Far from Home

No one ever described the arrival of any of the slaves hired to build the Capitol and White House. Getting slaves to those work sites would hardly seem to be an issue. In 1790, there were more slaves in Prince George's County, Maryland, than whites: 11,176 to 10,004. That was the county from which the city of Washington was extracted in 1800 when the federal government officially made it the national capital. It is often assumed that all the slaves needed, never more than 100 in the peak years of slave hire, lived nearby. Indeed, around 400 slaves lived a few miles from the site of the Capitol. Over 600 lived in Georgetown, not far from the site of the White House.

But to accurately imagine the arrival of the slaves contracted to work in the city for a year, we have to picture the first preparations for the move taking place on a wharf in the Patuxent River just below a plantation called Resurrection Manor. The master there, Edmund Plowden, could not simply give passes to the eight slaves he hired out — Gerard, Tony, Jack, Moses, Lin, Arnold and two slaves named Jim — and expect them to walk. St. Mary's County, Maryland, is not within walking distance of Washington.

Plowden could have sent his slaves by wagon, but given the nautical bent of Marylanders who lived on the creeks and rivers convenient to Chesapeake Bay, he more likely sent them on a sloop with two sails. Remember, no one ever described this, and if we are left to imagine it, we might as well make the sloop's voyage a memorable one and imagine that it picked up every hired slave along the way as it sailed southeast toward the bay, rounded Point Lookout and hoped for a south wind to push it up the Potomac River.

Its next stop might be St. Mary's City on the other side of the peninsula that forms St. Mary's County. We are not sure if E.J. Millard lived there, but he was a lawyer and county official, and that city is still the county seat. So welcome his slaves Tom and Joe aboard. St. Mary's City is ninety nautical miles from the city of Washington, but our imaginary sloop had to deviate from a true route. The innumerable bays along the river had eased access to tobacco plantations for the past 150 years, and that's where slaves who could be spared for work in the city lived.

The Wicomico River forms the border between St. Mary's and Charles Counties, and the sloop had to put in there to pick up Bennett Barber's four slaves. A Luke Barber and Ann Barber also hired out slaves to the city. Then our sloop might have to wait for the Reintzell slaves to come down Chaptico Creek — Valentine Reintzell's Mike and George, as well as his brother Anthony's slaves Dick, Jacob, Will, Amos and Charles. The sloop's major port of call was Port Tobacco in Charles County, about forty-two nautical miles from the city of Washington. There we picked up Tom, Jack and Dick, who were hired out by Miss Anne Digges. The five daughters of the late Robert Brent of Charles County — Mary, Elinor, Teresa, Elizabeth and Jane — each hired out a slave or two to work at the Capitol: David, Charles, Silvester, Gabe, Henry and Nace. Assuming they didn't inherit large farms too, here was a way to profit off their inheritance rather than selling their slaves. Then there were Joseph Queen's slaves: Anthony, Moses, Joseph, Walter and Tom.

The Potomac narrows as it snakes between Charles County, Maryland, and Stafford County, Virginia. There were as many Brents living in Virginia as there were in Maryland and many Brent slaves in each state. But the notion was widespread that if a Virginia master hired out a slave for work in Maryland, or vice versa, for over a year, that slave might be able to sue for his freedom. So our imaginary sloop made its stops along the Maryland shore, though as we'll see the commissioners hired slaves to cut timber in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and quarry sandstone in Stafford County.

At Piscataway Creek, which forms a wide bay, our sloop finally reached Prince George's County. The road from Nottingham fifteen miles away came down to the creek. Although also on the Patuxent River, that village was about twenty-five miles from the site of the Capitol, so Robert Young's slave Abraham and Ignatius Boone's slaves Charles, Moses and Jacob might still be sent up in our sloop. A few more slaves belonging to members of the Digges family could have been picked up at Fort Washington, but most of the Prince George's County slaves probably walked to the city. The same can be said for the Montgomery County slaves. Georgetown would become part of the District of Columbia but until 1800 was a part of Montgomery County.

So our imaginary sloop picked up at least thirty-eight slaves. In reality, they all probably never worked in the city at the same time. But judging from the records we have, the slaves of Edmund Plowden and Joseph Queen worked in the city from 1794 to 1799 and likely began working there in 1792. Indeed, many of the local slaves, those within walking distance, were hired by the month, not the year. Most of the slaves on our imaginary sloop were hired out in January and worked until December. (Another reason making our imaginary sloop's voyage unlikely is that, in those days, ice could stop boat traffic on the Potomac in the winter.)

