This notice has been running in the Dispatch most of the month. The Confederate Niter and Mining Bureau was tasked with supplying necessary minerals and metals to the South’s military. As white men continued to get killed and wounded and diseased, the Bureau had to tap other sources of labor.
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch March 24, 1864:
C. S. A, War Department,
Nitre and Mining [B]ureau,
Richmond, Va, March 7, 1864.
Wanted — To hire, 400 Slaves or Free Negroes. Under a recent act of Congress slaves and free negroes can now be impressed for Government work. The Nitre and Mining Bureau need some four hundred hands, and will give the regular Government price–$300, board and clothes.–Parties hiring slaves to this [b]ureau before the order of impressment will be credited with the number so hired in their quota under the call for negroes for any kind of Government service.
Whig, Examiner, Sentinel, Enquiror, and Lynchburg papers copy.
According to Encyclopedia Virginia that $300 was iffy and the slaves often came back to their masters in bad shape:
Still, reimbursement was often slow in coming if it came at all. Government bureaus also regularly impressed slaves at the height of the harvest season and kept them beyond their contracted term of service. Because of poor living and working conditions, many slaves returned to their masters in poor health. Despite protests from slave owners, slave impressments proved critical in allowing the Confederate government to shore up fortifications and keep the war machine churning out arms and ammunition until the very end.
