Slave labor on United States military installations was a common sight in the first half of the nineteen century, for agencies and departments of the federal government were deeply involved in the use of enslaved blacks. In fact, the United States military were the largest federal employers of rented or leased slaves throughout the antebellum period. In 1816, a visitor to the Washington Navy Yard wrote that master blacksmith Benjamin King estimated daily expense for a slave as twenty-seven cents and noted how lucrative the business. Navy was paying eighty cents per day for black workers while white blacksmiths were paid $1.81 per diem. English visitor and author, Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley, writing in the late 1840s, marked the prevalence of slave labor at the Washington Navy Yard: "We s