RAILROADS AND SLAVERY One of the least known aspects of railroad history is the use of slave labor on antebellum railroads. A scholar of African- American history offers his latest research findings as well as letters describing life in construction camps. By THEODORE KORNWEIBEL, JR. The universal in the use South. of on slave antebellum In labor every was southern railroads nearly universal on antebellum railroads in the South. In every southern state and most border states, railroads at one time or another used slaves between 1829 and 1865. By 1861, some 8,784 miles of track were operating in the 1 1 slave states that would join the Confederacy. A good portion of this mileage had been con- structed by enslaved labor. Many of the same lines were operated and maintained at least partly by enslaved African- Ameri- cans, along with whites and a few free blacks. Documenting the extent of the slavery on antebellum railroads is made difficult by the lack of contemporary records. Few sets of individual railroad corporate records have survived from the pre- 1865 period. The most numerous sources are the annual reports of railroad companies, pub- lished to satisfy stockholders and state rail- road commissions and to promote investments. Scattered annual reports can be found for most of the railroads, but it is uncommon to find a complete "run" for a particular line. Also, antebellum railroad annual reports do not have the uniformity of reporting that researchers might expect of 20th-century corporate reports, espe- cially in regard to the South 's slavery. Some annual reports mention nothing about slavery, while others include a single budget item giving the dollar cost for "slave hires" (i.e., rented slaves) or the dollar value of slaves owned. Still others spell out the costs of hiring, food, cloth- ing, and medical care, and distinguish be- 34 / RAILROAD HISTORY Theodore Kornweibel Collection From the start, southern railroads depended on slave labor. The South Carolina Railroad hired slaves as fireman and brake hand for the first train pulled by the Wesf Point in 1831. Twenty-five years later, slave owners were offered $180 apiece for the hire of 50 "able-bodied Negro men" to lay track for the Mobile & Girard Railroad. tween slaves employed in operations, maintenance, or other labors. In a few cases, the actual numbers of slaves in each occupational category are detailed, along with the annual costs. Another important source of data on slavery is articles (often excerpts from annual reports) in the Ameri- can Railroad Journal , published weekly after 1831. And evidence is to be found in the advertisements by railroads seeking to purchase or hire slaves that were printed in southern newspapers. Robert C. Black's The Railroads of the Confederacy lists 113 railroads in the 11 Confederate states as of June 1,1861. This total also includes one line in Maryland and five in southern Kentucky, while ex- cluding Missouri railroads entirely.1 1 have documented the use of slaves on 85 of those lines. In addition, I have found evi- dence of the use of slaves on five other lines not mapped by Black that existed in mid- 1861. 2 Thus, of a total 118 southern railroads in operation at the beginning of the Civil War, 76 percent (90 in number) had used slaves. I also have found evidence of five more lines under construction dur- ing the war that utilized slaves, for a total of 95 slave-using railroads.3 The available information indicates that nearly all of these railroads used enslaved labor up to the abolition of slavery in 1 865. One notable exception was the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Its initial workforce of 1 829-3 1 included a very small number of hired slaves, but consisted mostly of Ger- man and Irish immigrants plus some free blacks, who were numerous in Maryland. FALL-WINTER 2003 / 35 No evidence exists, however, that the B&O continued to use enslaved labor after 1831.4 What is the likelihood that the other 28 railroads listed by Black used slaves? An examination of fragmentary annual reports for a third of them revealed nothing at all about the type of labor utilized. I was un- able to locate any annual reports for the remaining lines. But considering the high degree of acceptance of slavery by ante- bellum southern whites and the widespread belief that white labor (either native or im- migrant) was inferior to a black workforce, it is likely that most of these 28 railroads also used slaves in some capacity.5 The precise number of slaves who la- bored for specific railroad contractors or for particular railroads is often impossible to calculate because evidence, once again, is lacking. Numerous annual reports often mention or allude to the use of slaves, but give no information on the number. Other reports do not give the numbers of slaves, but include costs for yearly hiring or list the value of the slaves owned. Some re- cent scholarly works do include specific numbers of slaves. For example, Allen W. Trelease