Ray's article
Black American slave labor played the most important role in
constructing, and maintaining the historic Muscle shoals area in the U.S.
southern states. Many enslaved black men and women worked their entire lives, enslaved in the southern river region, and maintaining it’s
prosperity. In order to understand the history of the Muscle Shoals area, those
facets of that history having to do with the institution of ‘American chattel
slavery’ must be examined. This article seeks to explore the history of black
American slave labor, as well as the hiring, and the buying and selling of
slaves who were ultimately used to construct and maintain important U.S. government
infrastructure. This article is not a
thorough coverage of the subject, and due to limited information about local
conditions, many questions remain unanswered.
Historical records do not indicate when the first slaves
were brought into the Muscle shoals area. But long before Alabama became a
state in the Union, forces were at work that resulted in slavery being
established in Alabama. The French, Spanish, and British who at various times
claimed the Shoals area all employed the practice of ‘chattel slavery’ in this
region. Even after The American Revolution, ‘chattel slavery’ remained firmly
established by law in southern U.S states.
As European settlers begin to move deeper into southern U.S.
states like Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama shortly after the American
Revolution, they brought their slave property with them. While this westward
spread of slavery was going on, the Federal Constitution was adopted in 1788.
It made slavery a legal institution under the protection of Federal authority.
Many enslaved black people in the south did not live on a
plantation, and worked at tasks unrelated to plantation life. Some built roads,
canals, bridges, and did other types of construction. For example, James
Fennell, first president of the State Bank at Decatur, used his slaves in the
erection of the bank building. The slaves cut large stone pillars and hauled
them to Decatur using wheels made of tree trunks drawn by oxen.(1) Enslaved black
people also worked in the Florence brickyard, stock and delivery boys, deck
hands and stevedores, and at numerous other tasks. Most were unskilled laborers
but some were highly valued for their special abilities.
When the civil War came, enslaved black people were often
called upon to perform new and additional tasks. When in 1861 the Union armies
were threatening Fort Donelson and Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Cumberland
rivers, a call was sent out for 300 slaves to help erect the fortifications for
that area.
Although American slave owners feared the loss of their
property and were reluctant to let their slaves go work for contractors, and the U.S government, many slaves were used in the
construction of and development of the famous Muscle Shoals, and connected the Tennessee, and Alabama river region to the Ohio river basin. The
awesome amount of labor used to make this connection was provided by enslaved
blacks, and opened the south up to the greater national, and international economy.
The Tennessee River was long conceived of as a potentially important means of transportation, navigation of the area between Chattanooga, Tennessee and Riverton, Alabama was generally restricted to flatboats, keelboats, and other small craft. Efforts to construct canals in the shoals dated back to 1783, but it was not until the advent of the steamboat during the 1820s that the river was seen as a potential major transportation route. In 1831, Congress authorized the construction of a canal around Muscle Shoals.
To
better understand the role that enslaved black people played in the historic
feat, we would like to reference the book‘Slavery in the American Mountain
South’ By Wilma A. Dunaway, Pages 89-91 (Published by Cambridge University Press in 2003)(2)
One-third of the Appalachian counties were situated within
the Ohio River Basin and linked to the Gulf of Mexico. Twelve West Virginia
counties and three eastern Kentucky counties lay immediately upon the Ohio.
Another thirty-three West, eastern Kentucky, and eastern Tennessee counties enjoyed
secondary access to the Ohio River because they were transversed by the
Monongahela, the Kanawha, the Guyandote, the Tug, the Kentucky, the Big Sandy,
and the Cumberland Rivers, which fed into the Ohio.
To the south, the Tennessee River system meandered through
the valleys and mountains of thirty-three Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama counties,
ultimately to connect with the Ohio River. At the southern extreme,
twenty-three Georgia and Alabama counties were served by the Coosa River, which
fed into the Alabama River at Montgomery to link this zone of Southern
Appalachia to Mobile and the Gulf of Mexico. State legislatures created as
public monopolies numerous navigation companies that were authorized to make
river improvements, construct boats, operate landings for tolls, and accept
payment to transport passengers and commodities. These navigation companies
relied heavily upon slave laborers.
