[1] Teamoh's autobiography[2] is remarkable for his clear rebuke of the military's use of slave labor and the federal government's role both in perpetuating slavery and failing to protect newly emancipated blacks.

I have worked in every Department in the Navy Yard and Dry-Dock, as a laborer, and this during very long years of unrequited toil, and the same might be said of the vast numbers, reaching to thousands of slaves who have been worked, lashed and bruised by the United States government ...[3]His narrative also contains important information on post Civil War Virginia, for he was an elected to and participated in the Virginia Reconstruction era government.

[11] In later years, he found a copy of John T. Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language which helped him gain an extensive vocabulary.

[15] Later in life, there is some evidence, Teamoh may have read mid Victorian evangelist, abolitionist and poet, George Joseph Williamson's,1860 volume of poetry, "The Ship's career and other poems" for one line from Williamson's poem, "Missionary Enterprise" "God Made man and Man Made the Slave" appears also in Teamoh's own unique and wholly original poetic effort, which he included in his manuscript.

[16] Both Teamoh and Williamson were former sailors, devout Methodists and temperance advocates, who sought to avoid conflict, build alliances and improve the lot of others.

In 1839 that whole year, I carried to record every hour of sun-shine, rain, cloud and thunder storm, marriages, births and deaths; distinguished visitors; ministers of the Gospel and where they hailed from; ...

[18] Teamoh was justly proud of his hard-won literacy and on the front cover of six of eighteenth school exercise books that he penned his autobiographical manuscript, he carefully wrote: "written by himself.

Thomas Smallwood, a former slave who worked at the Washington Navy Yard in the 1840s, remembered how amazed whites were to learn that he could read: "What little I know of the letter was obtained in the following manner, for I never had a days schooling.

I appeared to be a walking curiosity in the village where I then lived, and when passing about the village I would be called into houses, and the neighbors collected around to hear me say the Alphabet and to spell baker and cider, to their great surprise ..."[21] Slaveholder Jane Thomas hired out George Teamoh in the 1830s to the 1840's as laborer, caulker and ship-carpenter at the Norfolk Navy Yard, Fort Monroe and to private businesses in the greater Norfolk area.

Commodore Lewis Warrington in an 1831 letter to the Board of Navy Commissioners felt it necessary to respond to three petitions of Dry Dock workers and local residents, regarding their fears of enslaved labor.

A large group of white stone masons had quit their positions and accused project chief engineer, Loammi Baldwin Jr. of the unfair hiring of enslaved labor in their stead.

In their 6 January 1830 petition they wrote:"' On application severally by us for employment we were refused, in consequence of the subordinate officers hiring negroes by the year under the immediate cognizance of the chief Engineer, and placing them at stone cutting for which they are incompetent to the injury of we the undersigned who are men of families – and placed in the peculiar circumstance in which we stand, we view it as a most grievous imposition, detrimental to the laboring interests of the community and subversive to every principal of equality.

The response from the shipyard came quickly on 21 June 1839 Commodore Lewis Warrington wrote to Secretary of the Navy James K. Paulding a letter to request this action be deferred.

[27] If Warrington believed, this would end the practice, he was wrong, for enslaved labor continued to be employed at Norfolk Navy Yard, hence the atmosphere was often tense.

African Americans Charles Ball and Michael Shiner were among many enslaved navy yard workers enumerated on the military muster as "Ordinary Seamen".

That same year Commodore Jesse Wilkerson Commandant of the Gosport Navy Yard confirmed to Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft "It is my duty, however to appraise the Department, that a majority of them are negro slaves, and that a large portion of those employed in the Ordinary for many years, have been of that description, but by what authority I am unable to say as nothing can be found in the records of my office on the subject – These men have been examined by the Surgeon of the Yard and regularly Shipped for twelve months.

"[33] Teamoh was not fooled, "that branch of the U.S service, so far as hirelings were concerned, was but little different from letting out to a building contractor, varying only in point of punishment - whipping post and cow hid - gang-way and cat-o.nine tails.

"[34] In 1841 Methodist minister, and chaplain to the Norfolk Navy Yard, the Reverend Vernon Eskridge married Teanoh to an enslaved woman named Sallie.

[42] On the return voyage he decided to jump ship in New York City "where he hired a lawyer to secure his back-pay, declared himself formally free and then came to New Bedford, Massachusetts about 1 December 1853.

He quickly rose to prominence as a leader of Portsmouth's African American community and advocated for fair wages for fellow shipyard workers.

Teamoh blamed this faulty loan on the Tide Water Trust company and a local minister whom he referred to as "This high apostle of real estate brokerage.

"[56] If the loss of his property was a bitter blow, the triumph of the so-called Redeemers, self-styled Conservatives and their opposition to the black franchise and their dismantling of all racial progress, was even more so.