page_title: Slave labor on United States military installations 1799–1863
hierarchical_section_title: Slave labor on United States military installations 1799–1863
caption_attribution_description: English: 1827 ad for 38 Negro Men, placed in the Pensacola Gazette by Samuel R. Overton Pay Agent USN Pensacola Navy YArd
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: 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 (1818 to after 1887), a former enslaved laborer, ship caulker and carpenter toiled at the Norfolk Navy Yard and Fort Monroe in the 1830s and 1840s.
  Teamoh later wrote of his years of unrequited labor at federal shipyards and forts: "The government has patronized, and given encouragement to Slavery to a greater extent than the great majority of the country has been aware. It had in its service hundreds if not thousands of slaves employed on government works."
  Today, the history of the United States government's rental of slaves on federal installations still attracts "less scholastic analysis than other aspects of slavery." Indeed, historians have primarily focused their research on the labor and intensive plantation economy of the South. In the formative years of the nineteenth century however, the federal use of enslaved labor was often the subject of public attention, discussion and commentary, with both slaveholders and critics voicing strong opinions. Recent scholarship has confirmed that blacks, both enslaved and free, comprised a significant and vital source of labor for military, installations.
caption: 1827 Navy Agent Samuel R. Overton Pensacola Navy Yard ad for 38 Negro men
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