Introduction

In the preface to A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison (1863), John Brooks Russell explained the project’s genesis: “as [Paul Jennings] was a daily witness to interesting events, I have thought some of his recollections were worth writing down in almost his own language.”

Paul Jennings could certainly recollect an eventful life. Born into slavery at Montpelier, he was a dining room servant at the White House and a body servant to Madison during the president’s retirement. Eventually, Jennings purchased his freedom and took a job in the Pension Office in Washington, where his anecdotes about the Madisons caught the attention of Russell, a colleague.

Jennings was literate. He could have written down his recollections himself, had he wished. Russell seems to have provided the catalyst. A published author of historical articles, Russell saw value in Jennings’s stories of the Madisons, and knew a forum where they could be presented to the reading public. The memories contained in his Reminiscences belonged to Jennings; the language was “almost his own.” Russell’s statement that “some of his recollections were worth writing down” implies that Jennings shared other anecdotes that Russell did not deem worthy of preservation. Jennings, too, silently played an editorial role, having already decided which of his memories to share with his white coworker.

Madisonian Memoir, Slave Narrative, or Oral History?

As the title makes clear, Russell’s focus was on Madison. Each anecdote gave an insider’s view of the president and his world. By specifying that these were the memories of a “colored man,” Russell indicated that they were not the memories of Madison’s colleague or equal. Jennings’s importance came from the insight he provided into the world of the great man; any glimpses into Jennings’s world were secondary. In the context of slave narratives, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences has less in common with works written to expose the terrible realities of slavery (such as Harriet Jacobs’s 1861 Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), and perhaps more in common with slave narratives produced by the Federal Writers Project of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s. The majority of those narratives were recorded by white interviewers, a fact which may have subtly altered the answers given by the elderly, formerly enslaved people being interviewed.

The structure of the Reminiscences, in fact, resembles an oral history with its digressions, interruptions, and chatty narrative, rather than a carefully composed essay. During the discussion of the burning of the White House during the War of 1812, Jennings makes an allusion to the portrait of Washington “of which I will tell you by-and-by.” The narration covers events of the next several months before returning to the rescue of the portrait, repeating details already given. News of the peace treaty is interrupted by a three-paragraph digression on the Madisons through 1832. The narrative then resumes at the peace of 1815. Following an affecting description of Madison’s death and funeral, the Reminiscences concludes with an anti-climatic identification of pallbearers. This meandering structure suggests that Russell may indeed have written down Jennings’s anecdotes in the order that he told them, “in almost his own language.”

Insider Views of the White House

A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison was the first book published in the genre of White House memoir. While written from the perspective of an insider, Reminiscences presents the Madisons in a flattering light and reveals very little of Jennings’s personal life or the realities of enslavement in the early nineteenth century. Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln, took a different approach when she published Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868). Keckley devoted three chapters to her own experiences in slavery, describing beatings and sexual assault. Keckley intended to present the often-criticized First Lady in a positive light. Mary Lincoln, however, was offended by the revelation of personal information that she found embarrassing. Many readers at the time also took offense at the apparent breach of the First Lady’s confidence by an African American woman in a subservient role.

A number of White House staff members wrote memoirs in the twentieth century, including Thomas F. Pendel, who began his career as a doorman in the Lincoln administration (Thirty-Six Years in the White House, 1902); Elizabeth Jaffray, the first woman to head the household staff during the Taft administration (Secrets of the White House, 1927); and Lillian Rogers Parks, seamstress from the Hoover through Eisenhower administrations (My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House, 1961). Like Jennings, these longtime staff members took pride in their association with presidents and in their status as insiders. As expectations of privacy for public figures have changed over time, memoirists have shared more personal details than Jennings or Russell probably ever contemplated revealing. 1Read the White House Historical Association’s The Working White House to learn about the experiences of White House staff through the centuries.

The Annotated Edition

The annotations for this edition of A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison provide context for Jennings’s narrative, using other contemporary accounts to corroborate or clarify his observations. These comparisons show Jennings’s memory to be consistently reliable, with the occasional disparities over dates and minor details that occur when any two people try to recall the same event. Jennings clearly paid attention to the conversations that took place while he served meals and attended to Madison and his guests. Jennings’s ability to give thumbnail descriptions of the members of Madison’s cabinet, for example, shows a keen insight into their personalities that goes beyond the mere retelling of Madison’s favorite anecdotes.

While details of Jennings’s life appear only on the periphery of his Reminiscences, the annotations insert elements of Jennings’s biography into the narrative. Jennings was more than the enslaved household servant seen by the Madisons and their contemporaries. He was a husband and father living apart from his family, separated sometimes by a few miles, sometimes by a few hundred miles. As a free man, he was an active member of the African American community of Washington, D.C. He supported the efforts of others trying to achieve freedom. By the end of his life, he was a homeowner in a Washington neighborhood that included others formerly enslaved at Montpelier.

