[Footnote 8:  Louisiana Advertiser (New Orleans), May 13, 1820, advertisement.]

Far more frequently such laborers were taken on hire.  The following are typical of a multitude of newspaper advertisements:  Michael Grantland at Richmond offered “good wages” for the year 1799 by piece or month for six or eight negro coopers.[9] At the same time Edward Rumsey was calling for strong negro men of good character at $100 per year at his iron works in Botetourt County, Virginia, and inviting free laboring men also to take employment with him.[10] In 1808 Daniel Weisinger and Company wanted three or four negro men to work in their factory at Frankfort, Kentucky, saying “they will be taught weaving, and liberal wages will be paid for their services."[11] George W. Evans at Augusta in 1818 “Wanted to hire, eight or ten white or black men for the purpose of cutting wood."[12] A citizen of Charleston in 1821 called for eight good black carpenters on weekly or monthly wages, and in 1825 a blacksmith and wheel-wright of the same city offered to take black apprentices.[13] In many cases whites and blacks worked together in the same employ, as in a boat-building yard on the Flint River in 1836,[14] and in a cotton mill at Athens, Georgia, in 1839.[15]

[Footnote 9:  Virginia Gazette (Richmond), Nov. 20, 1798.]

[Footnote 10:  Winchester, Va., Gazette, Jan. 30, 1799.]

[Footnote 11:  The Palladium (Frankfort, Ky.), Dec. 1, 1808.]

[Footnote 12:  Augusta, Ga., Chronicle, Aug. 1, 1818.]

[Footnote 13:  Charleston City Gazette, Feb. 22, 1825.]

[Footnote 14:  Federal Union (Milledgeville, Ga.), Mch. 18, 1836, reprinted in Plantation and Frontier, II, 356.]

[Footnote 15:  J.S.  Buckingham, The Slave States of America (London, [1842]), II, 112.]

In some cases the lessor of slaves procured an obligation of complete insurance from the lessee.  An instance of this was a contract between James Murray of Wilmington in 1743, when he was departing for a sojourn in Scotland, and his neighbor James Hazel.  The latter was to take the three negroes Glasgow, Kelso and Berwick for three years at an annual hire of L21 sterling for the lot.  If death or flight among them should prevent Hazel from returning any of the slaves at the end of the term he was to reimburse Murray at full value scheduled in the lease, receiving in turn a bill of sale for any runaway.  Furthermore if any of the slaves were permanently injured by willful abuse at the hands of Hazel’s overseer, Murray was to be paid for the damage.[16] Leases of this type, however, were exceptional.  As a rule the owners appear to have carried all risks except in regard to willful injury, and the courts generally so adjudged it where the contracts of hire had no stipulations in the premises.[17] When the Georgia supreme court awarded the owner a full year’s hire of a slave who had died in the midst of his term the decision was complained of as an innovation “signally oppressive to the poorer classes of our citizens—­the large majority—­who are compelled to hire servants."[18]