The Black History of the White House Page 11

  The enormous task of building the capital city created an economic boom for people living in the area and beyond. It was not only attractive to whites who were looking for jobs and investments, but was also economically enticing to free blacks, enslaved blacks, and white indentured servants from around the country. Employment, investment, and business opportunities grew substantially as the city was being built. By 1795, the city and surrounding areas had grown so much and were populated with so many blacks that Georgetown, then independent of the city, passed regulations forbidding slaves and indentured servants from congregating in groups of more than five. Violators could be punished with thirty-nine lashes and a fine for the person’s enslaver.27

  Stone by Stone, Brick by Brick

  While nearly all of the construction work was done by men, there is some evidence that black women were also ordered to labor in the construction process, especially for making bricks. Allen writes that because “it was considered semi-skilled labor, molding bricks was usually the work of female or adolescent slaves, who could mold as many as 5,000 bricks a day.”28 Given that in 1796 the commission placed an order for “[o]ne million of good place bricks,” there was no shortage of workers in brickmaking, which probably included a good number of women, and bricklaying, which was probably done by men. In spite of Allen’s assertion, it’s notable that no record was made in the commissioners’ records regarding payments made to women, black or white. It is entirely possible that the black women slaved to make the bricks off-site, on plantations or farms, and that payment for their work was made directly to their white controllers. There is also a speculation that Mrs. Cloe LeClair, the nurse who ran the hospital for the workers for $10 a month, an outstanding salary at the time, was African American.29

  Moving stone from the quarry to the city was a difficult task. It had to be hauled from the pits to boats, shipped to the city, unloaded—which could take six enslaved men up to two days—then dragged to the construction sites at the Capitol and the White House. To stay on schedule, the commissioners instructed the workers’ supervisor, Elisha Williams, “to keep the yearly hirelings at work, from sunrise to sunset, particularly the negroes.”30

  It appears that blacks were not taught how to carve stone, a highly skilled task, but instead were ordered to do the bulk of the digging and excavation. It is certain that black slaves labored at the quarry in Aquia, Virginia. Arnebeck’s research indicates that they “tended” to the white and free masons who cut, polished, carved, and set the stone both at the White House and at the Capitol. In August 1795, there were forty-six slaves working with the stone masons at the quarry. And enslaved blacks were likely the ones who did the cleanup work around the quarry. According to surviving payroll records, the blacks known to have slaved there were Jack Fuller, Bob, Alexander, and Moses. It is possible that others who were listed on the payroll—Nias Cooper, Jesse Cooper, Joshua Doing, Jacob Piles, Nimrod Young—were either free or enslaved blacks.

  One free black who was involved in the building process was George Planter. According to Allen, Planter owned a boat that was used to transport stone from the quarries. This was likely a highly lucrative enterprise. There is not a lot of other personal information about Planter, but his situation implies that perhaps other free blacks with skills, needed equipment, or other talents worked on building the city as well.

  Although there is plenty of historical evidence that blacks were used for making and laying bricks, Arnebeck found only one advertisement for a slave bricklayer in the area newspaper. There is not a lot of direct evidence of the specific role of blacks in the brickwork that went into the White House and the Capitol. It is known, for example, that brickwork contractors Lovering and Lovell wanted and used African Americans in their business.

  In addition to the enslaved blacks who were forced to toil in the development and construction of Washington, D.C., a number of free blacks were also involved, including Benjamin Banneker. Although his father and grandfather had been enslaved at various points in their lives, Banneker was born to free parents on November 9, 1731, near Baltimore, Maryland. Banneker’s ancestry was unusual for the period. His white grandmother, Mollie Welsh, had been an indentured servant from England who finished her seven years of servitude and bought a farm near the Patapsco River. She eventually saved enough to purchase two slaves. Reportedly, one of those was Banna Ka, later called Banneka and then anglicized to Banneker. Some research has indicated that Banneker’s father was an African king who had been stolen off the western coast of Africa. One can only speculate about life on the farm, but apparently it was so harmonious that after several years of prosperity Mollie freed both Banneker and the other enslaved individual. Within a short time, Mollie Welsh and Benjamin Banneker married and eventually raised a family of four children, the oldest a girl named Mary.

  As an adult, Mary married a black man who had been captured in Africa just as her father had. However, after he converted, joined the Church of England, and was baptized with the name Robert, he was released from slavery. A free black man, Robert married Mary Banneker and adopted Mary’s last name as his own. Mary and Robert Banneker had four children as well, one boy and three girls. They named their boy Benjamin.

  Robert displayed the same industrious spirit as his in-laws and soon owned 120 acres of farmland in the area where Benjamin and his sisters would grow up. Mollie took a particular liking to the boy and began to give him special tutoring. She had him study and read the Bible, and later sent him to an integrated school nearby. He became a bookworm. As he grew, his studies expanded to include mathematics and astronomy, and his intellectual talents became known throughout the area. He earned a living farming tobacco.