reports that 1,493 black men and 425 black boys were at work constructing the North Carolina Railroad in 1852.6 By correlating the surviving information with general hiring and purchasing rates in par- ticular regions at specific times, it is pos- sible to arrive at a reasonable estimate of the numbers of slaves used by railroads. That number appears to have exceeded 10,000 a year at the end of the antebellum period. (Most of these workers, it should be emphasized, were slave hires, not slaves directly owned by the railroads.) In 1860, for example, 37 railroads used 100 or more slaves. This included a force of 1,200 that was at work building the Atlantic & Gulf line in southern Georgia; 500 construct- ing the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Texas in Louisiana; and 400 or more employed on seven other railroads. By comparison, no plantation in the South had as many as 1 ,200 slaves, and very few estates had as many as 400 slaves. All told, 55 southern railroads used an estimated 10,800 slaves in 1860. These railroads operated about 74 percent of the completed railroad miles in the slave states. Assuming the same proportion of slaves per mile labored on the railroads that operated the remaining 26 percent of trackage, an ad- ditional 3,800 slaves were utilized, for an estimated to- tal of 14,600 slaves working on southern railroads on the eve of the Civil War. The onset of the war did not end the practice. Al- though the pace of railway construction slackened con- siderably, the necessity for slave labor grew. As white men were absorbed into the Confederate army, a shortage of skilled and semi-skilled On 55 railroads On remaining operating 26 percent 74 percent mileage** of mileage* Total 1857 7,200 2,500 9,700 1858 7,100 2,500 9,600 1859 7,400 2,600 10,000 1860 10,800 3,800 14,600 1861 8,000 2,800 10,800 1862 11,300 4,000 15,300 1863 8,000 2,800 10,800 1864 8,500 3,000 11,500 These numbers include both hired and owned slaves. * Completed track mileage (best estimates) in the slave-holding states as of 1860. ** Assumes same proportion of slaves per mile on the railroads operating 26 percent of mileage. 36 / RAILROAD HISTORY Theodore Kornweibel Collection Most antebellum railroads did not have enough capital to hire the large number of slaves needed for construction, so they relied on contractors to assemble the workforce. This notice calling for 400 laborers was run in newspapers across several states. labor began to be felt. In areas of intense fighting such as in Virginia, both armies periodically destroyed track and bridges, necessitating large repair forces. By the end of the war, some railroads were resorting to military-ordered impress- ment of slaves in order to keep operating. I estimate that the total number of slaves on the railroads in 1864 in the South was 1 1,500. This was down from the 1860 to- tal, but above the number used in the 1 857- 59 period. In Virginia, employment data for the larger railroads indicate an increase in the number of slaves used between 1861 and 1864.7 Numbers, the about slaves the of lives course, who and labored experiences do not on tell the us of about the lives and experiences of the slaves who labored on the early railroads. Like their free Northern counterparts, these African-Americans faced difficult working conditions. Unlike post-Civil War railroad builders, who had access to steam shovels, pile driv- ers, and dynamite, few antebellum contrac- tors or railroads used pile drivers, and only black powder was available for hard rock blasting.8 Tunneling and excavating cuts through hills was done mostly with hand drills, picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows, supplemented by mule, ox, or horse-drawn plows, carts, and primitive scrapers. Construction typically began by clearing brush and chopping down trees. Next came the task of digging out boul- ders and stumps, called "grubbing," and excavating cuts. Finally, grading in- volved leveling, elevating, and filling the uneven ground so that crossties and rails could be laid. Some contractor gangs laid the track, but it was also common for the railroads to use their own labor to com- plete the right of way.9 The iron T-rails used at the time ranged from 28 to 68 pounds per yards and were 12 to 25 feet long. Ties were commonly eight inches square and twice the gauge in length; thus many ties were 10 feet long given the popularity of the five-foot-gauge in the South.10 It was not a task for the weak. Reports in the American Railroad Journal noted that enslaved construction hands were vig- orously pushed. Contractor F. H. King, building a part of the Charlotte & South Carolina Railroad, was unapologetic about the amount of labor he expected: "I go out there about half past five and get the niggers to work." This did not leave time to cook breakfast, so the slaves ate cold food prepared the evening before. They were not fed again until 12:30 p.m., and then worked from 2 p.m. until sundown. This was at least