Slaves for Hire

Renting Enslaved Laborers in Antebellum Virginia

John J. Zaborney

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780807145142
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Esclavitud

In Slaves for Hire, John J. Zaborney overturns long-standing beliefs about slave labor in the antebellum South. Previously, scholars viewed slave hiring as an aberration -- a modified form of slavery, involving primarily urban male slaves, that worked to the laborer's advantage and weakened slavery's institutional integrity. In the first in-depth examination of slave hiring in Virginia, Zaborney suggests that this endemic practice bolstered the institution of slavery in the decades leading up to the Civil War, all but assuring Virginia's secession from the Union to protect slavery.
Moving beyond previous analyses, Zaborney examines slave hiring in rural and agricultural settings, along with the renting of women, children, and elderly slaves. His research reveals that, like non-hired-out slaves, these other workers' experiences varied in accordance with sex, location, occupation, economic climate, and crop prices, as well as owners' and renters' convictions and financial circumstances. Hired slaves in Virginia faced a full range of oppression from nearly full autonomy to harsh exploitation.
Whites of all economic, occupational, gender, ethnic, and age groups, including slave owners and non-slave-owners, rented slaves regularly. Additionally, male owners and hirers often transported slaves to those who worked them, and acted as agents for white women who wished to hire out their slaves. Ultimately, widespread white mastery of hired slaves allowed owners with superfluous slaves to offer them for rent locally rather than selling them to the Lower South, establishing the practice as an integral feature of Virginia slavery.

CHAPTER 1

THE ORIGINS AND PROLIFERATION OF SLAVE HIRING IN VIRGINIA

Following the end of his presidency early in the nineteenth century, Thomas Jefferson focused his attention on Monticello, his estate in Albemarle County, Virginia. At that time, Virginia was in the midst of an economic transformation, and Jefferson noticed one of the changes. “Tobacco,” he observed in May 1812, was “very much abandoned.” Jefferson’s remark was a bit overdrawn for Virginia as a whole, yet his exaggeration reflected the fact that in some areas of Virginia, tobacco cultivation had declined significantly. Whereas Virginia tobacco producers had exported annual averages of approximately 110,000 hogsheads between 1790 and 1792, exports soon fell dramatically. During most of the first two decades of the nineteenth century, Virginia tobacco growers shipped averages of less than 10,000 hogsheads each year. Yet this was merely one of many changes that Virginia experienced during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Together, these changes brought about and proliferated slave hiring in Virginia.¹

For most of the Virginia colony’s first century, tobacco dominated the export trade. Yet by the late seventeenth century, tobacco production declined in some areas as the primary regions of tobacco cultivation moved westward. In 1687 Northampton County, on the eastern shore, produced only 4.2 percent of Virginia’s total tobacco output, and by 1695 one observer noted, “In some places on the Eastern Shore they plant no tobacco, not finding a market for what they have.” In Northampton County, the shift away from tobacco was nearly complete by the end of the seventeenth century.²

During the eighteenth century, international developments began to pull other Virginia planters away from tobacco. In Europe, population growth outpaced food supplies, and Spain and Portugal, in particular, looked to the Western Hemisphere for their needs. West Indies plantation owners, too, sought grain from the British colonial mainland. New demand for grain in both Europe and the West Indies soon led many colonial Virginia planters to grow wheat instead of tobacco.³

Other factors also persuaded Chesapeake planters to focus on grain. Decades of intensive tobacco cultivation had exhausted the soil and rendered tobacco production difficult. Additionally, the War of the Austrian Succession made it difficult for Chesapeake producers to export tobacco to England in any event. Shortly after the outbreak of hostilities in 1739, Spanish privateers and warships seized numerous cargoes of Virginia tobacco in Chesapeake coastal waters. By 1741, after the French allied with Spain in the conflict, Chesapeake tobacco planters began to lose dozens of tobacco shipments. Consequently, higher insurance rates were attached to tobacco vessels bound for England, increases that were absorbed by planters. Ultimately, losses at sea combined with mounting costs to push Virginia planters away from tobacco and toward wheat.⁴