Along the region’s major waterways, more than five hundred
small communities became landings for commercial activity and boat
construction. Even natural sites like large caves were transformed into boat
landings and warehouses where slaves loaded and unloaded commodities. Most of
the river systems were improved with canals, locks, sluices, or dams to bypass
shoals and falls. Probably the most famous was the Muscle Shoals of the
Tennessee River, where the federal government funded the development of a
canal.
Because of the interruption in the flow of commodities,
merchandise was transferred to canal boats or barges for transshipment to
steamboats. The Muscle Shoals canal contractor advertised to hire five hundred
slaves annually, and the company drew most of those laborers from the
Appalachian counties of northern Alabama. The canal was so desperate for
workers that it offered day wages to entice temporary hires, in addition to the
customary annual contracts. In the 1830’s the canal company was paying $15
monthly for slave hires. The canal also assured slaveholders that it would take
medical responsibility “for any injury or damage” that occurred to slaves “in
the progress of blasting of rock or the caving in of banks.”
Seven Appalachian counties of Virginia were connected to
Richmond and to the Atlantic coast by way of the Roanoke River and the James
River and Kanawha Canal. Virginia’s James River and Kanawha Canal purchased
slaves and exploited black convicts.
The Canal Company also regularly advertised to hire slaves
from Appalachian counties. In April 1838, for instance, the canal was “in
immediate want of SEVERAL HUNDRED good laborers.” John Jordan and John Irvine
contracted to construct the canal extension from Lynchburg to Buchanan, relying
on forty-eight owned and six-hundred hired slaves.
In addition, a Rockbridge County contractor used slaves to
build the extension between Lexington and the main canal. After construction,
slaves were used to repair locks and to do regular maintenance. When the canal
began to experience labor shortages in the 1850’s, the superintendent “urged on
the board the propriety of purchasing sufficient numbers of young men and boys
(black slaves)” to keep the canal “in repair.” The company found it cheaper to
purchase slaves than to endure the “difficulty, trouble, and expense” of hiring
laborers “at exorbitant rates.”
Moreover, the canal considered slaves “an economical measure”
because of “the great savings” over the cost of hiring white laborers. In the
northern tier of Appalachian counties, the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers and
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal linked together into a network that drew eighteen
Appalachian counties of Virginia, West Virginia, and Maryland into the wider
system of national commerce.
The Maryland canal relied on slaves just as heavily as the Virginia
and Alabama canals. By the 1850’s, DeBow’s Review was claiming that “in
ditching, particularly in canals” a female slave could “do nearly as much work
as a man.” The periodical had arrived at the conclusion because slave women had
been employed extensively to do ditching during construction of the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal.
In conclusion, we can see that through historic references enslaved black people living in America played the most important role in building the southern waterways and valuable infrastructure, all of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice. We must honor and always remember these amazing individuals who under no fault of their own were forced to bear labor to this nation we call home. Their bones are buried in the same soil as all that have come before use, yet today, their descendants do not enjoy the prosperity and fruits of their labor. In fact, Black American descendants of slaves are statistically the poorest group of people in the United States, and this we must work together to change.
References
1. Leftwich, Two Hundred Years at Muscle Shoals, page 54.
2. ‘Slavery in the American Mountain South’ By Wilma A. Dunaway, Pages 89-91
To understand the historic growth of the American economy, you must understand that it’s growth was completely spearheaded by the free labor provided by black American slaves. While all slaves were assigned some non-agricultural tasks, a sizable amount were highly skilled and specialized.
In
the United States, about one-third of all male slaves and about one-quarter of
all female slaves were employed in occupations other than common field labor.
Among male slaves some estimate more than 35% were skilled and semiskilled
artisans, and tradesmen working directly on private and public construction
projects.
When examining the history of the U.S. economy prior to the Civil War, you must understand the South. The Southern United States infrastructure, primarily the Appalachian Mountainous Region, made it possible to fully integrate the south into the national economy. Because of the Souths ability to develop a strong infrastructure, it became deeply invested and relied upon by world markets.