a 14-hour workday in the summer. By contrast, Irish laborers build- ing the B&O in 1850 put in an 11-hour day in the summer. Little wonder that some of the men were, in King's words, "damn mean ones."11 FALL-WINTER 2003 / 37 North Carolina Division of Archives and History Convict labor- male and female, free and slave- was used to build the future Chesapeake & Ohio main line across Virginia. Southern railroads continued to rely on convict labor after the war. The inscription on this undated image jokes of "stripes but no stars." The laborers faced cholera, fevers, and various epidemics, especially when con- tractors shifted them between regions with different endemic diseases. It was a pru- dent contractor who vaccinated his hands against smallpox. Some contractors sought to save money by scrimping on housings, forcing slaves to live in crude shanties or tents. In one particularly egregious case, a contractor on the Atlantic & North Caro- lina Railroad kept slaves in "a square pen, made of pine poles, with large cracks, through which one might thrust his double fists . . . [with] no shutter to the door." The roof did not repel water and there was "no chimney and no floor, no bed clothing, and no cooking utensils."12 Given the inherent dangers of railroad construction, it was not surprising that some owners refused to hire their surplus 38 / RAILROAD HISTORY of slaves to the railroads.13 Other owners sought to protect their investments with life insurance policies, or insisted on hir- ing contracts that excluded their slaves from the most dangerous work, such as blasting. That such agreements were some- times violated was underscored by vari- ous lawsuits from owners against contractors or railroads seeking damages. In another form of contract, owners re- ceived a greater-than-market payment for hiring their slaves, while acknowledging that "all risks incurred, or liability to acci- dents ... is compensated for and covered in the pay agreed upon."14 Owners who rented out their slaves sometimes aban- doned the practice, with one slave owner complaining, "I shall not let my negroes work on the Rail Road any longer than this week for they dont [sic] take care of them and it is better to feed them and let them do nothing than to have them crippled up and no care taken of them."15 A detailed picture of slave experiences on rail construction projects is revealed in the papers of a Mississippi slave owner, Samuel Smith Downey. Beginning in 1836, Downey hired 27 of his slaves to a contractor building the Mississippi & Pearl River Railroad from Natchez toward Jack- son. Among that number were 1 1 women. Some of them were married, several brought young children with them, and one gave birth in the construction camp. At least two, Old Granny and Uncle Lewis, were elderly. In an unusual but prudent arrangement, Downey's agent, physician Joseph T. Hicks, accompanied the slaves. Arriving in Natchez in February 1836, Hicks was told by the residents that "this is a very healthy section of the country," but he predicted, "we may calculate upon losing some of them in becoming accli- mated."16 Working close to the Mississippi River, Downey's slaves suffered from a variety of illnesses. Despite his physician's min- istrations, Lucy's child, whose age was not recorded, died suddenly of the croup. Dur- ing the spring, most of the slaves, includ- ing several of the females, lost time due to sickness. About a dozen of them also had diarrhea. Abednigo was painfully sick with rheumatism and a bladder stoppage. He was cured of the latter after Hicks bled him and gave him a cathartic. Old Uncle Lewis was also ill. Hicks wrote to Downey that "it takes all my time to attend to them - we have been fortunate in not los- ing any of them. The hearse has been run- ning regularly bearing bodies from the FALL-WINTER 2003 / 39 negroes market to the public cemetery" in Natchez.17 Summer brought more illness, Hicks again complaining that he had to attend to sick slaves night and day, and they did not heal readily. "Railroads are very bad places for sick people," he wrote. At one time, nine of the (now) 26 slaves were ill, four fe- males and five males. Old Granny was quite sick; others suffered from fevers and dysentery, and several children had whoop- ing cough. "All our negroes seem to be dissatisfied here," he summed up. One cause of dissatisfaction was the temporary work sites, where the slaves lived in crude shanties. "The mosquitoes torment them almost to death in the night time." The hapless slaves resisted as best they could. Ben ran away after a flogging, but eventually returned and resumed work. Another slave simply resisted working: "John has done but very little work since he has been here, he seems to be clear of fever, looks well, eats hearty . . . but when he goes out to work he seems to think he cannot stand it." The contractor subse- quently refused to pay for the days that John was allegedly malingering.18 The toward acknowledged callousness Downey's