Did Jennings Tell All?

Jennings’s few comments about slavery at Montpelier are surprisingly benign. Rather than give insight into the harsh realities of slavery, Jennings seems at times to feed into the myth of happy slaves contentedly serving a kindly master: “Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived. … [The slaves] generally served him very faithfully.” In the text, Jennings refrains from mentioning attempted escapes, backbreaking field labor, or monotonous rations issued to the enslaved, particularly as they compared to the bountiful table set for the Madisons. There is no mention of the irony or the injustice of the Father of the Constitution’s denial of the most basic form of liberty to the more than one hundred African American people he owned as property. While Paul Jennings chose not to level such charges against James Madison, the reader should not take Jennings’s testimony as a reason to believe that Madison had somehow managed to make slavery a benevolent institution. The reader may instead probe beyond the words of the narrative to consider the choices Jennings made.

Despite the best efforts of historians, Jennings’s story remains incomplete. As a free person, a literate man, a government employee, and a homeowner, Jennings appears more frequently in documentary records than most of his African American contemporaries, particularly other members of the enslaved Montpelier community. His Reminiscences offer a provocative glimpse into his world, yet leave the reader with the feeling that Paul Jennings knew and experienced much more than he chose to tell.

Generous support for this research was made possible by the Richard S. Reynolds Foundation. For more on Paul Jennings, visit The Life of Paul Jennings

A COLORED MAN’S REMINISCENCES OF JAMES MADISON

by PAUL JENNINGS

PREFACE.

Among the laborers at the Department of the Interior2Jennings began work at the Pension Office by 1853. As a “laborer” (a general term the government used for African American workers, including messengers, doorkeepers, and clerks), he earned $400 annually. By comparison, white clerks earned $900 to $1,800. By the time Jennings left the Pension Office in 1866, his salary was $720. Jennings appeared in Washington city directories from 1858 through the 1860s as a “laborer,” and as a “book binder” in 1871 and 1872. Only a fraction of Washington’s 9,209 free black residents in 1860 were government employees. Most worked in the building trades or in service occupations such as barbering, tailoring, catering, or domestic service. A smaller number practiced professions (education, ministry, or medicine), owned their own businesses, or worked for the federal government as laborers.  Sources: G. Franklin Edwards and Michael R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings- White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” White House History Journal (1983): 52-63, MRD-S 24611; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 183-84, 215.is an intelligent colored man, Paul Jennings, who was born a slave on President Madison’s estate, in Montpelier, Va., in 1799. His reputed father was Benj. Jennings, an English trader there;3Daniel Alexander Payne Murray wrote that Benjamin Jennings was “an Englishman, who lived at Montpelier.” Murray, a historian who became assistant librarian of the Library of Congress in 1881, was himself a member of Washington’s African American community. Murray interviewed Paul Jennings’s son Franklin Jennings in 1901 while working on a piece entitled Biographical Encyclopedia of the Colored Race (unpublished).  Source: Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, “Paul Jennings – President Madison’s biographer and valet”, Papers of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, 1881-1966, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 24107; Daniel Murray biographical notes from MRD-N 53216; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 239. his mother, a slave of Mr. Madison, and the grand-daughter of an Indian.4The specific details concerning Jennings’s mother, including her name, birth and death dates, and in what capacity she worked for the Madisons, are unknown. It is likely that she was a domestic servant laboring inside the Montpelier household. Jennings mentioned her in a letter he wrote from Montpelier to Dolley Madison in Washington in 1844: “Mother is well sends her love to you.” Claiming a native American ancestor may have been a point of pride for the Jennings family, connecting them to a free, non-white community.  Source: Paul Jennings to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, April 23, 1844, Dolley Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 26439; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 3. Paul was a “body servant” of Mr. Madison,5The term “body servant” or valet was used to describe a personal attendant who assisted with dressing, shaving, and other domestic tasks. Jennings acted in this capacity for the last sixteen years of Madison’s life, from approximately 1820 to 1836. Madison’s cousin Sarah Conway recalled (as paraphrased by a biographer) that Madison “was always neat in his dress and was assisted in his toilet by Paul (Jennings), his body-servant, and Paul always accompanied him when he travelled.” Madison entrusted Jennings with errands: “I am hastening Paul to the post office, that the letter may be in no danger of failing.” Jennings was also a “competent dining room servant,” according to Daniel Webster. Dolley Madison’s niece, Mary Cutts, referred to Jennings as “a favorite page of Mrs. Madison’s.” Additional sources, including oral history of the Jennings family, identified Jennings as a coachman.  Sources: Gaillard Hunt, The Life of James Madison (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1902), 381, MRD-S 26428, quoted in Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 74; James Madison to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, November 5, 1824, Gratz Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin, MRD-S 22014; Recommendation for Paul Jennings from Daniel Webster, 23 June 1851, Alfred Chapman Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, MRD-S 38310; Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, Memoir I, [1849-1856], Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MRD-S 27600; John H. McCormick, MD, “The First Master of Ceremonies of the White House,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1904): 170-194, MRD-S 26359; “Paul Jennings and the President’s Square,” a monograph by Beth Taylor, 14 December 2009, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 41750, p. 21, 42. till his death, and afterwards of Daniel Webster,6Daniel Webster, statesman and orator, served as Congressman, Senator, and Secretary of State during his lengthy political career and was an outspoken advocate of preserving the union of the states. He dined with the Madisons in Washington and visited Montpelier at least once, likely giving him opportunity to observe Jennings in service to the Madisons. Webster wrote a reference for Jennings in 1851, describing him as “very honest, faithful, sober, & a competent dining room servant.”  Source: Biographical notes on Daniel Webster, MRD-N 53139; Mr. & Mrs. Daniel Webster to James Madison, December 13, 1816, Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, MRD-S 35449; Dolley P. Madison to Mr. and Mrs. Webster, reply to dinner invitation, March 5, 1842, Peter Force Collection: Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 40436; G. S. Hillard (editor), George Ticknor, and Anna Eliot Ticknor, Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor (Boston, MA: James R. Osgood and Co., 1876), MRD-S 23826; Recommendation for Paul Jennings from Daniel Webster, 23 June 1851, Alfred Chapman Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, MRD-S 38310. having purchased his freedom of Mrs. Madison. His character for sobriety, truth, and fidelity, is unquestioned; and as he was a daily witness of interesting events, I have thought some of his recollections were worth writing down7Despite Russell’s subtle discounting of Jennings’s language skills, Jennings was literate. His surviving letters show that while he spelled phonetically and did not punctuate, he was capable of expressing himself effectively. During his wife’s final illness in 1844, Jennings wrote, “pore fanney I am looking every day to see the last of her — to my supris she call me to her Beed side last friday she expressed her self in the tone of a Repented sinner as tho she was sinking in the grave so unexpected it was to me.” Russell presumably formalized Jennings’s language for the Reminiscences; insufficient documentary evidence survives to know precisely how Russell filtered Jennings’s story through his own preconceptions.  Source: Paul Jennings to Sukey, May 13, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30571.in almost his own language.