This region of southern states was mainly incorporated in the production of raw materials, such as
logs, lumber, iron, coal, and also agricultural products and commodities. Through the use of slave labor, Appalachian agricultural producers, factories,
and mining companies exported their goods to the northeastern states and to Western
Europe for huge profits.
Appalachian plantations provided the mass majority of the black labor used to fuel economic growth in the Southern United States. To achieve the highest level of production from their slaves, Appalachian slave owners structured a system among their slaves to develop master/elite skilled tradesmen and laborers.
Appalachian slaves were skilled industrial and
commercial laborers 1.3 times more often than other U.S. slaves, but they were
also 3 times more likely to become “Drivers,” the top management position to
which slaves were appointed. Moreover, 30% or more of Appalachia’s slaves were
employed full time as literate industrial laborers in mostly non-agricultural
enterprise.
By 1860, nearly one-quarter of the Appalachian population was concentrated in towns, villages, and hamlets, and black Appalachians formed a significant component of the commercial labor force that resided in those small urban areas.
Black Appalachians supplied labor for
public works projects, but also supplied skilled labor for retail enterprises & developments, for home and
hotel construction, for artisan shops, and for construction companies across
the entire southern region of the United States. They provided some of the highest levels of craftsmanship recorded.
In towns located in the Appalachian counties of Alabama and Georgia, slaves and free blacks accounted for nearly half the population. Even in the region’s smaller villages – like Richmond, Kentucky, or Martinsburg, West Virginia, or Franklin, North Carolina; one-quarter to one-third of the residents were black Appalachians.
Black people who were free from slavery
formed small communities within Appalachian towns, and lived very meager lives,
living in small homes, or homeless in alleyways. But, because black labor was a
“valuable labor supply,” several Loudoun County, Virginia, merchants and companies
petitioned the state legislature for relief from the law requiring emancipated slaves
to “leave the state immediately.”
Because of the frequent presence of large amounts of unemployed freed black skilled workers, men were often “seen every day of the week standing on street corners, seeking day labor.”
Black codes to regulate the behaviors and
employment of freed blacks were developed. Under these laws blacks were forbidden to stand,
smoke, or spit on sidewalks, empty kitchen slops in public areas, to dance or
run in the streets, to utter profanity publicly, to collect money in public, to
ride in licensed vehicles, or to ride abroad after 7:30pm, this was known as “Black Curfew.”
Moreover, city ordinances specified the circumstances under which free blacks and slaves could engage in labor & trade. These laws were passed to justify the re-enslavement of free blacks so that their labor could be used to build state and local projects, or in agriculture.
State and local laws also “criminalized” poverty, and vagrancy was prohibited. Under these repressive laws, unemployed free blacks were subject to arrest and indenturement {Free labor}.
Throughout the south, the majority of public works were constructed by blacks. Without the modern power tools & equipment we use today, constructing and maintain buildings, and public spaces in the 1800's was in most cases a grueling task, thus slaves graded, paved, and cleaned streets, built bridges, built courthouse, built schools, maintained canals and sewers, collected garbage, and fought fires.
Like other urban centers, Appalachian towns also employed black slaves on public works and in public services. Slaves provided most of the labor to construct courthouses in McDowell, Cherokee, Watauga, Macon, Henderson Counties and the university buildings in Blue Ridge Virginia.
It was recorded that, after one Virginia
slave burned down his master’s barn “containing about 1500 lbs. of tobacco,
straw, and shucks of corn & oats” the court sentenced him to lifetime labor
on public works projects in the towns and villages of Nelson County.
In all eight Southern states where Appalachian counties were located, laws permitted county sheriffs to force runaway slaves in their custody to perform labor of public works projects, which they fully employed. For example, the towns of Roanoke and Charlottesville in Virginia and McMinnville and Knoxville in Tennessee used black convicts or hired slaves, paying their masters, for all kinds of public labor for their cities & towns.
