Prisoners Built the White House

When the United States established its new capital in the swampland along the Potomac River, the immense task of constructing federal buildings began. For the President's House, the commissioners in charge of construction faced a labor shortage and turned to the region's available workforce. This included a mix of free white laborers, many of whom were recent Scottish and Irish immigrants, and a significant number of enslaved African Americans. These enslaved men performed some of the most grueling and foundational work, quarrying the sandstone from Aquia Creek, Virginia, felling trees for timber, and firing millions of bricks in kilns on the future White House grounds.

The use of enslaved labor was not an accident but a deliberate economic choice, a fact confirmed by the U.S. government's own payroll records from the 1790s. These documents show payments made not to the workers themselves, but directly to the slave owners for "renting" the labor of the people they enslaved. While skilled European craftsmen, like Scottish stonemasons, were hired for more intricate carving and finishing work, it was the arduous, unpaid labor of enslaved people that formed the very structure of the nation's most iconic residence. This history reflects the deep entanglement of slavery in the economic and physical foundation (Review) of the early American republic.