Grain brought better returns than tobacco, too. Despite the large volume of grain Virginians produced, prices of wheat and flour advanced between the 1740s and the Revolution, an increase that reflected significant international demand for American grain. The price of flour, for example, rose from three to four dollars per barrel in Virginia port towns by the middle of the eighteenth century, and it remained at that level through the Revolution.⁵

Export figures for Virginia wheat illustrate the change. From 1737 through 1742, Virginia’s wheat exports to southern Europe, the Wine Islands, and the West Indies, along with the coastwise trade, totaled 35,428 bushels. About thirty years later, between 1768 and 1772, Virginians shipped 254,217 bushels of wheat out of the colony. The figures are even more revealing of the change given that Virginia’s rapidly growing population consumed most of the colony’s grain output.⁶

The agricultural diversification in Virginia was paralleled by a rapid increase of its slave population. Importation of Africans to Virginia contributed to an increase in their population in the colony from 950 in 1660 to 16,390 in 1700. Natural increase, too, sustained the growth rate of Virginia’s African American population. In the Chesapeake region, that population doubled in every decade but one between 1650 and 1690, and its growth rate surpassed that of the white population. By the Revolution, African Americans outnumbered whites in several counties of the Virginia Tidewater, and they constituted more than 60 percent of the populations of James City and York counties. In the Northern Piedmont, Loudoun County’s slave population rose from 998 in 1760 to 6,078 in 1800, and Virginia’s total slave population increased from 293,427 in 1790 to 383,000 in 1810.⁷

Virginia planters’ increased wheat production within the context of a growing slave population created slave surpluses. The reason was that the amount of labor required to produce wheat was less than that demanded by tobacco. Tobacco cultivation involved much time, care, and diligence throughout the year. Wheat required little attention until harvest.

Virginia planters and other observers noted the surplus-slave problem. At Mount Vernon, George Washington complained, “It is demonstratively clear . . . that on this Estate . . . I have more working negro[e]s by a full moiety, than can be employed to any advantage in the farming system.” A British traveler reported that Virginia planters were “overstocked” with slaves and that slave surpluses constituted a “circumstance complained of by every planter.” Another observer recognized, “Since the cultivation of wheat has excited the attention of farmers in the northern neck of Virginia, the hoe has been exchanged for the plough, consequently the same number of hands are not now requisite, to work the same quantity of ground, as when tobacco was the chief crop.” In 1798 Virginian William Fleet asserted, “Something should be done with the negroes who are not employed in making the Crop.” Many eighteenth-century Virginia planters had too many slaves, and they began to seek ways to resolve their problem.⁸

Possession of too many slaves made it easier for some white Virginians to act upon Revolutionary rhetoric concerning liberty and equality and set their slaves free. Consequently, Virginia’s free black population rose from about 12,000 in 1790 to 20,000 in 1800 and to approximately 30,000 in 1810. Other white Virginians with extra slaves sold their surplus hands. After the turn of the century, the cotton gin pushed cotton prices upward, prompting slave-owner settlement of new western territories in the Lower South. These developments, together with the banning of legal importation of Africans in 1808, created enormous demand for slaves in the Lower South. As a result, whites in Virginia and other Upper-South states sold some 750,000 of their extra slaves to the Lower South between 1790 and 1860.⁹

Slave hiring, however, became another solution to Virginia planters’ surplus-slave dilemma. Beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing throughout the antebellum period, Virginia slave owners had little difficulty locating markets for their extra slaves in various economic sectors. Coal, salt, and gold mine operators; iron producers; and railroad companies and other industrialists, as well as tobacco manufacturers and other urban whites, for example, hired the surplus slaves. Slave hiring, in fact, facilitated urban and industrial development in Virginia. White Virginians also hired slaves out for agricultural work. Unable to afford slaves of their own, tenants hired slaves from slave owners who had too many on hand. Following the Revolution, tenants and small farmers formed the bulk of Elizabeth City County’s population, and they were the largest group of slave hirers in that county. During the 1780s, almost 90 percent of Elizabeth City County taxpayers were involved in slave hiring, a system that became “an integral part of the institution of slavery” in the county.¹⁰