On the 10th of January, 1865, at a curious sale of books, coins and autographs belonging to Edward M. Thomas, a colored man, for many years Messenger to the House of Representatives,8A fellow laborer with Jennings in the Pension Office and a leader in the free black community of Washington, D.C., Thomas was a Freemason and a member of the debating society Israel Lyceum. He amassed a library of nearly 600 volumes along with coin and fine art collections. Thomas “for years enjoyed intimate relations with the statesmen of ante-bellum days, and took advantage of his association to gather some mementoes of them.” A newspaper notice of the sale of Thomas’s collection listed, in addition to the Daniel Webster document, a wide range of autographs including Napoleon Bonaparte, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, and George III, as well as a four-page letter from General Lafayette to James Madison, in which Lafayette commented on the “purchase and employment of slaves, a thing I detest, and shall never do.” In 1862, Thomas was selected to head a delegation of five black Washingtonians who met with Abraham Lincoln regarding proposed colonization of freed slaves in Central America. Thomas’s letter to Lincoln, stating that he had been won over by Lincoln’s pro-colonization arguments, outraged many within the assembly who had selected him.  Sources: Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 201, 215, 238); Kate Masur, “The African American Delegation to Abraham Lincoln: A Reappraisal,” Civil War History (June 2010): 117-144, MRD-S 42092; Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, “Paul Jennings – President Madison’s biographer and valet”, Papers of Daniel Alexander Payne Murray, 1881-1966 , Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 24107; “Miscellany [sale of Webster’s note regarding Paul Jennings],” Historical Magazine, and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America (April 1865): 136, MRD-S 25635. was sold, among other curious lots, an autograph of Daniel Webster, containing these words:9An account published in antislavery newspapers in 1848 told the story of Jennings’s sale in this way: “Three years ago [Mrs. Madison] sold an old slave, who had been nurtured on Mr. Madison’s farm, and had been his barber and dressing-man … He was purchased by a Northern Senator to save him from the cotton field, and is now working out the price of his freedom with his own hands.” A second report by the same author added further details: “Immediately after the death of her husband, Mrs. Madison promised to set the man free, as she knew was the wish and expectation of Mr. Madison. After she brought him to this city, he worked a year and a half or two years on wages, which she took to the last red cent, leaving him to get his clothes by presents, night-work, or as he might. Thus situated, and fearing every day her wants might urge her to sell him to the traders, he insisted she should fix the price, which he would contrive to pay, whatever it might be. Two hundred dollars he actually did advance to her.” The author of the article was William Chaplin, an agent of the New York Anti-slavery Society, operating in Washington. Chaplin was the instigator of the 1848 attempted escape of enslaved people onboard the Pearl, an effort in which Jennings played a role.  Sources: Daniel Webster, flyleaf, concerning the purchase of the freedom of Paul Jennings, 1847, unlocated, MRD-S 25636; William Chaplin, “Mrs. Madison a Slave Dealer,” The North Star (Rochester, NY), April 14, 1848, MRD-S 296; William Chaplin, “Mrs. Madison’s Slaves Again,” The Liberator (Boston, MA), March 31, 1848, MRD-S 295; Mary Kay Ricks, Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad (New York: William Morrow, 2007) 37-38, 43-44. “I have paid $120 for the freedom of Paul Jennings; he agrees to work out the same at $8 per month, to be furnished with board, clothes, washing,” &c.

