History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol

No one will ever know how many slaves helped to build the United States Capitol Building—or the White House; or the homes of founding fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison; or Philadelphia's Independence Hall. Indifference by earlier historians, poor record keeping, and the silence of voiceless classes have impeded our ability in the twenty-first century to understand fully the contributions and privations of those who toiled over the seven decades from the first cornerstone laying to the day of emancipation in the District of Columbia.

Ten years ago, official celebrations of the Capitol's two-hundredth anniversary focused national attention on earlier Americans who had no cause to celebrate: the slaves who quarried the stone, cut the timber, and formed and fired the bricks that became our nation's Temple of Freedom. As plans proceeded for construction of a Capitol Visitor Center in the 1990s, members of Congress and others expressed increasing concern that a great opportunity to tell this story might be missed.

The following report responds to that opportunity. It offers a balanced and well-reasoned account, based on the surviving sources, of a significant chapter in American history. By infusing this story with its broader historical and architectural context, the author has added a dimension never before available. While we will never know as much about the slave laborers who built the Capitol as we do about their free counterparts, we now know a good deal more than before this project began.

Introduction Soon after it was finished in the 1820s, the Capitol began to be called the "Temple of Liberty" because it was dedicated to the cherished ideas of freedom, equality, and self determination. How, then, can a building steeped in those noble principles have been constructed with the help of slave labor? The first step in the Capitol's evolution was taken in the last decade of the eighteenth century and was, in fact, assisted by the toil of bondsmen—mainly slaves rented from local owners to help build the Capitol and the city of Washington. They were an integral component of the city's workforce, which otherwise would have suffered from a severe shortage of hands. In every colony north and south, from the seventeenth century on, the building trades drew upon slave labor to augment the available supply of free workmen. This was especially true in the Potomac region, where the population was sparse and the concentration of slave laborers was the highest in the nation.1 The irony of slaves helping to build America's "Temple of Liberty" is potent.

It is instructive, however, to recall that other landmarks of American freedom were also built with a similar labor force or in other ways intertwined with the institution of slavery. Faneuil Hall—Boston's celebrated "Cradle of Liberty"—, for instance, was given to the city by a slave owner whose fortune was founded on the slave trade. America's oldest lending library, the Redwood Library in Newport, Rhode Island, was founded in 1747 with the help of New England's largest slaveholder, Abraham Redwood. Two well-known Massachusetts leaders, Cotton Mather and John Winthrop, were also slave owners.2 Independence Hall was built at a time when slavery was widespread in Pennsylvania. Indeed, the colony's Quaker founder, William Perm, was a slave owner. The homes of George Washington (Mt. Vernon), Thomas Jefferson (Monticello), and James Madison (Montpelier) were constructed with the help of slaves. Bondsmen helped construct the three principal public buildings in Williamsburg, Virginia: the Capitol, the Governor's Palace, and the Wren Building at the College of William and Mary.3 Indeed, it is highly unlikely that any eighteenth-century building now standing in Colonial Williamsburg was built without the assistance of slave labor. By the time of the American Revolution slavery had existed in every state for generations. When the Capitol was begun in the 1790s slave labor had a well-established record in the building trades, a record that would only expand with the work necessary to build a capital city on the Potomac. It is not possible to examine the documents at the National Archives relating to the Capitol's early construction without being impressed by the sheer number of references to "Negro Hire" (see the appendix). These vouchers record payments to owners for time their slaves spent working on the Capitol, the President's House, and elsewhere in the emerging city of Washington. Today it may seem negligent on the part of early historians of the Capitol that they failed to include the story of slave labor in their accounts. Surely they were aware of the fact; however, their failure to incorporate slaves in their Capitol histories should be seen as a typical disinterest in the working classes in general. In years past, the labor of everyday workmen of all races and ethnicities was not considered a subject worthy of scholarly notice. The issue of slavery in particular was an embarrassing topic that did not sit well with squeamish writers. Early histories of the Capitol by George C. Hazelton (1897), Glenn Brown (1900,1902) and I. T. Frary (1940) were focused on architecture, architects, and superintendents and not on the workmen who actually implemented the plans and orders. This situation has changed dramatically in more recent accounts, which reflect a new respect for all who played a role in the Capitol' s history—including lower-class laborers and slaves. This is the result of a more inclusive view of history by modern scholars and a relatively new interest in multi-cultural subjects. A glance at the index to Bob Arnebeck's authoritative examination of the city's formative years, Through A Fiery Trial, reveals no fewer than 89 entries for slave labor.4 In 1993 Robert Kapsch completed a landmark dissertation on the workmen who built the President's House during the period 1793-1817.5 Another example of this new interest in workmen is found in the February/March 1995 issue of American Visions, a magazine of Afro-American culture. It contains a series of articles about blacks in Washington history and includes two narratives on slaves helping to build the Capitol and the President's House. The most recent history of the Capitol (2001) contains numerous references to slaves and other workmen.6 The documents that made such scholarship possible have never been lost, have never been "discovered," and have in fact been available to the public for generations, yet only in the last fifteen years have they captured the interest of historians of Washington's early days.

