sailoring

Racial perceptions did not compel white recruits to join the army, but the notion that sailoring welcomed blacks and subjected men to situational slavery certainly weakened the navy's case for attracting recruits.

Begrudgingly, many working class, poor, and foreign-born sailors began to think that despite all the rhetoric and all the racial theorizing, their whiteness meant little.(63) Former slaves and so-called wage slaves working in the same place, competing for the same ratings, and making the same pay did nothing but persuade many white sailors that the path to sailoring led through servitude.