J. B. R.10John Brooks Russell became a Pension Office clerk in 1861. A lifelong history enthusiast, he was an occasional contributor to the publication Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries concerning the Antiquities, History, and Biography of America, generally signing his articles “J. B. R.” Russell submitted A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison to the Historical Magazine, where it was first published in 1863. Two years later, when A Colored Man’s Reminiscences was published in book form, the information on the 1865 Thomas sale was added to the preface.  Source: Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 204-05, 214-15, 281.

REMINSCENCES OF MADISON.

About ten years before Mr. Madison was President, he and Colonel Monroe11James Monroe fought in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, served as Madison’s Secretary of State and Secretary of War, and became the fifth President of the United States. As Jennings noted, Monroe was typically addressed by his military title, even while president. James Fenimore Cooper noted that “in conversation, the actual President, I find, is called Colonel Monroe. I am told that his predecessors were addressed as Mr. Madison, Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Adams, and General Washington.”  Sources: Biographical notes MRD-N 0067; Notions of the Americans: picked up by a travelling bachelor by James Fenimore Cooper (Philadelphia: Lea & Carey, 1828), vol. 2, pg. 48; Tench Ringgold to James Madison, July 7, 1831, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. MRD-S 18987. were rival candidates for the Legislature. Mr. Madison was anxious to be elected, and sent his chariot to bring up a Scotchman to the polls, who lived in the neighborhood. But when brought up, he cried out: “Put me down for Colonel Monroe, for he was the first man that took me by the hand in this country.” Colonel Monroe was elected, and his friends joked Mr. Madison pretty hard about his Scotch friend, and I have heard Mr. Madison and Colonel Monroe have many a hearty laugh over the subject, for years after.12The election of 1789 was the only election to date in which two future presidents ran for the same Congressional seat. As Monroe was a regular visitor to Montpelier, Jennings had ample opportunity to hear Madison and Monroe retell this story. By dating the story ten years before Madison’s 1808 presidential election, Jennings is off by nearly a decade. (The event took place before Jennings was born). Aside from the date, Jennings’s account is nearly identical to an anecdote recorded by Hugh Blair Grisby, as told to him by Madison’s private secretary Edward Coles. In the Coles/Grigsby version, Madison’s friends transported the voter and Monroe’s father was the voter’s benefactor. The immigrant’s ethnicity was not specified. Sources: Chris DeRose, Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election that Saved a Nation (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2011); Hugh Blair Grigsby Papers, Virginia Historical Society, cited in Gordon R. Denboer, The Documentary History of the First Federal Elections, 1788-1790 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) II, 349; Hilarie M. Hicks, The Election of 1789, research memo, December 23, 2011, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 41739.

When Mr. Madison was chosen President,13Jennings was about 10 years old when he and the Madisons arrived at the President’s House in 1809. The President’s House staff included free employees (both black and white) as well as enslaved servants. Only a few were brought from Montpelier. Footman John Freeman, enslaved but working toward his freedom in 1815, and Jack Shorter, a free black stable hand, had served in the President’s House during Jefferson’s administration. Several Madison-era employees were French immigrants, including butler Michel Kromenacker, steward/chef Henry Doyhar, and majordomo/doorkeeper Jean Pierre Sioussat. At least one employee was Irish: gardener Thomas Magraw. This diverse workforce contrasted sharply with Jennings’s previous experience on a plantation with approximately one hundred other members of the enslaved community.  Source: MRD Name records.we came on and moved into the White House; the east room was not finished, and Pennsylvania Avenue was not paved, but was always in an awful condition from either mud or dust. The city was a dreary place.14Jennings was not alone in finding Washington dreary in the early nineteenth century. Benjamin Ogle Tayloe remembered “I came to Washington in 1801, and remember it literally as rus in urbe [‘country in the city’] … there was scarcely any pavement, except in front of detached houses. … During Mr. Monroe’s administration, I have seen carriages mired in Pennsylvania Avenue, even then almost impassable…”  Source: Benjamin Ogle Tayloe, Our Neighbors on LaFayette Square (Washington, DC: Junior League of Washington, DC, 1982), MRD-S 23883.

