter did not reflect on them. But the letter shows that the commissioners fostered an atmosphere that did not bode well for any hired slaves. By the way, the commissioners would soon fire George Hadfield and, once the Capitol roof was done, try to fire James Hoban. It almost seems like they hoped to present the finished buildings in 1800 with no workers around so that the three commissioners would get all the credit. As far as I can tell the carpenter William Barry who delivered the letters was not hired despite the commissioners' recommendation.

Abigail Adams amused by slaves working at White House

"In November 1800, First Lady Abigail Adams stood at a window of the White House and saw a small gang of slaves clearing dirt and rubbish from her yard. In a November 28 letter to a friend in Massachusetts, she opined dismissively: 'I have amused myself from day to day in looking at the labor 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 rubbish about a 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 whole 12.'"

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 18

Work arrangements before slave hire

"The commissioners encouraged Williams to hire men who work by the job, not on time wages and expecting chocolate butter for breakfast...."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital page 42

One result of the commissioners firing L'Enfant's workers in January 1792 was that they had to find somebody to organize the work that had to be done and this time they would not give nebulous orders to proceed, as they did with L'Enfant. They tried to give explicit orders. That was difficult because they really didn't know how to go about such a huge and unprecedented project, unprecedented in this country at least.

I share the scans of two documents I photocopied from the microfilm reels of the commissioners' proceedings made by the National Archives. The first is the commissioners' contract with Elisha Williams who they put in charge of the work. The second is their instructions to Williams outlining what they wanted him to do after the commissioners' adjourned and left Georgetown.

I didn't crop the first scan to exclude other matters the commissioners dealt with. I am always accused of sharing too much detail in my books. Here's a chance to show the many details I didn't share.

Four months after hiring Williams, the commissioners instructed him to hire slaves. That raises the question: when they hired Williams did they already expect to hire slaves? Williams was to be the "overseer," be in charge of "provisions" for workers, prepare for brick making and get timber to build huts to get ready for work in the Spring. Another order asked him to get the huts built by Spring.

But he was to overseer of those laborers those "who do work on priced time." When the commissioners hired slaves, they hired them for a year. If they expected Williams to exclusively handle slaves, they might of simply said he would oversee yearly hires.

These documents show that the commissioners were not thinking of hiring slaves but trying to arrange that all the work be done on a piece-work basis. That is, they wanted him to contract with men who would dig clay for bricks or cut timber for huts for a certain price. (They soon instructed Williams to hire men on a piece work basis to build the huts.) The amount of time it took them to do it would have no bearing on what they were paid. Of course, this may have invited slave owners to bid for the job and use their slaves to do it but it would free the commissioners from having to hire workers paid by the days, month or year, free or slave.

Free laborers and slaves hired by the month

The laborers hired by the year, principally slaves, were evidently not kept on payrolls. Their wage did not vary unless they were absent for over a week. As these 1796 payrolls for overseers and laborers show, overseers and free laborers were on payrolls and during the building season monthly hires, usually more free laborers than slaves, were added to the payrolls.

The March 1796 payroll lists three overseers, including John S. Slye, who was hired by the commissioners as a reward for bringing 30 hired slaves to the city. Obviously those slaves, paid by the year, are not on this monthly payroll. One of the two laborers on the payroll, Jeremiah Holland, was, I think, the laborer referred to in a 1795 note as "Jerry the black man." 

The April payroll is as spare as the one in March and Slye is not on it. My guess is that he left or was fired.

I copied the July and August 1796 payrolls for overseers and laborers which shows how the number of laborers swelled. Also two new overseers are listed: William White and Samuel Smallwood. The July payroll shows that laborers got a raise in the middle of the month from 60 Maryland shillings a month to 75. However in the spring of 1797 they would again make 60 shillings a month so the raise was probably an inducement to continue working during the hot months.

These payrolls do not segregate the free laborers paid by the month from the slaves. Although members of the same family did work together, usually men with the same second name listed together were slaves and that the last name they shared is the last name of the master. Unfortuntely,  many of the payrolls were bigger than the photocopy machine at the Archives so I did not always include the signature of the person who received the monthly wages.

In my book I list hired slaves, masters, black laborers and white laborers so there you can find my ideas on the status of all the men on these payrolls. Below the 1796 payrolls, I show a scanned photocopy of a May 1797 payroll showing how a master or his agent signed for the receipt of his slaves' wages. The two men listed with Burnes as the last name were slaves of James Burnes.

Negro Simon's high wage and No Sunday Work

"On top of the list is Negro Simon...."

Quote from Slave Labor in the Capital, page 104

This was perhaps my most exciting find in the National Archives. It is one of the illustrations in the book, on page 104. Other historians have used the information in the payroll, but not correctly. It shows that these slaves were paid for 30 days labor in August and one "Negro" sawyer was paid as much as slave carpenters and white apprentice carpenters, around 2 shillings less an hour than carpenters. The other "Negro" sawyers on the list made the usual "extra wage" of one shilling a day that was theirs to keep.

But some historians use the payment for 30 days of work in a month with 31 days as evidence that the slaves had to have worked on Sundays. That's not the case.

As I explain in my book on page 104, all workers were credited with 2 hours extra pay for each day they worked 14 hours during the long days of late Spring and the summer. So for a 6 day week of 14 hour days, the workers were paid for 7 twelve hour days of work, and, as always, got Sunday off. Below the payroll showing Simon, I put a scan of the carpenters' payroll for June which shows that the foreman Redmond Purcell and the slave Harry were credit as working 30.4 days which means they worked all 26 working days and got 2 hours of extra pay for each long day, or 52 hours or 4 days 4 hours, which they wrote down all totaled as 30.4 days.

That slaves were allowed extra pay for 14 hour days, meager though it was for all but Simon, is a credit to their bosses. But I do worry about highlighting possible generosity. In the book, I wonder if Simon actually worked for a master named Hammersley who the commissioners paid the same sum of money that month for hiring out a sawyer.  I didn't find Simon on any other payrolls.

I'll share another payroll because I am very worried that the claim that these slaves worked on Sundays will continue to be made. The payroll for August 1796 shows that the fraction used in the number of days work reflected the extra two hours credited for fourteen hour days Some of the carpenters including one of the slave carpenters, Harry, were listed as working 31 days and 6 hours. So by working 6 fourteen hour days they earned an extra day's wages. That August had 27 working days so anyone working the full 27 days earned 31 days and 6 hours wages.