  Benjamin Banneker was sixty years old and living on his farm in Patapsco Valley, Maryland, when he was hired to survey Washington, D.C. He and Major Andrew Ellicott arrived in the area on February 7, 1791, and set up camp. Although he had little experience conducting field surveys, Ellicott needed Banneker for his knowledge of astronomy. His principal duties included monitoring the instrument known as the astronomical clock and recording and studying the movement of the stars and the sun. Contrary to subsequent rumors, Banneker did not assist in designing the city and there is no evidence that he and L’Enfant had met. However, Banneker played an essential role in laying out the city’s boundaries. He was paid $60.00 for approximately three months of work he conducted in 1791.31

  In March 1791, his efforts were praised in the Georgetown Weekly Record, whose editor described Banneker as an “Ethiopian whose abilities as a surveyor and astronomer clearly proved that Mr. Jefferson’s concluding that race of men were void of ‘mental endowment’ was without foundation.”32 The Record’s editor was referring to the copious passages in Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia in which he makes disparaging remarks about the intelligence and characteristics of African Americans. In addition to attacking the quality of the poetry of celebrated black writer Phillis Wheatley (whose poem opens this chapter), Jefferson wrote:

  Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me, that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous. . . . But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture.33

  Jefferson’s bigotry notwithstanding, Banneker made a substantial contribution to the surveying of the nation’s capital city.

  Phillis Wheatley, the first black woman whose writings were published. Born in Africa circa 1753, abducted and shipped to the American colonies in 1761 where the Wheatley family enslaved her until 1778 when she was legally released.

  Banneker later had a famous correspondence with Jefferson, whom he had never met. In a long letter dated August 19, 1791, Banneker chastised Jefferson, then secretary of state,
for his views on blacks. He reminded Jefferson of “the injustice of a state of slavery, and in which you had just apprehensions of the horrors of its condition” and quoted Jefferson’s renowned opening to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” Banneker’s letter argued that Jefferson and all professed Christians had an obligation “to extend their power and influence to the relief of every part of the human race, from whatever burden or oppression they may unjustly labor under.” Banneker went on to say:

  I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves, and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous, that every individual, of whatever rank or distinction, might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof; neither could you rest satisfied short of the most active effusion of your exertions, in order to their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.34

  The twelve-page letter he sent personally to Jefferson was later published in Banneker’s Almanac. As a black man in the 1790s, Banneker showed great courage—and took great risks—by criticizing Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in a public manner. Speaking against slavery was illegal in most of the South, and unwise from the perspective of his personal security. Nevertheless, Jefferson responded to Banneker within two weeks. “Nobody wishes more than I do,” he wrote in a letter dated August 30, 1791, “to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colours of men, & that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence both in Africa & America.” Jefferson did not address the fact that their “degraded condition” is a direct result of the slavery that had been enshrined in the Constitution. He went on to say, “I can add with truth that nobody wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstance which cannot be neglected, will admit.” Jefferson was politely deferential to Banneker’s criticisms without in any way committing to use his authority to assist Banneker and the abolitionist movement.

  Benjamin Banneker’s Almanac.

  Banneker’s fame continued to grow after his work with Ellicott. From 1792 to 1797, he published a well-received and commercially successful almanac, Benjamin Banneker’s Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanack and Ephemeris For the Year of Our Lord. . . . The popular almanac contained essays, practical information, short stories, poems by Phillis Wheatley, and abolitionist arguments advocating the illegalization of slavery. Each almanac also contained an ephemeris, an astronomical chart that shows the positions of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. Due to deteriorating health, he was forced to suspend his publication after 1797. Banneker died on October 9, 1806, five years after construction of Washington, D.C., was complete and the city officially occupied. In 1980 the U.S. Postal Service celebrated his accomplishments by dedicating a first-class stamp to him in its Black Heritage series.35

  Little is known about other free blacks who helped build the new city. Among those known to have worked there are Cesar Hall, Isaac Butler, and Jerry (or Jeremiah) Holland. In the records, Hall and Butler are listed as Free Cesar and Free Isaac. They all worked at the White House construction site as laborers. In the records for 1795, Holland was to be paid $8 per month for being considered “the best hand in the department”—a high wage for a black person. However, no records have been found to indicate that he actually got paid that amount. Historical documents indicate that he later worked as a servant for the commissioners in April 1798 and 1800, and lived in a house that was perhaps one that the commissioners built for skilled workers. Unfortunately, payroll records and other data only begin to give a glimpse of the complicated lives these workers led.

