Free and Enslaved Labor in the 19th Century
After the Revolution, the U.S. Army downsized considerably. Peace removed the compelling need to enlist as many soldiers as possible. Absent the urgencies of war, there was little to drive officers and recruiters to challenge racial biases prevalent in the early republic. Despite their valuable service during the Revolution, the United States refused to enlist Black soldiers until well into the Civil War (1861-1865). Accordingly, the United States Military Academy left little room for African Americans as it established its own foundations in the first several decades of the 19th century.
Although free labor was much more common at the Academy in the nineteenth century, the presence of enslaved labor at West Point after New York became a free state reflected the Army’s complex relationship and interaction with increasing sectional tensions over slavery. Black laborers, however, were a visible presence at West Point throughout the nineteenth century. Among other things, they served officers and officers’ families, kept the grounds, cut cadets’ hair, maintained existing infrastructure, and built new infrastructure. Like Black soldiers during the Revolution, some of those laborers were employed of their own free will while others were enslaved (despite New York’s status as a free state from July 4, 1827, onward). It was not uncommon for Army officers to bring the institution of slavery into free states in the nineteenth century. The infamous Dred Scott v. Sandford case in 1857 started with a lawsuit filed because a U.S. Army surgeon had kept Scott and his wife as enslaved property in free territory while posted at different garrisons in Illinois and Wisconsin throughout the 1830s. In this way, U.S. Army officers had helped to exacerbate sectional tensions related to the institution of slavery prior to the American Civil War (1861-1865).
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JONATHAN WILLIAMS SOUP TUREEN
This soup tureen belonged to Colonel Jonathan Williams, the first Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy from 1802 – 1812.
Married officers at West Point in the early nineteenth century would have dined at home and in accordance with his position, Williams would have entertained visiting dignitaries in his home. Officers’ servants, whether free or enslaved, spent considerable time caring for items like this. The 1810 census seems to report one enslaved person in Superintendent Williams’s household.
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U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY PAYROLL DOCUMENTS
During the 19th century, while accounting for their pay on a monthly or bimonthly basis, U.S. Army officers enumerated personal servants in order to receive an allowance for expenses incurred in feeding, rooming, and clothing servants.
The authorized allowance applied for both free and enslaved servants. The pay slips included in this exhibit provide evidence of some officers bringing enslaved people to West Point—in two cases overtly and in one case surreptitiously—despite New York’s status as a free state:
First Lieutenant Lloyd Beal’s August 1836 pay slip listing duty at West Point openly declares his servant Henry to be enslaved.
Acting Superintendent R.E. DeRusey’s pay slips show that he carried enslaved servants into New York surreptitiously. His June-July 1842 pay slip for service at West Point lists two individuals—Tom and Fanny—describes as servants.
But his October 1842 pay slip for service at Ft. Monroe, Virginia (a slave state) describes Tom and Fanny as enslaved.
In his pay slip for January 1861—encompassing his brief tenure as Superintendent of West Point—P.G.T Beauregard openly declared his servants to be enslaved.
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1875 NY STATE CENSUS, TOWN OF HIGHLANDS
![1875 census[49458].jpg](https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/56666/archive/fullsize/69ae7c5f2ed315b01a8374c1991f9523.jpg?Expires=1714608000&Signature=eOTHqo4Dv6YlZJnFC4-whm44JDzHkqFQ1FgziqafvJMoZicA3JhUCF5iZmqdsxRBDA7RR0hQRvDpc7cttzuP9a0m3k6k3jN-uuWVp2xfSzPRDVM2YOAIsrmtc-cfsv2M%7EC%7ECjp8sT4h2F-1YiJjkGJcRW1fZ1z-NBU9P-ErIoj2Eb6qP3IJJok3Iolq2-Ivi4QUzzQBMDgJeUZaGg0B%7EgXj5gVpXJmBJJo3pCANiTl1uiOsCN7ND187KDqIl5rKfdvRyDdhjczXDjlKDG7nF0sFp0p2zPqIMOs3kXaCOeUdtKGmTReXtw8AZ6-WOIL4FKjOiq6jFCCgxtA22mOJVag__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM "1875 census[49458].jpg")
This section of the 1875 New York state census enumerates some individuals and families living on West Point. Lines 26-32 list Joseph and Hannah Simpson, two of their adult children, one of their granddaughters, and two boarders residing in their home. All are identified as mixed race and the three men are further identified by the work they performed on West Point.
The Simpsons were an institution within the institution of West Point, well known members of the community for over six decades. Joseph arrived in the 1820s, first apprenticing as a barber and then becoming the barber on West Point. He also operated a soda fountain and performed work as a laborer and a janitor. Hannah became known as “Aunty” to many cadets, tended to the soda fountain, and ran an informal business out of it from which cadets would buy and enjoy homemade sweets and baked goods.
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EXTRACT FROM "RECOLLECTIONS OF CADET LIFE 40 YEARS AGO" FROM FRANK LESLIE'S POPULAR MONTHLY
This extract is from a retrospective account of cadet life in the late 1830s and early 1840s. In its descriptions of “Peter It” and “Joe the Barber,” the author simultaneously reveals the extent to which cadets depended upon members of the Black community at West Point (for things both consistent and entirely inconsistent with regulations as enummerated in the highlighted paragraph) and the views on race that existed at West Point in the mid-19th century. The author presents a particularly interesting window into racial attitudes at the time, in which appreciation and casual disdain appear side by side, and directed against the same subjects.
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PHOTOGRAPH OF BUCKNER
A photograph of Buckner, Anna Warner’s servant and gardener, standing with a three-wheel buggy in front of the Warner House on Constitution Island. Buckner is believed to have performed occasional work at West Point as well. There is no known connection between Buckner and Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr.
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