The St. Mary's and Charles County slaves likely appreciated meeting those Georgetown slaves like Jack and Peter, who were owned by Middleton Belt, or Dick, Oliver and George, who were owned by Mary Magruder. Belt hauled building materials for the commissioners. Magruder was probably a member of the Georgetown family that sold Indian meal to the commissioners. City slaves owned by them probably knew what was going on at the work sites and might explain some strange things to the St. Mary's slaves.

For example, they did the same jobs as a handful of free blacks. We know of them because they were listed on payrolls as "Negro Caesar Free" or "Free Isaac." We learned of Isaac's full name because in the next payroll, there is an Isaac Butler. Just below that name is a Rhody Butler, so he was likely a free black too.

We learned about a free black laborer named Jerry Holland because he was an excellent worker. In January 1795, an assistant surveyor attached a 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." If it wasn't for that letter, we might still think Holland was a free white laborer. (Holland continued to work for the commissioners until 1800, acting as their servant and living in a small stone house next to their office. They bought him a great coat for $7.50 to keep him warm in the winter, but he never got paid more than the hired slaves.)

The number of free white men who did the same work as the hired slaves was probably most surprising to slaves from the tobacco plantations. The commissioners annually passed resolutions calling for "Negro laborers," but usually the ads in the newspapers just said "laborers." White men signed up and worked for the same low wages. The records we have suggest that the white laborers did the same jobs as the slave laborers, and both often worked side by side with the skilled white workers. But at least the white laborers got to keep the wages they earned.

Slaves and freemen working together was not a novelty in eighteenth-century cities, even in the South. Racial lines had not hardened then as much as they would in the nineteenth century. Around the Capitol and White House, there was generally one white laborer for every three slave laborers. In the summer, the best time for building, the number of white laborers hired by the month swelled and might outnumber the hired slaves.

Overseers began keeping payrolls and time sheets for the laborers in late 1794. On the time sheet for December, the overseer Bennett Mudd, probably himself from Charles County, tops the list, followed by the cook Thomas Smith; two men who handled the scow used to deliver sandstone come next, and then the laborers are listed last. Thirteen freemen, with John Doran first, and twenty-six slaves are at the bottom, with "N Newton — Beall." That means Newton was Beall's slave, as was N Davy, the next man on the list. From other records, we know that Newton and Davy's master was William D. Beall.

Likely many of the slaves had both a first and last name, but only one hired slave was ever listed with both names in the commissioners' records. There is this short note in the records dated December 2, 1795: "pay to Barton Ennis for use of Catherine Green negro hire." There is nothing else known about her or her master. She was likely the only female slave hired by the commissioners.

We might latch on to the division in the payrolls between slave and white workers to suggest that they were segregated and that the slaves worked under more severe conditions. Indeed, on July 30, 1794, the commissioners directed the man overseeing their overseers "to keep the yearly hirelings at work from sunrise to sunset particularly the negroes." Severe as that may sound, the order didn't allow the whites to quit early, and as we shall see in the chapters examining the work the slaves did, free and slave laborers did the same jobs. In later payrolls, the slave and free laborers are mixed together.

All the hired laborers were guaranteed a place to sleep. Does that mean white and black laborers slept in the same quarters?

Given the number of laborers guaranteed a place to sleep by the commissioners, one would think there would be descriptions of where the slaves lived. However, no one left any, and in the commissioners' records, there are only two mentions suggesting where the hired slaves slept.

In December 1794, a contractor was paid to haul five logs to the "laborers' camp on Capitol Hill." In 1800, after slave hire ended, a man was paid to haul the "camps" off Capitol Hill, and it took his crew and wagon two days to do it.

Skilled white workers lived in temporary housing or huts that were built on the Capitol and President's Squares, often four to a room, or in barracks, one made of bricks, two stories, with enough small rooms to board thirty-two workers, two to a room with four men sharing one chimney. The laborers' camp must have been even less accommodating.

The slaves in the nearby Notley Young plantation lived in log cabins strung out on a ridge overlooking the Potomac. There were garden plots between cabins. That must have seemed like paradise to any hired slaves who saw it. Their camp was probably in the most inconspicuous corner of a public square and without any gardens. Who would tend them? The hired slaves couldn't bring their families.