Mr. Robert Smith was then Secretary of State, but as he and Mr. Madison could not agree, he was removed, and Colonel Monroe appointed to his place. Dr. Eustis was Secretary of War–rather a rough, blustering man; Mr. Gallatin, a tip-top man, was Secretary of the Treasury; and Mr. Hamilton, of South Carolina, a pleasant gentleman, who thought Mr. Madison could do nothing wrong, and who always concurred in every thing he said, was Secretary of the Navy.15Jennings’s description of Madison’s original cabinet is insightful and personal, indicating his awareness of the politics and personalities surrounding the president. Secretary of State Robert Smith was appointed to maintain party unity, but he repeatedly undermined Madison’s policies and leaked information. New Englander William Eustis, a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, was appointed Secretary of War to balance the cabinet regionally. Criticized for his obsession with administrative details and failure to communicate effectively with generals in the field, Eustis resigned six months into the War of 1812 and was replaced by William Armstrong. Albert Gallatin, one of Madison’s most valuable Cabinet members, had a keen understanding of finance and worked tirelessly to secure loans to pay for the War of 1812. Former South Carolina Governor Paul Hamilton’s experience was political rather than naval; like Eustis, he resigned in December 1812.  Sources: Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990); David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004).

Before the war of 181216The United States declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812. Also known as the Second War for Independence, the War of 1812 was a struggle for recognition of American sovereignty against the world’s largest colonial power. American forces sought the abolition of British restrictions on trade with France, Britain’s enemy during the Napoleonic Wars, and resisted impressment, the British practice of compelling American sailors into the British navy if they were suspected to be of British birth. The war was waged on the high seas, along the border of the British colony of Canada, and along the Atlantic coastline. The last major battle was fought in New Orleans in January 1815.  Sources: Exhibit research materials for the 2012 Montpelier exhibit, A Young Nation Stands: James Madison and the War of 1812. was declared, there were frequent consultations at the White House as to the expediency of doing it. Colonel Monroe was always fierce for it, so were Messrs. Lowndes, Giles, Poydrass, and Pope–all Southerners; all his Secretaries were likewise in favor of it.17Throughout Madison’s first term, Congress debated the appropriate response to such issues as violations of neutral shipping rights by both France and Great Britain and British impressment of American sailors. Congressmen who advocated for war against Britain were dubbed “War Hawks.” Interestingly, Jennings did not mention Speaker of the House Henry Clay, the War Hawks’ leader. Perhaps the War Hawks Jennings listed—South Carolina Representative William Lowndes and Virginia Senator William Branch Giles—were more frequent or memorable visitors to the President’s House. As delegate to the House of Representatives from the Orleans Territory (future state of Louisiana), Julien de Lallande Poydras was a non-voting member of Congress, but apparently significant enough to stand out in Jennings’s memory. Kentucky Senator John Pope (President pro tempore of the Senate in 1811) may have participated in discussions, but he voted against the war.  Sources: David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004); Robert A. Rutland, ed., James Madison and the American Nation 1751-1836: An Encyclopedia (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994;  Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; 11th United States Congress; 12th United States Congress; Julien de Lallande Poydras;, Territory of Orleans; John E. Kleber, ed., The Kentucky Encyclopedia (University Press of Kentucky, 1992)