in of Hicks' the slaves contractor letters. was In toward Downey's slaves was acknowledged in Hicks' letters. In one, Hicks reports that "the meat they [sic] use is very salty and a little spoiled." Be- cause contractors only leased the laborers and had not invested large sums in their purchase, some were less than diligent in seeking medical care. Hicks suggested that "if we had a part of the roads [meaning if Downey and Hicks were railroad contractors them- selves], we could take better care of our negroes." He further noted that the con- tracting work was "a first rate scheme to make money."19 Health conditions continued to be bad at the construction site. Little Jack barely survived after battling malaria for 1 9 days. Mary, who had taken sick in May, was still not well by mid-August. Supposedly the sickly season was over in early Septem- ber, but Hicks had tragic news to relay at that time: Mary's child had died, and Mary herself was only starting to recover from her fever. Old Uncle Lewis was again "very ill." Sophia was so sick that Hicks doubted she would recover. Hicks' own slave, Anderson, died of unrecorded causes. The only good news was that Tabb given birth to a healthy girl. Six week poor Mary was still afflicted, this tim "consumptive symptoms." Summing season on the railroad, Hicks state Downey's slaves would not have su without "my unwearied attention wh were sick. I frequently have had to ris my bed and go to the shanties [sic] a night and remain until morning."20 The following January, Downey his slaves to a different contractor build- ing the M&PR from the other end, south- westward from Jackson along the Pearl River. Again Joseph Hicks accompanied them. He reported soon after work com- menced that "the hands have enjoyed very good health" except for brief colds, prin- cipally because they now labored in the hill country away from diseases that were common to swampy regions. They worked only into May, however, when all work on the railroad halted on account of political turmoil in Jackson.21 The slaves, including Tamar, Tabby, Becky, Sophia, and Fanny, along with their husbands and children, returned to railroad construction in 1 838, but this time Downey rented them directly to Hicks, who had obtained a contract to grade 13 miles of the line. Hicks supplemented his workforce by hiring some white men. But sickness 40 / RAILROAD HISTORY continued to bedevil the workforce. Mary began the year unwell, and after giving birth, she developed a "peritoneal inflam- mation" and was laid up for three months. Another mother, Mirah, also had been sickly since her pregnancy; Hicks attributed her menstrual irregularity to suckling her child, but also suggested that she was a malingerer.22 Historians have not previously noted black women and children in railroad construction campus. What did they do? Among Downey's slaves, some women undoubtedly cooked for the rest of the crew, and one or two probably worked part-time sewing and washing clothes. (Hicks' accounts of cloth and clothing purchases indicate as much.) But the re- mainder likely cleared, grubbed, and graded alongside men. Older children worked as teamsters on the carts that hauled dirt from one location to another. The employment of black women and children in railroad construction is par- ticularly noteworthy because, North or South, their white counterparts would not have been considered for such arduous and dangerous labor. Despite their ill health, Mary and Mirah continued to work. Another slave, Joanna, died; Hicks' accounting to Downey included $10 for a hearse, coif in, and grave. Despite these losses, Hicks wrote that "I am doing a very fine business and making money faster than I ever expected to make it." In fact, he was becoming so flush that "I think I shall be rich enough to marry by the fall."23 The fragmentary story of Hicks' crew of Downey's slaves has an ironic conclu- sion. They, along with other contractors' rented slaves and 106 chattels owned by the railroad itself, managed to build only 25 miles of the Mississippi & Pearl River's intended line before the failure of its par- ent, the Mississippi Railroad & Banking Co., threw the railroad into inescapable debt in 1839. Some contractors, Hicks included, re- mained unpaid. He repeatedly begged the bank to make good on at least a portion of his claim of $14,000 and finally managed to gain a judgment for partial payment. When he died soon thereafter, it was left to his heirs to pursue the claim.24 The line was subsequently ripped up. Only after the end of the Civil War would the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Railroad provide a rail link between Natchez and the state capital at Jackson. Railroad 1861 1862 1863 1864 Petersburg 121 150 191 265 Richmond & Danville 283 328 477 700 Richmond & Petersburg 1 20 1 27 119 1 53 Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac 113 120 133 133 Southside 204 370 439 439 Virginia & Tennessee 564 711 714 722 Virginia Central 268 321 