Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865 (19 page)

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Authors: Midori Takagi

Tags: #Social Science, #Ethnic Studies, #African American Studies, #test

BOOK: Rearing Wolves to Our Own Destruction: Slavery in Richmond Virginia, 1782–1865
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The influx of free canal workers from Ireland and Scotland in the late 1830s should have amply met the company's needs, given that the work did not require great skills and slave labor was expensive. But their experience with immigrant laborers confirmed the belief of James River and Kanawha Company officials that slaves were crucial to the completion of the canal.
By the late 1830s the company's efforts to secure a stable workforce by recruiting white immigrant laborers had proved unsuccessful. To the chagrin of JRKC officials, immigrant workers refused to accept the poor working conditions and wages. On two occasions in 1837 they struck, demanding higher pay. In 1838, when workers were informed their wages would be delayed because of the national economic crisis (the panic of 1837), "not less than one half of the whole white force, and a much larger proportion of the masons . . . left the line."
38
Company officials also were disturbed by white immigrants' hostility toward slave workers. The project's chief engineer said in a written report that he lacked patience for the immigrant laborers, "who war against our institutions, and refuse to work with our slaves."
39
In its annual report the company announced its intention to increase "the proportion of black labour on the work [due to] the inaptitude of the still preponderating mass of foreign labourers."
40
And by late 1838 the company successfully secured more slave laborers and changed the proportions of the workforce to "two third blacks and one third whites," which was, according to the board of directors, ''more manageable and stable."
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The advantages of using slave instead of free workers (for reasons other than cost) were noted by other industries as well. George Cooke, the agent at Busby's mine (a Richmond coal mine), frustrated with the white employees, wrote to the company's president complaining, "You have no idea. . . . I am plagued by the worthless white men who pretend to labor about here."
42
As a solution, Cooke recommended replacing white workers with slaves. The Richmond Dock Company apparently reached a similar conclusion about its mixed workforce and replaced all wage laborers with slaves. In 1819 the company employed thirty-six white, three free black workers, and twenty-five slave hands. The following year, however, company officials reported a workforce made up of sixty-four slaves only.
43
Industrial interest in hiring a predominantly slave workforce obviously did not extend to women workers largely because of the factors mentioned earlier, including notions of female differences. As a result, the majority of the 2,000 to 3,000 slave women in Richmond worked as household domestics, laboring as cooks, nannies, personal servants,
 
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chambermaids, seamstresses, and laundresses. While most female domestics were expected to perform any job assigned to them, owners and employers acknowledged that some women excelled at certain tasks and sought after them for those skills. This is most evident in the newspaper advertisements featuring slave women for sale or hire that touted them as "good cooks" or "excellent maids," and by the fact that cooks generally commanded higher prices than maids.
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In contrast to the men, however, the differences in positions and skills women held had little impact on their working conditions and environment. The dramatic differences in the labor systems under which canal hands and tobacco stemmers worked did not exist in domestic servitude. Whether they were cooks or maids, female slave domestics working in the "Big House" were on call twenty-four hours a day and spent a great deal of their time under the watchful eye of their owners and employers. Although most of the jobs that slave domestics performed allowed them a degree of latitude in the pace of their work, the fact that their working and living arrangements were housed under one roof meant they had little privacy or independence. In further contrast to the men, slave women, regardless of their skills and jobs, were vulnerable to being sexually exploited and oppressed by their owners and employers.
Richmond slave owners and employers did not experiment with the domestic workforce as they had with its industrial counterpart. Throughout this period household servants were mostly slaves and generally women. Although a few households had slave and free laborers under the same roof, typically all the workers were black. Few, if any, households mixed black and white domestic workers with the exception of, perhaps, the craftshop households. There were a number of slave men working as domestics alongside the women, but their jobs were distinct from those performed by females. Servants within their master's home were assigned tasks on the basis of sex. Male slaves often were chosen to act as butlers, valets, carriage drivers, gardeners, or stable boys.
45
The separation of duties by sex was fairly commonplace, and rarely did servants perform the duties of the opposite sex. Advertisements for slave labor indicate a strong division of tasks based on gender as owners and employers called for female maids and male gardeners. An exception was when there was a shortage of servants. Then, female slaves would assume certain "male" jobs such as that of dining room servant. There also are a few instances in which a male slave would be selected and trained as a cook. These instances, however, were quite rare, as both slave owners and male slaves generally followed gender conventions that prevented men from performing "female" jobs such as doing the laundry.
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Although it may appear that the emerging urban industrial system had little impact on slave women's working and living conditions, what went on outside of the "Big House" did affect what happened inside. The rapid increase in slave male hiring costs, for example, had the dramatic effect of pulling women out of the kitchens and into the tobacco and cotton factories for a brief period. Although they never entered the industries that way again, slave women briefly experienced the "liberating" effects of the unusual working and living conditions brought by the emerging urban slave system.
Tobacconists and other industrialists initially used slave workers because of cost, availability, and perhaps custom. But by 1840 slavery had become an important, if not vital, tool to continue the city's industrial development. In the case of the tobacco industry, slave hands became essential to production; not only did they supply the labor, they also helped shape the system of processing, supervised themselves, and set the pace of production. For a handful of other businesses, such as the canal and dock companies, there appeared to be no viable alternative; slave workers proved more efficient and less costly than free laborers.
By the mid-nineteenth century the status of urban slavery had changed dramatically from the Revolutionary and postwar eras. Male slave workers, once considered questionable for factory jobs, had established themselves as part of the permanent workforce and in some cases helped to define the production process itself. In spite of earlier reservations, Richmond elites came to see urban slavery as a superior labor system that was more efficient, economical, flexible, and manageable than free labor. In the words of one canal engineer, "There is no portion of the work which cannot be executed by slaves."
47
As employers struggled to define the role of slaves within the workplace, owners, local authorities, and within certain limits slaves themselves searched to define bond labor's position within urban society. The discussion among these latter groups was not, however, whether slaves should reside in the city, but in what manner. As owners quickly discovered, aspects of slave management and organization such as accommodations, discipline, and moral guidance needed to be reexamined and renegotiated because the system used on plantations did not fit the city environment. Urban slave quarters, for example, could not be a series of small shacks within sight of the "Big House." Instead, owners and employers made a variety of arrangements, including placing slaves in boardinghouses and rented tenements. Methods of slave discipline and control commonly used on plantations also needed to be reviewed. It was clear the system of overseers, drivers, and slave patrols would not work in the city with its network of alleyways, hidden grogshops, and
 