There is no reason to assume that the races were segregated. The white laborers ate the same food, had the same overseers and went to the same hospital when they were sick. In December 1797, the commissioners paid Thomas Dixon wages for being a laborer and paid him the wages of his slave Will "at same rate" but deducted three dollars because the commissioners had paid a doctor that amount for inoculating Will against smallpox. White laborers who were immigrants would not have found living with blacks unfamiliar. In tenements and alleys near the wharves of Philadelphia and New York, immigrants and recently freed slaves lived together.

Plantation owners like George Washington were careful to keep slaves from sleeping next to white overseers or hired free workers who had drinking problems. Drunkenness became a problem among workers in the city of Washington, almost all of them single men or without their wives, just like the hired slaves. But keeping hired slaves away from the white workers would have required making a camp far from their work sites because, as Niemcewicz pointed out, that's where the grogshops were.

We'll examine the living conditions of the laborers in a later chapter. For now, let's go back to our imaginary sloop, which raised more questions than it answered. Its journey up the Potomac showed us where many of the slaves came from, but it did not really tell us why so many slaves came from so far away.

The letters of the commissioners are mum when it comes to slave hire. This all happened well before the era when governments constantly studied themselves to make the bureaucracy more efficient. There was hardly any bureaucracy: three commissioners told one man to hire slaves. So in their records, there is not even a hint at why almost a third of the slaves hired came from such a distance.

Here's a guess: Miss Digges was a member of a prominent Maryland family that was intermarried with the family of Daniel Carroll of Rock Creek, one of the three commissioners hiring slaves. His sister-in-law had married one of the Fenwicks, who were related to the Plowdens. The Brents had intermarried with the Fenwicks, Plowdens, Diggeses and Carrolls. They were all prominent Maryland Catholics who all trusted Daniel Carroll, whose brother was Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore.

Slave hire allowed a network of slave owners well known by Commissioner Carroll to profit at little cost to them. Although there was no public comment about the financial aspects of slave hire, no pamphlets explaining or extolling the practice, masters grew very comfortable with it. All they needed were some rudimentary skills in math to understand its virtues.

On January 5, 1796, Samuel Davidson, a Georgetown merchant who owned the land just north of the White House and who personally owned just one slave servant, sold Negro Thomas to a newly appointed commissioner, Gustavus Scott, for 112 pounds, 10 shillings.

Let's take a brief digression and explain the money used in Maryland in the 1790s. The new federal government established a mint in Philadelphia and, by 1795, wanted all states to calculate value using the dollar system we have today. But pounds, shillings and pence were used also until 1800. Twelve pence equaled one shilling, and twenty shillings equaled a pound. In an economy where there were not many coins, it was a convenient way to keep track of things. In Maryland, the exchange rate between the two systems was one pound equaled $2.66. It makes sense to count money the way people using it did and then put the punch line, as it were, with a dollar sign.

Davidson had bought the slave a week before from a Charles County merchant for eighty pounds. Davidson bought clothes for the slave, at two pounds, nineteen shillings and five pence, and sundries at three pound and two pence, and calculated his profit at twenty-six pounds, ten shillings and five pence or about seventy dollars.

Slave hire gave masters who did not have work for a slave to do an option to profit from him without having to sell him. The commissioners hired a slave worth about one hundred pounds for twenty-one pounds a year. The slave's master would not have to feed the slave, and the value of the slave, as long as he didn't get injured or run away, would not decrease. The master was making roughly a 20 percent return on his or her "investment," and that was in an era when some thought making over 6 percent was sinful.

Then there is the case of Joseph Beck, who had a small farm out near what would become Bowie, Maryland, in Prince George's County. The land and slaves his father bequeathed to his children was evenly divided, and as historian Terry Buckalew discovered, one of the slaves had to be freed when he reached the age of twenty-five. Beck's farm was too small to make a profit, so he hired out his slave Ignatius since the sale value of a slave soon to be free was not very high.

Slave hire was so attractive that several of the men in charge of various aspects of the work in the city, including two commissioners, hired out their own slaves to the commissioners. Commissioner Scott hired out Bob and Kit, but if you weren't a commissioner, that could be risky.

Samuel Smallwood, the overseer of slaves at the Capitol, began hiring out his own slaves by the month to work at the Capitol. In September 1797, in order to economize, the commissioners stopped monthly hires. Smallwood complained to the commissioners, "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." He was stuck feeding his slaves without getting any money from their work. Smallwood lived in a small house on Capitol Hill, not a large plantation where there was always something for a slave to do.