308 284 TOTALS 1,673 2,127 2,381 2,696 From James H. Brewer, The Confederate Negro: Virgin FALL-WINTER 2003 / 41 42 / RAILROAD HISTORY There are no known photographs of slaves working on railroads (although several published photos erroneously purport to show slave scenes). These photographs were taken in 1863-64 by the U.S. Military Railroads, which rebuilt railroads in the South for the Union. Far left: Former slaves under a white overseer ditch and fill track on the Nashville & Chattanooga near Murfreesboro, Tenn. Left: Laborers at Alexan- dria, Va., test a clamp meant to destroy Confederate rails. Below: Example of railroad construction at Allatoona Pass, Ga., where Confederate and Union troops passed on their way to Atlanta. All: Library of Congress FALL-WINTER 2003 / 43 The working illustrated frequent in by railroad movement the experiences camps of slaves was of working in railroad camps was illustrated by the experiences of Rose, who was owned by the Nims fam- ily of Rock Hill, in the South Carolina piedmont 25 miles south of Charlotte, N.C. Frederick Nims was a Massachusetts-born, Andover-educated civil engineer who had come to work on the Georgia Railroad in 1835, commencing a career as a railroad surveyor and contractor. Two decades later, he secured a contract to build a portion of the 1 15-mile Charleston & Savannah Rail- road, which was using both rented slaves and Irish laborers. Rose was dispatched from the Nims home in March 1857 to cook for the laborers who were building a long trestle near the Ashepoo River, one of 13 rivers the railroads had to cross. We know noth- ing of her background, but as Nims was not a farmer or planter, it appears that Rose was a domestic servant for his family. If so, her life changed dramatically after she arrived at the camp. She was housed first in a tent, then in a shanty. She did not know the Irish workers or the male slaves who had been hired from local planters. Cer- tainly she was sexually vulnerable at the isolated locale. Perhaps she was married, but that mattered little to owners who sepa- rated slaves from their spouses if they could be more profitably worked else- where.25 She arrived with cooking utensils and a week's provisions, along with several hands, including Frank, an old man pur- chased for $300 to handle a mule team. Frank had worked as a house servant, car- riage driver, and gardener, and Nims ad- mitted that he did not know whether Frank or the mules would be the master of the other. Rose's cooking was more basic than it had been in the Nims household: her stock provisions were bacon, flour, coffee, sugar, corn meal, and grits. This was typi- cal of a slave diet deficient in protein and vitamins. As there was no mention of other cooks, Rose must have worked hard to feed the large construction crew. Rose cooked only until mid- July, when she and the other "up-country black hands" were taken off the job and sent into a healthier inland region to cut crossties and 100,000 feet of the 10-foot- by- 1 0-inch timbers needed for the trestle. Only slaves acclimated to coastal regions could be risked to work in the low coun- try during the summer. Nims, however, kept the Irish laborers at work, apparently because contractors were responsible for the health and medical bills only of hired slaves - a sick Irishman was simply un- paid during his illness.26 The health risks to up-country slaves were generally over by mid-fall, at which time they returned to the construction site. Those for whom Rose cooked continued to trestle, grade, and ditch into 1858, but work came to a standstill in late June when nearly all the workers, except for "the ac- climated negroes of this section," were sickened by malaria. Nims became quite ill himself and wanted to return home, but did not believe he could leave "as long as I have a negro of my own here. They would get sick and die off." Rose and the other up-country blacks finally returned to Rock Hill to wait out the malarial season. Not until late October 1858 did she return to the construction camp, again accompanied by some of Nims' male slaves.27 Contractors like Nims built the major- ity of railroad mileage in the South prior to the Civil War. Most railroads were hard pressed to raise capital sufficient for land, track, structures, locomotives, and rolling stock. Few had the resources to purchase or hire their own slave laborers in quan- tity. Construction contractors were, by ne- cessity, speculators; most received only half payment or less in cash, and the other portion came in stocks and bonds in the new railroad. Most of the contractors hired 44 / RAILROAD HISTORY slaves from farmers who had a surplus of slaves on hand. Local planters, though lacking engineering or construction expe- rience, sometimes bid on short segments of the roadway passing through their prop- erty. In this way, they employed their own slaves during agricultural slack periods. Although some contractors used white labor, they generally found that southerner