“In addition, free blacks, whites, and immigrants also worked on the massive building”.
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As President Obama took office in 2009, National Archives researcher Reginald Washington pored over historical documents detailing the extent of slave labor at the White House.
So, look. So, don’t let anyone ever tell you that this country isn’t great, that somehow we need to make it great again. Kelly Clarkson was one of a number of people to celebrate her speech when one user responded: “I’m not sure I liked the part where she said the White House was built by slaves”.
So in conclusion, slaves are not exclusively responsible for building the White House, but there is truth behind Obama’s powerful statement.
Slave owners provided clothing and blankets while city commissions supplied food and housing for slaves, but those living quarters were “not much more than huts”, Washington explained to NPR. “It was 1792. The land for the District of Columbia was ceded to the federal government by two slave states”. They were trained by stonemason Collen Williamson to cut stone at a quarry in Virginia. This was used for the walls of the president’s house – and laid by Scottish workers. Hoban’s personal slaves joined Irish carpenters who worked inside the White House. Records show about 400 payments made to slave masters between 1795 and 1801. Slave carpenters Ben, Daniel, and Peter were noted as being owned by James Hoban.
The White House has undergone numerous renovations over the years – it was heavily damaged during the War of 1812, was expanded in 1902 and underwent a reconstruction in the early 1950s – many of which took place after the Civil War and the end of slavery in the United States. “Both black and white individuals contributed to the building of the White House”. The identity of these slaves and where they came from has been lost, he wrote.
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Politifact, the political fact-checker website, rated it as true.