This study on slave labor and the construction of the Capitol has been prepared at the request of Congress.7 Here, the focus will be on the construction of the Capitol from the early 1790s until it was occupied in 1800. This period contains the most comprehensive documentation relating to slave labor in the history of the Capitol, and while later materials will be discussed, the bulk of the story belongs to the 1790s.

I. Manpower, Money, and Materials: The Capitol's Faltering Start
The authority to construct the Capitol was granted to the president by Congress in the Residence Act of July 16,1790. This law gave George Washington broad powers to oversee the construction of a new city on the Potomac River, complete with buildings necessary to house the chief executive and the legislature. (A home for the judicial branch would have to wait.) To facilitate matters, the law granted the president the authority to appoint a three-man board of commissioners to act as his representative on the spot.s The government, after all, would be in Philadelphia while the new federal city was being prepared. Commissioners had been appointed to lay out cities in other places during the colonial period, when new towns were needed for county seats or state capitals. What set this venture apa rt was the breathtaking scale of the new city and the vastness of the public buildings that would be built there. Washington's vision for this national metropolis reached far into the future: at eleven square miles the planned capital would be many times bigger than Philadelphia, then America's most populous city, which at the time covered approximately one square mile. Indeed, the federal city was (on paper, at least) larger than London's eight square miles.9 The President's House promised to be the largest residence in America, and the Capitol would surpass the size and scale of any contemporary public building in the country. (The Capitol design that Washington eventually approved covered an area 10 times larger than Independence Hall.)

What makes Washington's vision for America's capital city all the more remarkable is where it was to be situated: rural Tidewater Maryland. Such ambitious plans might have been more practical in areas near Boston, New York, Philadelphia, or Charleston—areas with well-established building industries—but the sparsely populated agrarian context of the Maryland countryside could do little but throw roadblocks in the path of a city's rapid or orderly development. Most of the human elements necessary to build a great city were missing: there were too few carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers, or roofers; there were virtually no stone cutters or carvers; and surveyors, architects, and engineers had to be brought in from elsewhere. The only human resource that the neighborhood could supply in abundance was unskilled labor—mostly slaves, but a smattering of free blacks and whites as well. Basic building materials, such as lumber, brick, and stone, could be procured locally, but the vast quantities needed to build the Capitol and President's House strained resources to the breaking point. Another vexing problem was the city's finances, which were always in a state of disarray. Proceeds from the sale of building lots were intended to pay for construction activities, but the anticipated real estate bonanza never materialized. (The first sale of lots in October 1792 netted only $2,000.) In desperation the city commissioners sought loans from Dutch capitalists, Congress, and the Maryland legislature. After the initial optimism regarding the city's finances turned sour a fewyears into the project, decisions affecting the Capitol and President's House were made with economy foremost in mind. Scaling back the grand designs was never an option, but building piecemeal was. Therefore, while the Capitol was begun in 1793 with the expectation that it would be finished in seven years, it would not be completed until 1826. (Admittedly, the Fire of 1814 imposed an unexpected and excusable setback.) During the initial phase of construction (1793-1800J only the Capitol's north wing was completed.10