white males were uninterested or unavail- able for railroad building. Attempts to hire Irish and German immigrants were largely abandoned after contractors found them to be prone to walking off the job or rioting over perceived slights and disputes over pay. In Georgia, enslaved blacks per- formed all railroad construction, except for masonry, by the 1840s.28 The most basic reason for the heavy reliance on slaves was their cheap- ness. According to the New Orleans Daily Cres- cent, "negroes will prob- ably do more work, and for one-fourth the cost, than double the number of hired [free] laborers." The influential DeBow's Review similarly opined that "where the labor can be owned by the companies, ... that the grading, masonry, and mechanical work on rail- roads, . . . will be less than half the cost it would be under the system of contracts" with individual free workers.29 While railroads contractors' most directly lines hired were slaves, purchased built some by contractors' hired slaves, some railroads directly purchased slaves for construction work. When the Alabama legislature loaned the belea- guered Montgomery & West Point Rail- road $116,783 in 1844, hoping to ensure completion of the line from the state capi- tal to the Georgia border, the railroad used $42,176 to purchase 84 slaves in Virginia. The president of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad offered $10 for the capture of runaway slave Virgil. Wilmington (N.C.) Daily Journal, May 23, 1855 The imported slaves were not especially tractable, according to the M&WP's presi- dent, who wrote to his stockholders in 1850, "With these negroes, for several years, the Company had great trouble. At one time as many as 10 had run off. Some were found in Kentucky, some in Indiana, some in the mountains of Georgia, and two have never been heard from. But of this purchase there still remains a valuable force of 53 men, 7 women, and 1 1 chil- dren."30 The Mobile & Great Northern used its own slaves to build eastward from the bank of the Alabama River on the eve of the Civil War. Its 1861 annual report stated that "the Company force consists of 70 negro men, 11 women, 4 boys, 20 mules, 12 horses, 18 carts and 1 wagon." The first several miles of roadbed were entirely through swamps. The slaves built an em- bankment for 3,000 feet, spending weeks carting thousands of yards of earth from elsewhere, only to watch it wash away one night in a flood. This necessitated new construction, in- cluding building 1,500 feet of temporary trestles, which were later filled in with earth. Railroad officials crowed, "It was fortunate that we had a Company force to use upon this section, as no contractor would have willingly encountered the dif- ficulties presented in executing the work." The rest of the line was cleared and graded by contractors using bonded labor, with the M&GN's slave force then coming in to lay FALL-WINTER 2003 / 45 Harper's Weekly, March 15, 1862 Charleston Mercury, December 20, 1859 Rose, a slave of contractor Frederick Nims, cooked for gangs building the Charleston & Savannah through the malarial Ashepoo River swamps. After completing the line to Pocotalgio, S.C. in 1859, the C&S sought both male and female slaves "to work upon the repairs" of the railway for year 1860. track along the 50-mile line at the rate of 10 miles per month.31 Slave ownership was profitable for the railroad. Including time lost for illness, each hand (including the women and boys) averaged $336 worth of labor a year. Con- sidering that the railroad paid an average of $1,360 for each slave, it recouped a quarter of its investment in just one year. The M&GN's chief engineer assured stockholders that "the hands have been well clothed, fed and cared for, and have given but little trouble," although medical services were higher than anticipated be- cause the slaves had been purchased from inland planters and were not acclimated to swampy environs. Whether the slaves were actually "well fed, " as stated by the chief engineer, is open to question, given that the railroad spent twice as much to feed a horse or mule as it did a slave. In fact, the average yearly cost for tools, quarters, provisions, cloth- ing, medical services, superintendence, bedding, and incidentals was $170, only $3 less than the cost of feed and harnesses for a work animal.32 Once to southern begin enough railroaders regular trackage train was established service, finished to begin regular train service, southern railroaders established employment patterns based on race that would last long after the end of slavery. 