  In the years leading up to the Civil War, white people’s fear of and antagonism toward black folks in Washington, D.C., grew, and in 1835 the city’s first race riot erupted. R. Beverly Snow, a free black man, owned a popular restaurant, the Epicurean Eating House, located approximately ten blocks from the White House on the corner of Sixth Street and Pennsylvania. On the night of August 4, Arthur Bowen was accused by the neighbor of his enslaver, Anna Maria Thornton, of having entered her room drunk and carrying an axe.36 Although Thornton would later state that she perceived no harm from Bowen, and actually tried to defend him, he was eventually arrested. The incident, occurring only four years after the infamous Nat Turner-led slave rebellion in neighboring Virginia, stirred up a mob of white males who took to the streets to get Bowen. They also sought those who were perceived to be spreading abolitionism. When Marines were sent in to protect the jail, the crowd turned their attention to Snow, incited by a rumor he had, in the words of the Washington Mirror, “used very indecent and disrespectful language concerning the wives and daughters” of whites.37

  A lynch mob formed and came after him. In the three days of rioting that followed, many blacks were attacked. Snow escaped, but many others were not as lucky. Snow’s bar was trashed, and a number of black businesses, churches, and homes, as well as a black orphanage were attacked, burned, or demolished. The U.S. military finally had to intervene to stop the armed bands of white men who were roving the city hunting for free blacks and abolitionists.38 In fact, dealing with the lynch mobs ultimately led to the creation of the U.S. National Guard. It also led to a ban on blacks’ either selling liquor or owning a commercial business in Washington, D.C.

  As it turns out, Francis Scott Key, author of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” was the city’s district attorney. His role in the whole affair was disreputable. He went after the 18-year-old Bowen and Reuben Crandall, a doctor he accused of sedition for having abolitionist literature, with a vengeance. He sought the death penalty for Bowen that an all-white, all-male jury provided after fifteen minutes of deliberation at his November 1835 trial. However, Thornton wrote a passionate letter to President Jackson to save Bowen, and after granting two reprieves he finally released him—writing “Let the Negro boy John Arthur Bowen be pardoned—effective on July 4, 1836.39 Despite appealing to the sentiments of white supremacy, Key lost the case against Crandall.

  As the Washington Post recounts it, Snow left the United States “for a country where a man might live freely: Canada. His troubles had become such a symbol of the unrest that the events of August 1835 would be remembered as ‘the Snow Riot.’”40 Snow thrived in Canada, establishing himself as a successful businessman and owner of several upscale restaurants, including the Tontine Coffee House eatery.41 While some African Americans chose or were forced to flee the nation’s capital, many others would leave their mark on the city. The unacknowledged handiwork of black people would continue to play an important role in constructing the nation’s most famous symbols of liberation, freedom, and democracy.

  Enslavement and Freedom in the Making of the U.S. Capitol

  Adorning the top of the U.S. Capitol building is the statue called Freedom. The artwork was designed and executed by Thomas Crawford in 1855–1856. According to the architect of the Capitol, Crawford proposed that the sculpture represent an allegorical figure of “Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace.” To Crawford, that meant the figure of a freed slave. He wanted to place a liberty cap on the head of the figure, a symbol of freedom in ancient Greece. However, Secretary of War (and future president of the Confederacy) Jefferson Davis objected and forced Crawford to use a crested Roman helmet instead.

  Crawford created Freedom at his studio in Rome, Italy. The mammoth statue stands nineteen and a half feet tall and weighs 15,000 pounds. Crawford had completed the piece by 1857 but died before he could personally oversee its installation. Freedom was disassembled, packed into six large crates, and shipped to the United States from Italy. After a circuitous journey, the statue finally arrived in Washington, D.C. t
wo years later, in March 1859.42

  The statue’s tribulations were not over. The commissioners had a plaster model of it assembled on the Capitol grounds so it could be viewed by the public prior to the original’s final installation. When asked to disassemble the replica, however, the Italian worker who had put it together refused unless he was paid more and guaranteed long-term employment for years into the future. He had faith that his plan would work because he believed he was the only person in the country who could take the model apart in a way that would allow builders to understand how the real one was to be constructed. He was wrong.

  To the chagrin of the Italian, a talented iron-worker named Philip Reed intervened. Upon learning of the plot unfolding on the mall, Reed developed an ingenious method to disassemble the model and in the process learn how to put together the real statute. Reed’s intervention was decisive in the process of getting Freedom correctly installed on the dome of the U.S. Capitol building.

  In some accounts, Philip Reed is called Philip Reid and referred to as a slave. In fact, he was enslaved at the time of the episode and was emancipated by the time the statue was placed at the top of the dome on December 2, 1862. Reed had been given his liberty along with the city’s other enslaved under the 1862 District of Columbia Emancipation Act. That was not the only significant change in his life. His former owner had spelled his name Reid, but after gaining his freedom, he changed it to Reed—as in “freed,” or so speculates Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, the genealogist who has also uncovered the details of Barack Obama’s Irish roots.43

  Reed had trained for many years at an iron foundry owned by Clark Mills, his former enslaver. Mills described him as “smart in mind, a good workman in a foundry.”44 Reed’s skills were so valued that he was paid a wage even during his enslavement period. According to Smolenyak, for Sunday work that he did at the foundry between July 1860 and May 1861, Reed was paid $41.25, money he received on June 6, 1862, seven weeks after he was freed.45