Rural white Virginians who wished to establish new plantations also found it expedient to hire, rather than purchase, slaves. In Chesterfield County, William McKean was employed to establish James Dunlop’s plantation early in the nineteenth century. McKean hired slaves to drain land and clear it of trees, build a house for a gardener, build slave houses and horse stables, construct a corn crib, and raise sheds for wagons, carts, oats, grain, hay, and cows. Ultimately, the slaves McKean hired established Roslin Plantation.¹¹

In Virginia, those who hired slaves by the year executed a slave-hiring bond for the transaction. When James Twyman “Hired of Frances A Michie four negro girls (to wit) Delia Fanny Amanda & Sophia for $35” in December 1849, Twyman “executed [his] Note payable on or before 1st January 1851.” Two days later, Twyman “Hired of Alfred C Wood one negro man (Peter) and executed [his] bond for [$]65 payable on the 31[st] [of] Dec[ember] 1850.” In addition to slave owners’ and slave hirers’ names, the names of slaves hired out, and the execution and due dates of the hire, most slave-hiring bonds stipulated the clothing the hirer was to provide the slave. Some Virginia slave owners also insisted upon security on any slave-hiring bonds they took in, and one claimed he “would not hire a Negro to any man without it.”¹²

Virginia slave hirers retrieved their retired bonds at the end of the year. The bond’s retirement was noted across its face, or the signatures of the persons who had executed the bond either were crossed out or torn off to signify payment. After John Fitzgerald paid off his bond for a slave he hired in 1856, for instance, Fitzgerald’s signature at the bottom of the bond was crossed out, and “Paid in full” was written across the bond’s face. Similarly, the signatures of Isaac and John Fletcher were crossed out after they paid their bond to Henry Dulany, from whom they had hired “negro woman Beck” for 1859. One year later, after the Fletchers paid their bond to William Childs for their hire of Childs’s slave Wesley during 1860, the Fletchers’ signatures were cut out completely. The removal of slave hirers’ signatures following payment of their slave-hiring bonds was a routine practice. Elizabeth Feutress, in her deposition for a chancery cause in Princess Anne County, declared that after she and her son paid off a slave-hiring bond, “the signatures were torn off,” and Feutress further affirmed that it generally was her “practice and was the practice of [her] Son, after paying a note to tear off the signatures.”¹³

Virginia slave owners who took in slave hirers’ bonds benefited from slave hiring in many ways. In Elizabeth City County, thirteen male slaves hired out as a group near the end of the eighteenth century brought hires that ranged from 7.3 percent to 23.7 percent of their appraised value. Slave owners’ profits on female slaves were slightly lower but still significant. Seven slave women hired out at the same time as the men brought hires ranging from 5 percent to 17.1 percent of their appraised value. Even after the costs of supporting pregnant, sick, and infant slaves were deducted from slave-hire receipts, the slave owner made a handsome profit, and other Virginia slave owners in the same area benefited likewise. Consequently, “hiring out slaves was a profitable venture in Elizabeth City County at the end of the eighteenth century.”¹⁴

The profitability of slave hiring made it an attractive way to secure an income for white Virginians incapable of supporting themselves. During the 1820s, York County resident George Smith, deemed “an Idiot,” was supported by slave-hiring income collected by white fiduciaries who hired out Smith’s slaves Sam and Lowther on his behalf continuously from 1820 through 1829 to several different hirers. Similarly, Halifax County resident Mary Hall was judged incapable of handling her own financial affairs, so Beverly Fleming hired out Hall’s slaves for her. Fleming hired out Hall’s slaves, Granville, Mary, Chloe, and Moses, to numerous different persons from 1845 through 1849.¹⁵

Slave-hiring income sustained Virginia’s minor orphans, too. Specifically, guardians hired out orphans’ slaves “for the annual board, clothing, and tuition of [the] children” following the death of a slave-owning parent. In Virginia, the guardianship system was initiated during the seventeenth century, and guardians were required to submit to the county court clerk an annual account of receipts and expenditures on minor orphans’ behalf until the orphans came of age. Guardians’ accounts show that slave-hiring income for minor orphans was substantial. In Essex County, the seven slaves whom guardian Christopher Newbill hired out in 1856 brought $311.50 for orphan Edwin Hunley’s support. A group of Sussex County slaves hired out annually from 1836 through 1843 generated $2,310.75 in income for orphans. Indeed, the Sussex guardian referred to his slave-hiring records as an “Account of the Annual Profits of the Negroes.”¹⁶