Soon after war was declared, Mr. Madison made his regular summer visit18Throughout James Madison’s years as Secretary of State and as President, he escaped the unhealthy Washington summers for what he described as “the healing benefit of our mountain atmosphere.” His visits to Montpelier usually lasted from late July until early October, during which time Congress was in recess. For Jennings, these trips were an opportunity to see his mother and renew ties with the enslaved community at Montpelier. During wartime, the visits became shorter and less regular. After declaring war in June 1812, Congress remained in session until July 6. Madison delayed his departure for Montpelier until August 28. Immediately called back to Washington, Madison spent barely two weeks in September at Montpelier. His sister Fanny Rose pointed out that his abrupt departure had left issues regarding their father’s estate unresolved: “I meant last September to have spoken to you on the subject … but the shortness of your stay prevented my having an opportunity of doing so.”  Sources: Curatorial Department, “Madison Chronology, 1723-2003,” 2010-2012, Montpelier Research Files, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 39744; Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 54; James Madison to Richard Cutts, March 27, 1824, private collection, MRD-S 22743; Frances Taylor Madison Rose to James Madison, March 20, 1813, Montpelier Curatorial Collection, MS MF 2003.3, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 24635. to his farm in Virginia. We had not been there long before an express reached us one evening, informing Mr. M. of Gen. Hull’s surrender. He was astounded at the news, and started back to Washington the next morning. 19Gen. William Hull, tasked with invading Canada, led his troops only a short distance across the border to Sandwich. Unable to secure supply and communication lines, and fearful of being overwhelmed by native fighters allied with the British, he retreated to Detroit. Hull’s subsequent surrender of Detroit to British forces on August 16 was a significant failure, requiring Madison and his Cabinet to revise their strategy. Fifty years after the event, Jennings recalled the scene of the messenger’s arrival as if the Madison party had already reached Montpelier. Dolley Madison’s account, written only days afterward, differs: “We had reached Dumfries on friday Evg. [August 28] on our way home, when an Express overtook us, with the melancholy tidings, that Genl. Hull had surrender’d Detroit, himself & the whole Army to the British! Mr. M found it necessary to return to the City, in order to repair our misfortunes by— We hope to get off again tomorrow [September 1], at any rate, we shall be at home this week.”  Sources: A. J. Langguth, Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 178-193; David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 153, 248; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Edward Coles, August 31, 1812, James Madison Papers of the Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library, Detroit, Michigan, MRD-S 23523.