The city of Knoxville, Tennessee hired slaves, paying their masters $10 monthly to fight fires, collect garbage, and handle other public services. Slaves forcibly manned the so-called “volunteer” fire company at Lexington, Virginia.
Charleston, West Virginia, and other river towns paid free black to light lanterns around the landings. Free black men who lived in the nearby houses were paid for lighting them every night and outing them out every morning. In Blue Ridge Virginia, enslaved and free blacks worked as “Mailboys” to deliver mail between towns and outlying rural areas.
While huge amounts of public works projects were being
performed by highly skilled slave labor and freed blacks, Appalachian slave
owners wanted to increase the lifetime value of their laborers, so they begin
to contract out children to learn trade skills. Slave owners employed child
slave labor to perform alongside their fathers as well as strangers. When they
were adults they could be leased out at higher rates.
Several American slave owners would regularly lease out
young male black slaves to towns as carpenters. Slave owners would often lease
children of slaves out to nonslaveholders. In this way, James Pennington and
his brother, both black American slaves, learned several trades through their
successive hires to a pump-maker, a stone-mason, a blacksmith, and a carpenter.
Another example is Darst and Jordan, a Rockbridge County
construction company, built large homes for slaveholders, and nonslaveholders,
they also undertook public works projects. Because this company relied solely
on a large slave labor force, the company regularly published newspaper
advertisements warning white towns people not to distract them from their grueling
construction labor.
Black slave laborers, tradesmen, craftworkers were extremely valuable to their owners. Slave owner who did lease out their black labor force
to public projects demanded top dollar from contractors. When the Muscle Shoals
Canal was being constructed in Tennessee, contractors gave special compensation
to the owners of slaves who were injured or killed by explosions or cave-ins.
White workers at that time were not covered by any type of accident insurance.
After hundreds of years of forced labor on many of the
United States public works projects, by black men,
women, and children, across
the South, opposition, and complaints of “unfair competition” by white labor
begin to arise. Most highly skilled construction positions & trades were now being claimed by whites, and white labor developed a bitterness that most
times led to violence against the slaves who had no part in the creation of the
system.
Since newly freed black tradesmen were highly skilled and could now compete for jobs in the free market, white workers, sometimes less skilled felt extremely threatened. White workers began protesting against the hiring out of skilled slaves as artisans, and tradesmen, as a way to keep the wages for themselves.
Soon after protesting against black labor in the free market, white working class people begin to commit many violent, and vile acts against poor working black
families and even those that were still in bondage, and considered as legal private property. These acts of violence
almost always were followed by laws that were passed to limit the employment, and use of
black labor on public works projects. Many states begin to pass laws that also prevented or made it very difficult for black American descendants of slaves to obtain contractors licenses, or become licensed architects. Many labor unions were also formed to stop the black labor class from working on public works projects all together.
Alabama Heritage - Information on Horace King's early years is scanty. He was born a slave in the Chesterfield District of South Carolina on September 8, 1807. His father was a mulatto named Edmund King; his mother, Susan (or Lucky), was the daughter of a full-blooded Catawba Indian and a black female slave. In the winter of 1829, Horace King's master died, and King and his mother became the property of John Godwin, a South Carolina house builder and bridge contractor.
Apparently, from the beginning of their relationship, King
was more of a junior partner in Godwin's company than a slave. Godwin developed
proposals; King supervised construction. With the success of the Columbus
crossing, known first as City Bridge and later as the Dillingham Bridge (pages
35 and 46), Godwin began to bid on and win other contracts for covered bridges
across the Chattahoochee. He and King built a 540-foot-long bridge south of
Columbus at Irwinton (now Eufaula), Alabama, for $22,000 (page 40). They
constructed a bridge at West Point, Georgia, in 1838-39; they built another at
Tallassee, Alabama, and they may have built another at Florence, Alabama, in
1839.
