Slave labor on United States military installations 1799–1863
Slavery in the US military / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Enslaved labor on United States military installations was a common sight in the first half of the nineteen century, for agencies and departments of the federal government were deeply involved in the use of enslaved blacks.[1] In fact, the United States military was the largest federal employer of rented or leased slaves throughout the antebellum period.[2][3] In 1816, a visitor to the Washington Navy Yard wrote that master blacksmith, Benjamin King, estimated daily expense for a slave as twenty-seven cents and noted how lucrative the business had become. According to King, Navy was paying eighty cents per day for black workers while white blacksmiths were paid $1.81 per diem.[4] Further south on April 27, 1830 at Gosport (Norfolk )Navy Yard, civil engineer Loammni Baldwin, transmitted a detailed report showing the "great economy of employing slaves" on the new dry dock. Baldwin by comparing the average cost of free white, stone masons with enslaved black hammers, lauded the saving gained by having blacks perform the work at 72 cents per day in comparison to white stone mason's paid 2.00 per day.[5] An English visitor and author, Lady Emmeline Stuart-Wortley, writing in the late 1840s, noted the prevalence of slave labor at the Washington Navy Yard: "We saw a sadder sight after that, a large number of slaves, who seemed to be forging their own chains, but they were making chains, anchors, &c., for the United States Navy."[6]
George Teamoh (1818 to after 1887), a former enslaved laborer, ship caulker and carpenter toiled at the Norfolk Navy Yard and Fort Monroe in the 1830s and 1840s.[7]
Teamoh later wrote of his years of unrequited labor at federal shipyards and forts: "The government has patronized, and given encouragement to Slavery to a greater extent than the great majority of the country has been aware. It had in its service hundreds if not thousands of slaves employed on government works."[8]
Today, the history of the United States government's rental of slaves on federal installations still attracts "less scholastic analysis than other aspects of slavery."[9] Indeed, historians have primarily focused their research on the labor and intensive plantation economy of the South.[10] In the formative years of the nineteenth century however, the federal use of enslaved labor was often the subject of public attention, discussion and commentary, with both slaveholders and critics voicing strong opinions. Recent scholarship has confirmed that blacks, both enslaved and free, comprised a significant and vital source of labor for military, installations.[11][12][13][14][15]