After the war had been going on for a couple of years, the people of Washington began to be alarmed for the safety of the city, as the British held Chesapeake Bay with a powerful fleet and army. Every thing seemed to be left to General Armstrong,20A Revolutionary War veteran and the American minister to France 1804-1810, William Armstrong replaced Eustis as Secretary of War in December 1812. Armstrong’s abrasive manner, unclear orders, and disdain for the chain of command led to friction with his generals and with Madison. In the summer of 1814, as it became clear that Armstrong did not intend to prepare for an invasion, Madison appointed General William Winder to defend Washington. After the city fell, many citizens blamed Armstrong. Monroe’s repositioning of troops at Bladensburg and Winder’s decision not to make a stand against the British at Capitol Hill were also criticized, as was Madison’s leadership.  Sources: David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 13-16. then Secretary of war, who ridiculed the idea that there was any danger. But, in August, 1814, the enemy had got so near, there could be no doubt of their intentions. Great alarm existed, and some feeble preparations for defence were made. Com. Barney’s21Commodore Joshua Barney, trapped with a fleet of barges in the Chesapeake Bay by British ships, sent word to Navy Secretary Jones that an invasion of Washington was imminent. Jones ordered Barney to destroy the flotilla and redeploy his 500 sailors and marines in defense of the capital. Initially sent to guard a bridge near the navy yard, Barney’s men quick-marched six miles to Bladensburg, arriving just before the battle began.   Sources: David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 38; A. J. Langguth, Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), 298; Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 32, 51-52, 58, 65, 67 flotilla was stripped of men, who were placed in battery, at Bladensburg,22The British planned to invade Washington from the Chesapeake Bay, by a route that allowed them to cross the Anacostia River at Bladensburg, Maryland, where American Brig. Gen. William Winder was gathering a force composed mainly of militia. The three-hour battle began as British forces charged across the bridge out of Bladensburg toward the American position. The militia broke ranks and many fled. Capt. Joshua Barney’s seamen and marines joined the battle but could not hold the British, who marched on toward Washington. Despite their failure to stop the British, Barney’s men were considered heroic even by the enemy. A British junior officer described the bravery of Barney’s men: “Not only did they serve their guns with a quickness and precision that astonished their assailants, but they stood till some of them were actually bayoneted with fuses in their hands.” Sources: Henry Adams, The War of 1812 (New York: Cooper Square Press, 1999), 225; David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 55; A. J. Langguth, Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006) 297-304. where they fought splendidly. A large part of his men were tall, strapping negroes, mixed with white sailors and marines.23Jennings was clearly proud of the record of the African Americans who served at Bladensburg. One of them was Charles Ball, an escaped slave who lived as a free man and joined Commodore Barney’s flotilla as a cook and seaman. Ball (possibly a pseudonym) gave this account in his 1837 autobiography: “I had been on board, only a few days, when the British fleet entered the Patuxent, and forced our flotilla high up the river. I was present when the flotilla was blown up, and assisted in the performance of that operation upon the barge that I was in. … When we reached Bladensburg, and the flotilla men were drawn up in line, to work at their cannon, armed with their cutlasses, I volunteered to assist in working the cannon, that occupied the first place, on the left of the Commodore. We had a full and perfect view of the British army, as it advanced along the road, leading to the bridge over the East Branch… I stood at my gun, until the Commodore was shot down, when he ordered us to retreat, as I was told by the officer who commanded our gun. If the militia regiments, that lay upon our right and left, could have been brought to charge the British, in close fight, as they crossed the bridge, we should have killed or taken the whole of them in a short time; but the militia ran like sheep chased by dogs.”  Sources: Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War  (1837), 468; Anne Dowling Grulich, “Putting Charles Ball on the Map in Calvert County, Maryland,” MRD-S 42095 Mr. Madison reviewed them just before the fight, and asked Com. Barney if his “negroes would not run on the approach of the British?” “No sir,” said Barney, “they don’t know how to run; they will die by their guns first.” They fought till a large part of them were killed or wounded; and Barney himself wounded and taken prisoner. One or two of these negroes are still living here.24Although Jennings knew the identities of these men, we do not. Charles Ball would have been 82 by 1863. Ball lived in Washington in 1803 (as an enslaved man hired out to work in the navy yard), and worked in Washington on and off between 1814 and 1820, but his 1837 narrative indicated that he planned to spend the rest of his life in Pennsylvania. The 1863 whereabouts of Caesar Wentworth, another African American listed as a cook in the Chesapeake flotilla in 1814, are also unknown. Jennings’s knowledge of the veterans of Bladensburg speaks to his lifelong ties with Washington’s African American community. In April 1848, Jennings became involved with a daring plan to transport members of the enslaved community of Washington to freedom onboard the ship Pearl. Although Jennings left no record of his participation, a descendant of someone who escaped on the Pearl credited Jennings as a leader in communicating the plan. By this time, Jennings was working for Daniel Webster in payment for his freedom and did not sail on the Pearl himself. When the ship was captured, Jennings raised funds to purchase the enslaved and prevent their sale by slave traders. One of those captured was well known to Jennings: Ellen Stewart, who had escaped from Dolley Madison. In a letter to John Payne Todd, Dolley mentioned reading about Ellen’s involvement in the Pearl affair in a newspaper: “she was taken in the vessel freighted for the North by Abolitionists – I have not seen her, but heard a bad acct. of her morals & conduct.” Dolley did not reclaim Ellen Stewart, but sold her to a slave trader who transported her to Baltimore. Supporters raised enough money to purchase Stewart and resettle her in Boston. Jennings established himself not only as a member of the community, but a homeowner as well. He and his second wife Desdemona bought a house on L Street in northeast Washington in 1854, and purchased the house next door in 1856. By the late 1850s, there were 413 free black property owners in the capital city; Jennings was one of the 179 whose property was valued at $1,000 or more. Jennings’s neighbors included Melinda Colbert Freeman, whose late husband John had worked with Jennings in the President’s House; Charles Syphax, a Pension Office laborer whose parents had been enslaved at Mount Vernon; and Edward M. Thomas, another Pension Office laborer who collected historic documents and acquired Daniel Webster’s statement regarding his purchase of Jennings’s freedom. Also in the neighborhood by 1870 were several people formerly enslaved at Montpelier: Ralph and Catherine Taylor with their two daughters, and Ben Stewart. The 1880 census lists Ralph as a hotel waiter and Catherine as “keeping house.” (This suggests the Taylors were sufficiently well off that Catherine did not need to work outside the home.) Ben Stewart, whom Dolley had sold south to Georgia, came to Washington after the Civil War and was employed as a waiter, a messenger, and finally a guide in the Capitol building. In an 1888 newspaper interview, Stewart reflected, “I have done very well here. I am proud of having been connected with the Madison family. … I own a good house in the city which I built myself, and my business is now guiding people around this Capitol.” Like Jennings, Stewart chose to say only positive things about James and Dolley Madison. Sources:  Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War (1837; Scott S. Sheads,  “African-Americans: Citizen-Soldiers of Maryland,”; Anne Dowling Grulich, “Putting Charles Ball on the Map in Calvert County, Maryland,” MRD-S 42095; John H. Paynter, Fugitives of the Pearl (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1930) 25-29, 35-36, 178; Mary Kay Ricks, Escape on the Pearl: The Heroic Bid for Freedom on the Underground Railroad (New York: William Morrow, 2007) 43-44; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Payne Todd, April 24, 1848, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 26448; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 168-76, 191-98, 201, 216-17; 1880 Federal Census ; Thomas J. [T]odd, “Madison’s Servant. Uncle Ben Stewart Talks About His Master and Mistress,” Bismarck Daily Telegraph (Bismarck, ND), June 8, 1888, MRD-S 24489.

