The Prison of Public Works: Enslaved People and State Formation at Virginia's Chiswell Lead Mines, 1775–1786

Abstract

The Prison of Public Works:Enslaved People and State Formation at Virginia's Chiswell Lead Mines, 1775–1786 Sean Gallagher (bio) One night in November 1775, an enslaved man named Charles stole an oyster boat at Aquia Creek in Stafford County, Virginia, and tried to sail to freedom. He and three other bondpeople took a couple of white fishermen hostage and demanded that they pilot the boat to the mouth of the York River, where the royal governor, John Murray, the fourth earl of Dunmore, was stationed. Charles had learned that Lord Dunmore had issued a proclamation offering freedom to all rebel-owned enslaved people who could reach his ship and would defend the Crown. Charles therefore made, in the words of his owner Robert Brent, "a determined resolution to get liberty." But the escape failed; the white fishermen sailed the boat into view of another ship and had the bondpeople placed under arrest. At their trial the following April, a county court loyal to the Patriot Committee of Safety in Williamsburg convicted Charles and the others of felony insurrection and sentenced them to "be hanged by the Neck until they be dead."1 Before the men's execution, however, the Committee of Safety commuted their executions to hard labor at the Chiswell lead mines in the southwest corner of the colony (in present-day Wythe County). In December 1776, Governor Patrick Henry of the newly independent state of Virginia issued ninety pounds from the treasury to Brent and purchased Charles for state use. Charles had no mining experience or skill in [End Page 777] the trade work necessary at mines such as blacksmithing or carpentry. He had "always" labored as Brent's personal servant. His "design" to selfemancipate, however, made him an ideal miner for Chiswell.2 Carted nearly three hundred miles west of Williamsburg, Charles extracted lead ore alongside other bondpeople and smelted it into musket shot for Continental army and militia troops. For the duration of the Revolutionary War, Charles worked as what was known as a "public negro," producing ammunition for his captors.3 The Chiswell lead mines were among the multiple works that Patriot institutions leased or subsidized at the outset of the war in order to supply munitions to militia troops.4 While most of these Patriot manufactories remained unbuilt in 1775–1776, the lead mines along the New River were already developed and indeed already possessed a workforce of free Welsh artisans and several bondpeople. John Chiswell founded the site in 1761, and by the Revolution it was owned by several prominent shareholders, including William Byrd III. The Fincastle County Committee of Safety, at the behest of Virginia's Third Convention, began renting the mines from private shareholders only a few months before Charles's escape. When Virginia's first state constitution went into effect in July 1776, the committee's lease transferred to Governor Patrick Henry and his executive council, just as the legislative functions of the provincial conventions passed to the House of Delegates. The House of Delegates empowered the governor to purchase bondpeople specifically for the mines. Militia officers—first, Colonel James Callaway and then, from December 1777 onward, Colonel Charles Lynch—superintended the works on the ground. With the exception of the period between May 1779 and June 1780, when the Virginia Board of Trade oversaw public works, the governor and council handled the Chiswell affairs either directly or through appointed commercial agents.5 [End Page 778] Patriot assemblies became state institutions when they incarcerated black runaways like Charles at sites of public labor like Chiswell. Of course, historians have long known that enslaved people's escapes and revolts at the height of the imperial crisis pushed their owners toward independence. As scholars from Sylvia R. Frey to Woody Holton have argued, when enslaved people triangulated the conflict with Britain by seeking the protection of royal governors, Patriot associations took up the mantle of upholding white supremacy.6 In effect, as Sally E. Hadden and Edward B. Rugemer have shown, the rage militaire of 1775 and 1776 was, in the southern colonies, the rejuvenation of the mid-eighteenth-century slave patrol and "Ordering" acts by independent...