page_title: Slave labor on United States military installations 1799–1863
section_title: Pensacola Navy Yard
hierarchical_section_title: Slave labor on United States military installations 1799–1863 / Pensacola Navy Yard
caption_attribution_description: English: Payroll of the Pensacola Navy Yard 1829, showing employees, slave laborers, overseers and pay-rates.
context_page_description: Slave labor on United States military installations was a common sight in the first half of the nineteen century, for agencies and departments of the federal government were deeply involved in the use of enslaved blacks. In fact, the United States military were the largest federal employers of rented or leased slaves throughout the antebellum period.
  In 1816, a visitor to the Washington Navy Yard wrote that master blacksmith Benjamin King estimated daily expense for a slave as twenty-seven cents and noted how lucrative the business. Navy was paying eighty cents per day for black workers while white blacksmiths were paid $1.81 per diem. English visitor and author, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, writing in the late 1840s, marked the prevalence of slave labor at the Washington Navy Yard: "We saw a sadder sight after that, a large number of slaves, who seemed to be forging their own chains, but they were making chains, anchors, &c., for the United States Navy."
  George Teamoh, a former enslaved laborer, ship caulker and carpenter toiled at the Norfolk Navy Yard and Fort Monroe in the 1830s and 1840s.
context_section_description: Pensacola Navy Yard was established in April 1826 because of its excellent harbor, the large timber reserves nearby for shipbuilding and its location which gave it  proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean where the West India Squadron maintained a vigil to eradicate piracy and suppress the international slave trade.     Ironically though this early navy yard was largely built and maintained by enslaved labor. The Pensacola Navy Yard, the seventh federal shipyard, was built on the southern tip of Escambia County,Florida where the air station is today. Navy Captains William Bainbridge, Lewis Warrington, and James Biddle selected the site on Pensacola Bay. Pensacola lacked the manpower the navy needed to lay bricks, bend iron and haul lumber therefor the government hired hundreds of bonds-people who they leased from local slave-owners.    Even at an early date, the monthly "List of Mechanics, Laborers &C employed in the Navy Yard Pensacola"  compiled by at the direction of the Navy Board of Commissioners and submitted in May 1829 shows over a third of the workforce was composed  of enslaved labor. The list which reflects the names, occupations and wage rates of eighty-seven workers, enumerates thirty-seven slaves.This surviving early list is rare since it specifically notes the 37 laborers as "slave laborers". Here as at other naval shipyards, civilian employees such as Navy Agent George Willis  leased their slaves to the navy. 
  To accommodate local slaveholders Pensacola Navy Yard hospital provided emergency medical care to enslaved laborers. In 1838 "Dr. Solomon Sharp USN, a slaveholder himself, took the unusual step of raising his objections to the free medical treatment provided enslaved navy yard workers and appealed directly to the Secretary of the Navy" Mahlon Dickerson. Dickerson replied on 2 June 1838 " it is not deemed expedient to change the practice which prevails at the Navy Yard Pensacola..." In addition to medical, the navy yard protected slaveholders from loss of their property, e.g.in 1838 navy yard endorsed three slaveholders claims for remuneration in the accidental death caused by drowning of enslaved employees
  Slavery remained integral to the Pensacola Navy Yard workforce throughout the antebellum period. As late as June 1855, the navy yard payroll listed 155 slaves.  Scholar Ernest Dibble concludes his study of the military presence in Pensacola with this coda  "In Pensacola the military was not just the most important single force creating the local economy, but also the most important single influence  to the spread of the slaveocracy  in Pensacola." Pensacola's location and comparative isolation, made escape for the enslaved extremely difficult and perilous.Historian Matthew J. Clavin noted that there is only one documented case of a fugitive slave, a twenty-one year old Pensacola Navy Yard blacksmith name Adam actually making a successful escape from antebellum Pensacola to the northern United States or Canada (see thumbnail).
caption: Payroll of the  Pensacola Navy Yard 1829, showing employees, slave laborers, overseers and pay-rates.
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