Confederate Slave Payrolls

Confederate Slave Payrolls 

Exploring the "Confederate Slave Payrolls"

During the U.S. Civil War, the Confederate Army required enslavers to loan their enslaved people to the military. Throughout the Confederacy from Florida to Virginia, these enslaved people served as cooks and laundresses, labored in deadly conditions to mine potassium nitrate to create gunpowder, worked in ordnance factories, and dug the extensive defensive trench networks that defended cities such as Petersburg, Virginia.

To track this extensive network of thousands of enslaved people and the pay their enslavers received for their lease, the Confederate Quartermaster Department created the record series now called the "Confederate Slave Payrolls." This series is fully digitized and available to view in the National Archives Catalog.

This series is comprised of payrolls for slave labor on Confederate military defenses, including forts, entrenchments, obstructions on navigable rivers, "nitre" works, harness-making shops, ordnance works, and arsenals, in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

The payrolls were originally created by the Confederate Quartermaster Department, but were arranged, indexed, and numbered by the Federal War Records Office. The payrolls show the time period covered, the Confederate officer under whom the slaves were employed, the Confederate officer certifying the accuracy of the payroll, the place of service, names of the persons from whom the slaves were hired, names and occupations of the slaves hired, number of days employed, daily rate of wages, amount paid for each slave's work, and the signature of person receiving the payment. The person receiving payment may be (1) the person from whom the slave was hired or (2) a person designated by them to receive pay on his or her behalf through a validly executed power of attorney, which may be filed with that particular payroll or a different one.

Many payrolls, particularly those from Virginia and North Carolina, indicate the county of residence of the person from whom the slaves were hired. Although it can generally be presumed that the person from whom a slave was hired was the slave owner, that was not always the case. For example, payment for work done by Alex, James, and John, who were slaves at the Arsenal at Knoxville, Tennessee, went to different men each month, who probably hired these slaves from their owners, perhaps as a means to avoid providing their own slaves to Confederate authorities.

Approximately 90 percent or more of the persons providing slaves (slave owners) were men, but perhaps five to ten percent were women, likely either widows or women who inherited a slave(s) from a parent.

Most slaves were designated as laborers, but some were blacksmiths, wagon drivers, and so forth. Most slaves are listed on the payroll with one name, but some are listed with a surname or a nickname. More than 99 percent of the slaves were men, but some female slaves are listed as workers at "nitre works" or, occasionally, as cooks.

Some "slave payrolls" include free blacks (sometimes designated as FPC for free person of color) who were likely impressed (forced to work) but received payment. Some lists are payrolls for white employees, who acknowledged receipt of payment for themselves, and there are some lists that contain both white employees and slaves.

Many payrolls indicate that the person from whom the slave was hired (slave owner) was "unpaid" or show no payment, meaning that the payment was not recorded on that particular payroll. This likely means that neither the owner nor his or her agent went to the Confederate officer for payment before the payroll was submitted to a higher-level authority. Thus, the same transaction should be found on a second payroll created at a later date when the owner or agent finally went to the Confederate officer for payment.