Confederate Slave Payrolls Reveal Details about Life of Slaves During Civil War

On April 14, 1861 the Confederate States of America began their occupation of Fort Sumter, following their victory over Major Robert Anderson’s US Army garrison. Eight enslaved carpenters and nine enslaved laborers also arrived at Fort Sumter on April 14. Their names were Francis, Moses, James, Harry, Jim Edwards, Damon, Sam, Josh, Daniel, Prince, Reuben, Ned, Lewis, Joe, Lewis, Stephen, and Andrew. They labored between 3 to 18 days. The carpenters earned $2.00 per day for their enslaver while the laborers earned $1.00 per day for their enslaver. John Hinton Lopez, a builder and contractor, received $282 from the Confederate army for the labor of these men he held in bondage; $282 in 1861 is equivalent to roughly $8,300 in 2020.

The Confederate States of America required enslavers to loan their enslaved people to the army. Throughout the Confederacy, enslaved people worked at ordnance factories and arsenals, mined potassium nitrate to create gunpowder, or labored on fortifications. The Confederate Quartermaster Department created the payrolls for slave labor on Confederate military defenses. After the end of the Civil War, the Federal War Records Office arranged, indexed, and numbered the documents. These nearly 6,000 documents have been digitized by National Archives and Records Administration staff and are available online for researchers.

The rolls show the period covered, the entity or person that employed the slaves working for the Confederacy, the place of service, the name of the enslaver, the occupation of the impressed enslaved person, the time employed, rate of wages, amount paid, and the signature of the person receiving the money (usually the enslaver or an attorney). In addition to the labor of enslaved people, the rolls list runaways, deaths, and other relevant details. They also include the names and occupations of free people of color and white laborers.

Enslaved African Americans worked as laborers, boat hands, bricklayers, carpenters, stone masons, and plasterers at Fort Sumter. The sums listed beside each name on the payroll went to the enslaver, and not the person who performed the labor. The documents can provide a rare record of the names of enslaved people.

There are 37 slave payrolls for Fort Sumter. The bulk of the records date to before the Siege of Charleston, a Union campaign that began in the summer of 1863 from Morris Island. The payrolls for the remainder of 1863 and 1864 show the increased danger of laboring inside Fort Sumter during the Union bombardment but does not capture the full amount of labor performed, the true number of casualties suffered by the enslaved, and how many laborers passed through Fort Sumter.

The tables provide an incomplete picture of the scale of labor performed on Charleston Harbor’s principal fortifications and the terrible human cost for the enslaved laborers forced to work on them. For example, the payrolls for Fort Sumter from 1863 do not record any casualties for the enslaved laborers, but the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies document many enslaved casualties at Fort Sumter in 1863.

Fort Sumter

Sullivan’s Island (includes Fort Moultrie, Battery Bee, Battery Marshall)

Morris Island (Battery Wagner)

Fort Johnson