"Negro hire": 385 payments to owners for building the US Capitol (Washington, DC, 1795–1801)

SUMMARY"Negro hire": 385 payments to owners for building the US Capitol (Washington, DC, 1795–1801) [Connections: Tech & skilled labor, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDWilliam C. Allen, architectural historian for the Office of the Architect of the Capitol, wrote a report for Congress in 2005. It found 385 payments for "Negro hire" between 11 Feb. 1795 and 17 May 1801, most of them in 1798. Owners were paid $60 a year per worker, against $70 for an unskilled white laborer, later raised to $70. In 1794 the commissioners hired 37 enslaved people in the city, 7 with the surveyors and 6 at the quarries, and resolved to hire up to 100 "good laboring Negroes by the year." For the Aquia Creek sandstone quarry (bought 2 Dec. 1791), Robert Brent was authorized in 1792 to hire forty "stout-armed" Negro men, and a 1794 ad sought "Sixty strong, active NEGRO MEN." The report says sawing was done only by enslaved "Negro sawyers," who were paid monthly "extra wages," usually $10–$30. Enslaved workers also did carpentry, masonry, carting, roofing, plastering, painting, mortar mixing and kiln work. Owners paid include James Hoban, William Thornton, Gustavus Scott, Middleton Belt and members of the Brent family. PolitiFact cites payments such as $13.00 to Teresa Brent for "Nace" and $23.00 to Elizabeth Brent for "Harry" and "Gabe." It quotes the 2005 task force: "No one will ever know how many slaves helped to build the United States Capitol Building."
STATUS: "Dick," "Tom," "Nace," "Gerrard," "Harry," "Gabe" are hired-out enslaved: the government paid the owners. The sawyers' "extra wages" are the one place the report shows money going to the workers, an overwork pay pattern. George Pointer (born 1773, Frederick County, MD) bought his freedom at eighteen and later captained a boat hauling Capitol materials: free (wage worker). HOSTILE

WITNESSThese are the commissioners' accounts, kept to pay owners

PATTERNThe government rented skilled men from their owners at a lower rate than it paid unskilled white laborers

LENS (WW9)"Slaves built those buildings? How?" The ledger answers: they cut the stone, sawed the timber and laid the walls, and the pay went to the people who held their papers

OPENConfirm that the sawyers' "extra wages" were paid to the workers and not the owners, from the original ledgers (National Archives, Records of the Commissioners for the District of Columbia)

SOURCEWilliam C. Allen, History of Slave Laborers in the Construction of the United States Capitol (AOC, 1 June 2005); PolitiFact, "Legend of slaves building Capitol is correct" (2009).