46 / RAILROAD HISTORY Conductors and engineers were uniformly white. Having slaves work as locomotive engineers was periodically suggested, but there is no evidence that this practice was ever adopted. Firemen were drawn from both races. Whites took this low-paying job because it was the essential stepping-stone to be- ing an engineer. Some roads, however, preferred black firemen because they could be hired for less - and could be worked harder - than whites. "Wood passers" of both races assisted white firemen in stok- ing the firebox and replenishing the ten- der with cordwood at the fuel and water stops.33 Brakemen (also known as train hands) and switchmen could also be ei- ther black or white. Other black males worked as station hands, loading and un- loading freight and mail, and performing general manual labor. Because of the greater hazards to firemen and brakemen, railroads had to pay more for their hire than for laborers. Those familiar with the variety of skilled tasks performed by plantation slave blacksmiths and cabinetmakers, or by bondsmen in the southern iron industry, will not be surprised to discover similarly skilled slaves working in antebellum southern railroad shops. Although a ma- jority of black shop workers were classi- fied as helpers or laborers, others were skilled blacksmiths, finish carpenters, and boilermakers. The need for shop slaves increased during the Civil War, as whites in these trades joined the army or gravi- tated to higher-paying jobs elsewhere.34 After the abolition of slavery, white rail- road workers organized unions based upon crafts, and blacks lost work in the skilled trades. Until the mid-20th century, Afri- can- Americans were shut out both from skilled rail jobs and from the railway Brotherhoods, which enforced white-only membership policies. Female slaves worked most commonly as cooks for bridge and maintenance-of- way (MOW) gangs. A few railroads used enslaved women as matrons at the largest stations to keep the premises clean. The Richmond & Danville Railroad assigned maids to the ladies' cars on its two express trains, and a "stewardess" on a South Carolina railroad likewise attended to pas- sengers ' needs. A handful of women - perhaps wives of company-owned males - may have been seamstresses; most hiring bonds specified that railroads were to clothe the slaves, and some companies purchased cloth rather than ready-made garments.35 The greatest concentration of blacks, almost all of whom were slaves, was in MOW. Rights of way required constant re- pair. Many railroads had been built as quickly as possible to satisfy investors and generate revenues. Crossties were often hewn from trees growing adjacent to the roadbed, not selected from harder woods, and they had to be replaced within five years. Most roadbeds were not ballasted with rock, and erosion soon undermined the track structure. Storms took a particular toll on these hastily built lines. The earliest rails were wooden stringers with an iron strap on top, which required constant straighten- ing, refastening, and replacement. The railroads divided their trackage into five- to 12-mile-long sections, each under the supervision of a white section master or overseer. His qualifications were essen- tially the same as those for plantation over- seers; one did not need an engineering background, only experience in "han- dling" slaves.36 Under him were the num- ber of hands needed to maintain that stretch of track, usually about one man for every track mile. The overseer was respon- sible for assigning and supervising work, and punishing those who did not perform to his satisfaction. Unless the section was close to a divi- sion point, the crew lived in shanties along FALL-WINTER 2003 / 47 its portion of track - one dwelling for the overseer, another for the slaves. Longer rail lines, such as the South Carolina Railroad, also used floating gangs, which bunked in decrepit passenger cars. In addition to lin- ing and re-spiking track, raising and tamp- ing ties, and clearing ditches, section gangs were responsible for keeping the water tanks filled for locomotives.37 The employment of black women and children in railroad construction is noteworthy because, North or South, their white counterparts would not have been considered for such heavy and dangerous labor. Railroad assembled during the managers January their section hiring typically season crews assembled their section crews during the January hiring season for slaves. Hiring bonds (contracts) were negotiated, with indi- vidual slave owners specifying a monthly or yearly lease. This figure fluctuated from an average of $ 1 00 to $ 1 25 per year in 1 850 to as much as $200 in 1860. The variations re- flected regional economies, supply and demand, and the cost of provisions and clothing. Larger rail- roads continued to obtain additional slaves throughout the year to fill specific needs, hiring from local owners by the day, week, or month. This sometimes coincided with slack times in agriculture, when farm- ers found their slaves underemployed. Hiring bonds commonly specified that the railroad was responsible for food, clothing, and medical care for the slaves, while the owner was responsible for time lost due to slaves running away. Some con- tracts stipulated that, upon the expiration of the year's agreement, the slave was to be returned clothed in new garments. Typi- cal was an