Slave Labor Discoveries at Furman’s Downtown Campus

Slave Labor Discoveries at Furman’s Downtown Campus Hero Image

This article was written by Andrew Teye and originally published on Aug 9, 2017.

As a student researcher in the Task Force, I was assigned the responsibility of investigating the construction of Furman’s early campuses. My research is therefore critical in the Slavery Project since it requires me to find leads on potential slave activity during the building of the University, and thus satisfy the initial inquiry of the Project.

I first consulted Robert Norman Daniel’s book Furman University: A History (1951) to gain general knowledge on Furman’s early campuses and came upon an interesting statement. In his book Daniel mentions a report dated November 1st 1852 by Dr. H. W. Pasley, the head of the Building Committee at that time, in which Dr. Pasley recommended the hiring of slaves for the school’s construction at the beginning of 1853. His rationale for employing them was because he thought that “it was difficult to get white men to remain on their jobs long at a time” and he also believed that “in the long run Negro labor would prove cheaper“. However, Daniel made the claim that the tradition of using slave labor for construction during 1852 “is certainly not wholly correct” according to Pasley’s report. 

I therefore spent a week going through manuscripts and payment records from the Furman University Treasurer’s Reports to pinpoint transactions that involved the employment of slaves in the early 1850s and I discovered three potential instances of slave labor in the construction of the downtown campus. One document I found dated April 20th 1852 actually demonstrated the use of “negroes in making mortar”, thus potentially contradicting Daniel’s claim since Dr. Pasley himself paid for the labor. The other two documents dated January and February 1853 demonstrated the use of unnamed “boys for work on building” for approximately fifty cents a day. I was also able to link these instances of slave labor to three potential slave contractors in the Greenville Area since they were the ones recorded for receiving those specific payments from the Furman Building Committee.  The potential slave contractors who were paid for these works were Henry R. Williams, John McGrady, and L. B. Cline. 

Nonetheless, it is not entirely clear if those “boys” or “negroes” were indeed slaves or freedman. Moreover, the Furman University Archives does not have complete access to information on their slave contractors and has limited information on slave ownership in the community. However, contextual analysis regarding the pay for their labor and antebellum South Carolina suggests that they were slaves and were directly involved in the construction of Furman’s downtown campus. 

These are some of the manuscripts I scrutinized for potential slave labor leads from the Treasurer’s Reports at the Archives and Special Collections unit of the James B. Duke Library. One can see the signatures of H.W. Pasley (the head of construction at that time) and L. B. Cline (a suspected slave contractor) at the bottom right of the first manuscript.

This manuscript records the payment for “Negroes work making mortar” among other receipts of labor. This statement potentially provides strong evidence of the use of slaves in literally solidifying the building of Furman’s downtown campus.