Because of the superior workmanship on the bridges King
supervised, Godwin was able to guarantee his bridges for five years, even
against floods. And when flood-related damage did occur, Godwin took full
responsibility. The flood of February and March 1841, known as the
"Harrison Freshet" (named for the ninth president of the United
States, William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia in April· of that year),
destroyed a portion of the bridge south of Columbus at Florence, Georgia, and
swept away almost the entire City Bridge in Columbus. Godwin repaired both
spans quickly. The Florence bridge was reopened to traffic by mid-April of that
same year, and Godwin rebuilt the City Bridge within only five months. Horace King's
skill and ingenuity made these feats possible.
In addition to building bridges, King probably also worked
on the important houses that the Godwin firm built around Girard and Columbus
during the 1830s and 1840s. Perhaps he supervised the slave workmen said to
have remodeled U.S. Senator Seaborn Jones' home, "Eldorado."
Certainly King worked for Jones, who hired him to build City Mills north of
Fourteenth Street in Columbus. King also worked on the Muscogee County
Courthouse (1838) in Columbus, and the Russell County Courthouse (1841) in
Crawford, Alabama. And he continued to build bridges for Godwin.
King's precise contribution to the design modifications
evident over the years in God win's bridges can only be speculated upon. The
bridges King supervised contained additional intermediate chords, a feature
that strengthened the trusses against twisting with age (Town himself had tried
to correct this problem by doubling the number of web members). Some of King's
bridges contained pier foundations formed by combining sand with timbers of
heart pine. Also improved over time were the procedures King employed in
erecting or assembling-without power machinery-vast trusses over water. Whether
or not King was responsible for these innovations, he was certainly responsible
for the care and efficiency with which these structures were erected. Indeed,
King's ability to supervise massive construction projects and to elicit
superior workmanship from mixed gangs of laborers, both slave and free,
impressed some of the most successful businessmen in the South.
One of these men was Robert Jemison, Jr., of Tuscaloosa, a lawyer and state senator, a prosperous planter, and the owner of a large and well organized network of interrelated businesses, including a stagecoach line, a turnpike and bridge company, and extensive saw mill operations. In the early 1840s, Jemison began contracting with Godwin for bridges in west Alabama, coordinating the contracts so that his mills supplied lumber for the projects while Godwin furnished the carpenters. Horace King supervised construction. After several joint ventures with Godwin and King, Jemison wrote to Godwin in 1845: "Please to add another testimonial to the style and dispatch with which [Horace King] has done his work as well as the manner in which he has conducted himself."
The next decades were particularly productive for King. He built
a bridge across the Flint River at Albany, Georgia, as well as a bridge house
that functioned as a portal to the span. That project, completed in 1858, had
been the special interest of Albany entrepreneur Nelson Tift, an energetic and
inventive businessman interested in developing south Georgia's economic
resources. Having failed to interest either the city or the county in his
bridge-building idea, Tift decided to undertake the project himself. To oversee
construction he hired Horace King. At the time, King was preparing to build a
bridge over the Oconee River near Milledgeville. He had already cut timbers at
the site when a disagreement over terms arose between King and his employers in
the Milledgeville area. Unable to resolve the disagreement, King shipped the
cut timbers by rail to Albany, thus becoming perhaps the first builder in the
South to prefabricate a major structure and ship it to the construction site.
As a free man, King also continued to work with Jemison on a
variety of projects. Jemison, a member of the state house ways and means
committee, may have helped King secure work on the second Montgomery
statehouse, constructed in 1850-51. Jemison and King bid on construction for
Madison Hall, a dormitory at the University of Alabama, but did not get the
bid. Jemison also consulted with King during one of the most massive
construction projects undertaken in antebellum Alabama-the building of the
Alabama Insane Hospital (Bryce) in Tuscaloosa, completed in 1860.
During the 1850s, John Godwin's fortunes continued to decline, primarily because of the failure of the Girard-Mobile Railroad in which Godwin had invested heavily. When Godwin died in 1859, his estate was insolvent, although the family still owned their large sawmill operation in Girard. The Godwin children, worried that King could be held accountable for their father's debts, took one further step to ensure his freedom by formally recording in the Russell County Courthouse that "the said Horace King is duly emancipated and freed from all claims held by us."