Slave-hiring bonds and other records reveal additional benefits Virginia slave owners derived from hiring out their slaves. Slave owners escaped responsibility for hired slaves’ clothing, a cost slave hirers assumed beginning in the eighteenth century. When Fauquier County farmer Peter Hitt hired Milly in 1777 and 1778, for example, he paid for Milly’s clothing. In 1797, the two whites who hired “Negroe Man Bob” executed a slave-hiring bond for “the delivering up [of] the said Negroe Man Bob well Cloth[e]d with a Du[t]ch Blanket & Hatt” at the end of the year. Elsewhere, after James Moore hired a slave from Levi Gilliam, Gilliam filed a complaint against Moore to recover clothing costs, a complaint reflecting the expectation that hirers would pay for hired slaves’ clothing.¹⁷

Virginia slave owners who hired out their slaves avoided tax payments on those slaves, too. Slave hirers’ responsibility for taxes on slaves they hired is shown by slaves’ rotation on and off annual personal property tax records in the years after the Revolution, and on slave-hiring bonds. In 1794, for example, when the hirers of “Negro Girl Anacai” promised in their slave-hiring bond to return the slave girl clothed with “a Jackett petticoat Blankett and hatt Two good shirts a good pair [of] shoes and stockings,” they also assumed responsibility for “all Taxes” on Anacai during the year.¹⁸

Slave owners, guardians, managers, and others in Virginia who hired out slaves usually were responsible for medical expenses for the slaves they hired out. Consequently, physicians who treated hired-out slaves at hirers’ residences billed the slave owners for medical services rendered. Slave owner Henry Carrington received doctors’ bills for the medical treatment of his hired-out slave Ephraim. Sally Hunter’s accounts from the late 1830s and early 1840s reveal payments to a Dr. Garnett and a Dr. Rennolds for medicines and treatments for slaves she hired out. Elsewhere, guardian William Macon made an account book entry for “cash paid Doctor John Adams for attending negroes . . . who were hired out including the boy Oliver that died.” Macon also noted other medical expenditures, including “sugar & rum for sick negroes” and “3 bushels salt—bottle wine—salts for sick negroes.” Several years later, Macon recorded payments to another physician “for attend[in]g . . . boy Charles” while Charles was hired out. Similarly, Lewis Burt assumed medical costs for Beverly, a slave he hired to John Hogg, and he recorded a payment to “Dr. Taylor’s accounte for attending Negro man Bev[er]ly” and another payment for “necessaries furn[i]s[hed] sa[i]d Negroe while sick.” Slave owners’ specific responsibility for medical expenses sometimes was addressed in slave-hiring bonds, as in 1859 when James Maynard and William Coughlin “hire[d] a Negro boy named Henry Corbin.” The bond stipulated that Henry’s owner was “clear of all expence Doctors’ fees excepted.”¹⁹

Virginia slave owners’ responsibility for medical expenses led them to assert their authority over medical matters. Frequently, slave owners demanded that hirers consult them concerning their slaves’ treatment, and they often indicated which physician they wished to treat their hired-out slaves. In 1843 Lewis Hill specified that slave-hirer William Gray employ a Dr. Carmichael should Hill’s slave “require medical aid during the . . . year.” Sometimes, slave-hiring bonds required that hirers call on slave owners’ preferred physicians and added that “no other Physician, [was] to be employed.” In medical matters, slave owners’ instructions to slave hirers were shaped by their desire to avoid unnecessary charges and by their wish to protect the value of their slave property.²⁰

Although Virginia slave owners normally paid medical bills on their hired-out slaves, any negligence on slave hirers’ part rendered them liable for hired slaves’ medical expenses. This occurred when hired slaves worked in dangerous employments and when hirers punished slaves in their charge. Hirers of seven of Benjamin Jackson’s slaves for railroad work in 1853, for example, bound themselve...