Who Built the White House?

Between 1790 and 1863 half the workforce that built the White House and the Capitol was enslaved.  In May of 2005 a bipartisan task force was created to recognize the work done by enslaved men in the nation's capital.This was due to an investigative story in 2000 by WRC-TV (Channel 4), reporter Ed  Hotaling. He found U.S. Treasurer promissory notes to those who hired out the workers. Headlines in the London Independent read "White House and Capitol built by $5-a-month slaves,. "Temples of Freedom Founded on Slavery", said a headline in the Times of London.

When planning began, slave labor was not discussed. The government,        architects and contractors sought white skilled craftsmen and laborers from Virginia and Maryland. One of; the commissioners in charge of the construction was Thomas Jefferson who decided to use the least costly labor ,those enslaved. Approximately half of all those enslaved in the United States lived in Virginia and Maryland and were hired out at much lower rates than free labor would have cost. The commission initially authorized the use of up to 100 slaves a year for the two largest projects in the District.

In September 1794 George Washington appointed Dr. William Thornton as a commissioner for the Federal district. Thornton was the amateur architect who won the design competition for the Capitol. He was also a slave-owning Quaker who helped establish the American Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color.

Thornton used his position as commissioner to advance two favorite  projects: completion of the Capitol and manumission. In 1795 he made two proposals to his fellow commissioners. The first was that 50 "intelligent  negroes" be hired for six years and paid wages from which they could earn  their freedom. The second was that slaves be purchased outright, trained  to cut stone and then freed after six years of service. There is no record  how or even if the other members of the board responded to these suggestions and no record of an enslaved worker being freed after working on buildings in the nation's capital.

A list of persons employed by the commissioners to build the Capitol and White House during a sample five-year period (1795-1800) contains 122 names of Blacks hired and assigned to the 74 stonecutters, 84 carpenters, or labored at such tasks as sawing lumber or hauling stone. They did the back breaking work in the Virginia quarries, cleared stumps and stones to create streets, dug foundations, sharpened tools and laid brick. They were housed in crude huts around the sites of the White House and the Capitol near the shacks where white laborers lived. French, German, Scottish and Irish  immigrants also worked on these structures. The city was still mostly  swampland so there were few houses and room rent was expensive.  The Europeans' pay ranged from $4.65 to $10.50 per week.

Payment for enslaved workers labor was paid to the owners through a vouchering system. Some of these were what reporter Hotaling saw in 2000. Occasionally these workers were  allowed to keep a portion of their earnings if they worked on Sundays or at night.

Federal officials stopped hiring enslaved workers in 1802 but didn't require contractors to follow suit. Enslaved workers hired by contractors helped  rebuild the Capitol and the White House after British troops burned both down to the shells in 1814.

The numbers of workers vary by reporting source but records indicate 400 payments were made to enslavers from 1795 to 1801.  That could include multiple workers on the same voucher. 50 free Blacks were also found to have worked on the Capitol or White House.

One worker named Philip Reid. His efforts were recognized when there was a problem completing the American Freedom statue commissioned to American Sculptor Thomas Crawford who lived in Rome.

Crawford completed the full -size plaster model of Freedom at his studio in 1856 for a payment of $3000. Of note was an objection by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Mississippi plantation owner who argued not only for the right to own slaves but to allow enslavement in newly formed states.The original design called for the statue to  wear a liberty cap, symbol of freedom being used throughout Europe, during the American Revolution and by those supporting abolition. Davis argued the people of the United States, had never been enslaved so the use of the cap was misleading and dangerous. He requested that a helmet be used instead, to signify America's "victory over tyranny".  Four years later he was named president of the confederacy.

In April, 1858, the model left Rome in six crates aboard the ship Emily Taylor. While crossing the Atlantic, the Taylor sprung a leak which got progressively worse. When it reached Bermuda the ship was condemned and Freedom was transferred to another ship for the remainder of  the trip. It's final destination was the the Mills Foundry in Bladensburg, Maryland owned by Clark Mills.

The Government had awarded the Mills Foundry a contract valued at  $23,736 to cast the plaster model in bronze and the work began in May, 1860. When the pouring of metals to form the casting was almost finished however, the Foundry Foreman went on strike stating $8 a day too meager for the work he felt only he could complete. What he failed to notice was  he had not been alone during the process. Philip Reid had been feeding the fire under the mold and watching every move the foreman made.  Clark Mills asked if he could finish the casting and left Reid to supervise the rest of the project.An article in the Dec. 2. 1863  New York Tribune reported "The Negro took the striker's place as superintendent and the work went on"

The bronze statue was in five sections each weighing over a ton. The  sections were moved by reinforced wagons from Bladensburg, Maryland to the east grounds of the Capitol. Philip Reid and other enslaved workers   assembled the Statue of Freedom on the grounds of the Capitol over 31 days to make sure everything fit just right.It was taken apart again, the pieces hoisted to the pedestal atop the Capitol Dome and  reassembled on December 2, 1863 amid great celebration and a 35-Gun Salute. The president, other elected officials and dignitaries talked about the the design and symbolic elements of the statue and the importance of freedom looking over the land as Reid and his crew went back to work.

18 foot five ton American Freedom Statue

Shortly afterwards,  the District of Columbia ended slavery and Philip Reid became a free man.  According to the terms of the act, his former owner Charles Mills was allowed compensation for the people who had previously been his property  so he asked the government for $1,500--more than twice the amount he asked for anyone else--to compensate for the loss of what one publication called;a highly skilled mechanic who performed the delicate and difficult task of fitting the Statue of Freedom on the dome of the Capitol. Reid continued working as a laborer earning $1 a day.