The U.S. Capitol

 

 

Some of these contributions are on display in Statuary Hall, the home of many of the statues donated by the 50 states to honor their greatest citizens and the original chamber of the House of Representatives.

 

Shaped like an ancient Greek amphitheater and the site of several presidential inaugurations, Congress was anxious to restore the room to its previous glory after British troops burned the Capitol during the War of 1812. To that end, the federal government contracted with a man named John Hartnet to provide the colossal columns of variegated Breccia marble to stand along the walls of House and Senate chambers. This marble was to be quarried from Noland’s Ferry, Md., which was located along the Potomac River in an area that is now known as northern Montgomery County. But the choice of Hartnet proved to be a poor one because he was “woefully unprepared,” according to William Allen, the architectural historian for the Architect of the Capitol who has written several books on the building’s architecture and art.

 

Hartnet failed to quarry, cut and polish the marble from Noland’s Ferry at the speed needed to complete the reconstruction of the House and Senate chambers, so the federal government decided to hire workers to complete the project, many of whom were slaves from nearby farms. While not paying these slaves for their work, the government provided clothing and temporary housing for these African American slaves as they successfully quarried, cut and polished the marble column shafts and sent them up the Potomac to Washington for placement. Those same marble shafts can now be seen along the walls of Statuary Hall and the old Senate chamber, one of the few places in the Capitol tourists can actually touch something historians and academics can positively attest was worked on by slaves.

 

The slaves’ reward for their work was to be returned to the same enslavement in fields and farms from which they were brought, while their masters received payment from the federal government.

 

The White House

 

 

African American slaves were not the only blacks to work on the White House. Free blacks also worked there, as proven by the existence of Jerry Holland. He was one of nine laborers working on a surveying crew at the White House, and in January 1795 he was praised by one of his supervisors for his work.

 

"Pay Jerry the black man,” it was written,  “a rate of $8 per month for his last months services; he is justly entitled to the highest wages that is due to our hands - being promised it and the best hand in the department.”

 

The African American contribution to the presidency did not end with the construction of the White House. The second child ever born at the White House was African American.

 

The first was Thomas Jefferson’s grandson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph. But the second was the child of two of Jefferson’s White House slaves, Fanny and Eddy.

Unfortunately, the child only lived two years past its birth in 1806, but if it had lived, it would have joined the legions of African American slaves that worked in the White House in the early days of the presidency. While Jefferson and other pre-Civil War presidents were shaping this country, African Americans were running “the President’s House” and making sure that the president was well taken care of.

 

The National Mall

 

and trees between the White House, the Capitol and the still-under construction Washington Monument. In fact, the District had to pass a special law in 1826 to force farmers to stop driving their cattle and livestock down to the center of the city to graze on the lush Mall grass.

 

Slaves also could often be seen herded across the National Mall, some heading to Alexandria, Virginia for sale and others toward the slave pens and markets that quickly sprang up around the edges of the Mall.

 

While slave markets and pens were scattered all around the District of Columbia _ including near the White House (Lafayette Tavern on F Street between 13th and 14th NW near the White House) and in Georgetown (McCandless Tavern near the southwest corner of Wisconsin Ave. and M St. NW )_ the best known were located near or on the National Mall.

 

For example, the area now known as Potomac Park, the 720 riverside acres divided by the famous cherry-blossom lined Tidal Basin, once hosted with slave pens. Another slave market and pen called Lloyd’s Tavern sat at the southwest corner of 7th and Pennsylvania NW (where the National Archives is located today). It is memorialized for the sale of a young girl named Margaret, who was seized from her master and sold because her master was too far behind in his rent.

 

(All photographs copyright Jesse J. Holland or the Library of Congress)

 

 

 

Jesse