In the 1870s, the family moved from Alabama to LaGrange, Georgia. The reasons for the move are unclear. Perhaps John Thomas had decided that business prospects were better there. Or, perhaps the move had something to do with Horace King's interest in the work of the Freedmen's Bureau, the federal agency established to help safeguard blacks from any form of re-enslavement. Education for blacks had long been a concern of King and his eldest son, who believed in the old axiom, "Ignorance breeds poverty." Horace King hoped to establish a "small colony'' in Coweta or Carroll County, Georgia, where former slaves, both men and women, could study. It was not intended to be a utopian community, but simply a school designed to teach men trades and women "the domestic arts." Records indicate that the idea was blessed by Brigadier General Wager T. Swayne, assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau for Alabama, and by his superior, Colonel C. C. Sibley, Assistant Commissioner, District of Georgia, but no records have been discovered that tell us whether or not the colony was established.
Throughout the 1870s, the King Brothers' construction firm
continued to prosper, building a new chapel for the Southern Female College
(1875-76) at LaGrange, Georgia; King himself laid the cornerstone and spoke
from the platform at the accompanying ceremonies. They also built LaGrange
Academy (c. 1875), that city's first black school, as well as the Warren Chapel
Methodist Church and parsonage (c. 1875), also in LaGrange. CLICK HERE TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE
Harry C. Alford - One of the richest legacies of African descendants is
construction. From the pyramids of Egypt
to the building of America, Blacks have been involved in this industry that
will survive the times. We will always
build. Even when we demolish existing
structures it is because we are about to build something new to replace
it. Yes, construction has a certain
future. It is a producer of many jobs
and can provide not only a living for the laborers in the business but wealth
for entrepreneurs to be handed down generation by generation.
African slaves were brought to this continent in the early
1500’s to build New York (New Amsterdam at the time), Philadelphia, Baltimore,
Washington, DC and the entire Southeastern territories. The craftsmanship that was learned through
this action gave freed slaves an advantage as we slowly approached the
Industrial Revolution. America relied on
the crafts learned by Blacks during slavery and passed along to offspring from
generation to generation. Even “Chicken
George’s” son in the Roots documentary owned a lumber yard to sell supplies to
the local black craftsmen who were the builders of the community.
As I grew up in Ventura County, CA, it was marvelous to
admire the parents of my friends. The
Gaston’s, from east Texas, were masters at drywall. The Drayton’s, from Louisiana, could lay
masonry like no one else. The Gordon’s,
from Georgia, were expert hod carriers.
No one could build a spiral staircase like Frank Williams, from
Louisiana. He was so good that the
wealthy would fly him to Australia, Japan, etc. to build spiral staircases for
custom designed mansions. He spent most
of his local time doing it for homes in Hollywood and Beverly Hills. He raised 18 children from the profits of his
craft. There were many more transplanted
craftsmen in my Southern California home and they were barely literate and
uneducated but they mastered their crafts. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE CLICK HERE
Pensacola News Journal Exploring the hallways of Fort Pickens and Fort Barrancas,
the beauty of those structures can make you forget they were built to protect Pensacola
from foreign enemies.
The walls' bricks were made by workers skilled in the task —
workers who were Pensacola slaves rented for the job.
"I heard somebody say one day that black people made no
contribution to this country and that's simply not true," said Georgia
McCorvey Smith, local author and retired school teacher.
"Without the labor of blacks, you wouldn't have some of
what the United States has today. When you're looking at Fort Barrancas and
Fort Pickens, you're looking at something built by slaves.
Having written six books on Pensacola history, Smith found
through her research that many Pensacola structures, including some that are
military, were built with bricks made by rented slaves.
The book Smith is working on now, "Elizabeth Finds
Freedom for Christmas," is a historical children's book based on true
facts and events. The book includes a character who is the master of slave
bricklayers, not unlike those who made the bricks used to build Fort Pickens
and Fort Barrancas.
"People are surprised to learn that slaves built the
forts because we weren't supposed to know how to do stuff like that,"
Smith said.