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corner stores, which defied attempts to monitor workers at all times. In short, owners and employers came to realize that slavery in Richmond required methods of slave management and organization that would accommodate the unusual demands of urbanization and industrialization. As a result, slaves worked and lived under a vast range of conditions, ranging from brutal to permissive. Those fortunate enough to enjoy the latter conditions found the greatest opportunities for "control" over their lives. For some bondmen this "control" was simply the ability to choose where they lived and what they ate. For others it was the opportunity to challenge slavery by helping define their working conditions and their relationships with owners, employers, and other white Richmonders and to take a step toward creating their own community.
 
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Three
Behind the Urban "Big House"
At the end of the workday, long after the sun had set, George, Richard, Manuel, and John left Hezekiel Wight's tobacco factory and walked through the dock and warehouse area toward their respective homes. As hired slaves they did not have to live with their owner, John Prosser, and were not required to stay with their employer because there was no housing for workers on the premises. Instead, each man received a small amount of cash with which to secure his own food and lodgings.
1
With the small sums, these men had several housing options: they could sleep at Prosser's house if he had room, they could rent rooms in a boardinghouse, or each could live with a family member. By the late antebellum era, their options also would include renting a house or a tenement near the tobacco manufactories. Although severely limited in their choices, these men and many other tobacco hands were free to select their lodgings.
Where George, Richard, and the others lived had a great impact on other aspects of their lives, including what they ate. If their lodgings came with a fireplace, the workers could prepare a simple meal of meat and vegetables at home. If cooking facilities were not available, they could grab a hot meal at one of the local cookshops or simply dine on cold bread and butter.
After supper, the hired tobacco hands could have stayed at home, visited friends, or if they had the funds gone to a local grogshop for a brandy and a game of billiards. In any case, they had to be careful
 
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making their way through the city because even with passes it was illegal for slaves to be "going at large." After a short night of rest, George and the others would be expected back at the tobacco factory.
In comparison to plantation slaves, and even to most other urban slaves at the turn of the century, George, Richard, and the others who lived and worked apart from their owners were anomalies. But by 1840 the jobs they worked and their sleeping arrangements became more commonplace as hiring out and living apart evolved into standard features of the urban slave system. The process by which George and the others came to work at Wight's tobacco factory, for example, became a standard practice among Richmond slaves, owners, and employers. Most commonly, hiring negotiations were held directly between employers and owners. Typically an employer would approach an owner proposing to hire his or her slaves, or an owner would indicate to certain businesses that his slaves were available for hire. Frequently employers and owners found one another through newspaper advertisements such as one placed by J.P. Shields, who "wanted to hire 25 black slave males to work on Manchester Turnpike Road." A recent study on hiring arrangements during the 1850s and 1860s indicates that employers and owners frequently knew each other through either family ties or close working relationships.
2
But during these early decades this pattern did not hold; owners and employers typically were strangers.
As hiring out became widespread, professional slave brokers began to handle the transactions.
3
For a percentage of the hiring fee, these traders would serve as a liaison between owners and employers, often brokering deals between parties in different counties, thus relieving both groups from having to travel and meet one another. By the 1840s slave brokers played a prominent role in hiring negotiations.
Some slave-hiring transactions were handled by slaves themselves, a practice that became known as "hiring one's own time." Under this system owners allowed slaves to go to Richmond to find work for a specified period of time, ranging from one day to one year. This system became popular among owners who cared little for paying an agent or for the hassles of finding employment for their slaves. According to this practice slaves were required to "pay their masters a stipulated sum of money . . . but whatever they could earn above that amount was theirs to do as they wished." As the practice became more common, slaves would arrive from neighboring rural counties and roam the streets of Richmond in search of work. Some came as soon as the harvest season was over, but the majority arrived in Richmond during the Christmas holidays a time when most employers were looking to hire help for the new year. During the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, the

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