Even before the Capitol's design had been decided upon, the city commissioners realized that they were facing a long-term labor problem and took steps to solve it. The secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, advised them in March 1792 to investigate the possibility of importing Germans and Highlanders.11 Three months later the commissioners sent a letter to a Dutch merchant asking his assistance in procuring 100 unmarried Germans to help build the public buildings in the new city. They were particularly anxious to have stone masons, stone cutters, and bricklayers.12 (There is no evidence that any Germans actually emigrated as a result of this letter.) In October 1792 they sent the head of the stone department on a scouting mission looking for stone cutters who might be among the redemptioners aboard a recently arrived ship.13 Redemptioners were essentially indentured servants who promised to repay—or redeem—the cost of their passage to America with future earnings that would be paid to the ship's captain. The commissioners wished to purchase fifteen to twenty contracts if the redemptioners possessed the construction skills they needed. It is doubtful, though, that the commissioners realized any benefit from this scheme: the people who were obliged to secure transatlantic passage in this manner rarely possessed valuable skills. President Washington had decided that the Capitol and the President's House would be faced entirely with stone, a decision that caused the commissioners considerable anxiety over the years. The best local buildings were brick, and if stone were used at all it was usually relegated to the trim around doors and windows. The federal city was located below the fall line, and stone architecture was an exceedingly rare sight in the neighborhood. Scarce, too, were the men who knew how to cut and carve stone. This situation did not deter Washington, however, whose admiration for stone architecture was amply demonstrated at Mt. Vernon: his frame dwelling was made to look like a dressed masonry building by its exterior sheathing of boards cut, beveled, painted, and sanded to imitate stone blocks. As nature's most durable building material, stone would contribute to the sense of grandeur and permanence that Washington wished the public buildings to impart. The first stone mason to arrive in the federal city was Colin Williamson, a Scot who was a relative of John Suter, the proprietor of the Fountain Inn in Georgetown where the commissioners held their meetings. He took charge of the stone department in 1792 and oversaw the laying of the foundations of the President's House and the Capitol. During a trip to Great Britain, George Walker scouted Masonic lodges (at the commissioners' behest) looking for recruits. He had little luck in London but was able to sign on several experienced masons from Lodge No. 8 in Edinburgh. George Blagden of Yorkshire, England, began his career in the federal city in 1794 and was employed there until his death thirty-two years later. Many other masons, however, found it difficult to persevere in the infant city due to the high cost of living and the lack of urban amenities.

On December 2,1791, the commissioners paid $6,000 for a sandstone quarry on Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia. Other nearby quarries with the same stone deposits were leased during this period. The quarry purchase was the first major outlay of funds for the benefit of the new capital city and predated actual construction activities by almost a year. But the commissioners knew the new city would demand a great deal of stone and determined to operate the quarry themselves rather than rely on stone delivered from far away. Contracts with various quarriers document the efforts to extract stone from several different quarries simultaneously. Robert Brent, a quarrier from Stafford County, was hired in 1792 to work the public quarry. In the fall of that year, just as operations at the quarry would have slowed down, he was authorized to hire forty "stout-armed" Negro men at £12 [$32] a year, pay their taxes, and feed and clothe them.14 It is likely that the commissioners wanted the slaves hired quickly in order to keep the quarry in operation throughout the winter months. It is also likely that Brent already had a crew of slaves at work. In a letter to the secretary of state written at the beginning of 1793, the commissioners referred to their prior use of slave labor, which was employed at the quarries or in felling trees lying in the paths of city streets:

Go to this link to download the full article in a .PDF format. clerk.house.gov/art_history/art_artifacts/slave_labor_reportl.pdf

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