advertisement in the Richmond, Va., Daily Examiner on December 16, 1861, informing the slaveholding public that the superintendent of the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad wished to "hire, for the ensuing year, to work on the repairs of their road and in their shops, the following de- scribed slaves, viz: 400 laborers, 50 train hands [brakemen], 33 carpenters, 20 black- smiths and strikers."38 When railroad managers weighed the relative costs of hiring versus owning slaves for section work, some concluded that ownership would be more profitable in the long run. The general superinten- dent of the South Carolina Railroad rec- ommended in 1847 the purchase of 10 women cooks and 75 men. For unrecorded reasons, no women were bought, however, and the 82 slaves bought be- tween 1848 and 1857 were all males.39 The president of the Raleigh & Gaston Rail- road was similarly per- suaded of the profitability of purch ing slaves - especial female slaves. Writi to stockholders in 185 he advocated staffin each of the railroad's eight sections with four men and one woman, the latter presumably to cook. But the president perceived a greater value in- herent in female slaves: "It is worthy of consideration that the increase [offspring] of the women would equal and probably excede [sic] any depreciation in value of the property [the slave herself]." The road did not implement this callous suggestion, probably for economic rather than moral reasons, although the president's subse- quent reports continued to decry the high cost of renting slaves. The cost of purchas- ing slaves also became high in the late 1 850s, particularly when it was necessary 48 / RAILROAD HISTORY to borrow funds for such acquisitions. Nevertheless, in the middle of the Civil War, the R&G purchased 47 slaves.40 The Savannah, Albany & Gulf hired on a fairly large scale, using 232 slaves in mid- 1861 for bridge and MOW repairs. Hav- ing recently put into operation about 40 miles of new route, the line extended 200 miles and was divided into 21 sections of roughly 10 miles apiece. Each section was the responsibility of a white overseer, six male laborers, and a female cook.41 Shorter lines also hired slaves for maintenance of way. The South-Western Railroad adver- tised in Georgia newspapers in 1851 for the yearlong hire of 30 slaves to be used in track repair; two years later, having added trackage, the line sought 60 males and 12 women for maintenance of the roadbed. Even short lines found slaves to be profitable: Georgia's Upson County Railroad hired about eight slaves to keep up its 16 miles of trackage.42 Whether owned or hired, section labor- ers were subject to punishment at least as severe as those suffered by plantation FALL-WINTER 2003 / 49 SLAVE LABOR ON GEORGIA'S SOUTH-WESTERN RAILROAD In "A Common Carrier of the South Before and During the War," Ch Woodward described the construction of the South-Western Railroad. The line went from Macon to Albany, Ga., 1 06 miles, with a branch west from Smithville to Eufaula (sometimes spelled Eufala), Ala., 61 miles. His article was published in No. 44, October 1 937, of Railroad History (then titled Bulletin). Woodward notes that very little hard data on slave labor was available, but includes abstracts he found from company records. As for the ultimate dispo- sition of the South-Western, in June 1 869, its managers leased it to the Central Railroad & Banking Company of Georgia. That company entered bankruptcy in 1892 and was reorganized as Central of Georgia, which (after being controlled by Edward H. Harriman and later Illinois Central and then Frisco) in 1963 be- came a subsidiary of Southern Railway, which is now Norfolk Southern. The relevant passages: The slave gangs of contractors under white overseers built the roadbed and track. In the superintendent's report of 1856 there appears this item under the caption Repairs of the Road: "included $1 ,1 50 paid for negro who died from ill treatment of an Overseer." In 1 857 under the same caption "is charged $1 ,248 paid for negro killed by ditching train," and again in 1857 under caption Inci- dental expenses "is included $71 5.83 judgment obtained for negro who died on the Road in June 1 854." In his report of August 15th, 1863, President [R. R.] Cuyler makes the first and only reference to slave labor as follows: "From the Balance Sheet it appears that the cost of road and outfit, including several negroes purchased for it, stands this day at the sum of $3,538,21 1 .94." Among the disbursements is the item in capital account "Negroes for Road $9,450." By the balance sheet of August 1 , 1 864, the capital cost had been increased to wit: assignable to "Land and Negroes $81 ,1 85." The item reappeared on July 1 , 1 865, and as at August 1 , 1 866, the item "Land and Negroes" was $83,1 85, the same in 1867, and was continued as a bookkeeping asset until August 1, 1 868, when apparently the item $75,250 for Negroes was written off. slaves. According to the 1858