Well, on the 24th of August, sure enough, the British reached Bladensburg, and the fight began between 11 and 12. Even that very morning General Armstrong assured Mrs. Madison there was no danger. The President, with General Armstrong, General Winder, Colonel Monroe, Richard Rush, Mr. Graham, Tench Ringgold, and Mr. Duvall, rode out on horseback to Bladensburg to see how things looked.25The additional advisors listed by Jennings include Richard Rush, Madison’s attorney general, and Tench Ringgold, whom Madison later assigned to a commission charged with rebuilding destroyed government buildings. Mr. Graham could be John Graham, chief clerk of the State Department, or George Graham, chief clerk of the War Office. Mr. Duvall may be Supreme Court Justice Gabriel Duvall, a Madison appointee and personal friend, or his nephew Edward W. DuVal, a Navy Department clerk. Jennings recognized these men and was familiar to many of them as well. Tench Ringgold mentioned Jennings in an 1827 letter to Madison: “I am glad to hear from Paul that your health is restored.”  Sources: Robert A. Rutland, ed., James Madison and the American Nation 1751-1836: An Encyclopedia (New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994), 54, 116-17; Christopher McKee, A Gentlemanly and Honorable Profession: The Creation of the U. S. Naval Officer Corps, 1794-1815 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 18; biographical notes on MRD name records; Tench Ringgold to James Madison, August 5, 1827, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 18105. Mrs. Madison ordered dinner26Surviving invitations from the Madison presidency indicate that dinner was generally served at three-thirty or four o’clock. Ordinarily a mid-afternoon meal in this period, dinner was typically served in the late afternoon in the capital city to accommodate Congress’s schedule.  Sources: James Madison to John Quincy Adams, February 10, 1809, Adams Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts, MRD-S 36547; James Madison to Mr. Hale, dinner invitation, April 2, 1810, Unlocated, MRD-S 36450; James Madison to William Hale, January 2, 1817, No. 193 [1985], Item 183, Paul C. Richards-Autographs Catalogue, MRD-S 35458; James Madison to Joshua Wingate, October 24, 1816, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois, MRD-S 35411; James Madison to Samuel Dickens, January 11, 1817, New York Public Library, New York, New York, MRD-S 35460; James Madison to Peter Hagner, February 9, 1817, Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; MRD-S 35503; Barbara G. Carson, Ambitious Appetites: Dining, Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (Washington, DC: American Institute of Architects Press, 1990), 75. to be ready at 3, as usual; I set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed them in the coolers, as all the Cabinet and several military gentlemen and strangers were expected. While waiting, at just about 3, as Sukey, the house-servant,27The enslaved maid Sukey was Dolley Madison’s personal servant from as early as 1814 through at least 1847. She had a child by April 1819, when Dr. Charles Taylor charged James Madison for “Visit &ce Suky & Child.” Sukey was apparently close to Paul Jennings. She was the first of six member of the enslaved community to whom Paul sent “love” in an April 1844 letter to Dolley Madison. Jennings wrote to Sukey directly in May 1844, addressing her as “sister sukey” and signing himself “your Afectionate Brother.” (Jennings and Sukey were not siblings; familial terms including “sister” and “brother” were often used within the enslaved community.) Jennings asked Sukey to “Answer this letter as soon as you can,” suggesting that Sukey may also have been literate.  Sources: Charles Taylor, Account with James Madison, September 14, 1818 – November 4, 1819, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 16664; Paul Jennings to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, April 23, 1844, Dolley Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 26439; Paul Jennings to Sukey, May 13, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30571; Amy Larrabee Cotz notes on brother/sister terminology, citing Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925 (Vintage Books: New York, 1976, chapter five, “Aunts and Uncles and Swap-Dog Kin”), and Geneva Smitherman, Talkin and Testifyin: the Language of Black America (Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston, 1977). was lolling out of a chamber window, James Smith,28Little is known of James Smith. In Charles Ingersoll’s 1849 history, Madison’s “faithful, brave young slave, Jim, returned with his masters last note, in pencil, directing [Dolley Madison] to fly at once.” Jennings, however, clearly identified Smith as a free man and did not seem to indicate that Smith was attached to the Madison household.  Source:, “Scenes of the Last War–Mrs. Madison’s Flight from Washington.,” Evening Herald (Cleveland), May 22, 1849, MRD-S 41369; biographical information for James Smith, MRD-N 61499. a free colored man who had accompanied Mr. Madison to Bladensburg, galloped up to the house, waving his hat, and cried out, “Clear out, clear out! General Armstrong has ordered a retreat!” All then was confusion. Mrs. Madison ordered her carriage, and passing through the dining-room, caught up what silver she could crowd into her old-fashioned reticule,29Dolley’s reticule, or drawstring handbag, may have seemed “old-fashioned” to Jennings in 1863, when women could carry personal items in pockets under full skirts. In 1814, however, Dolley’s skirts would have been too narrow for pockets. By specifying that Dolley saved only what could be carried away in a small purse, Jennings laid the groundwork for his later discussion that downplayed her role in saving items from the President’s House. Source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary; “A History of Pockets,” © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2013. and then jumped into the chariot with her servant girl Sukey,30Dolley Madison had a complex relationship with her longtime enslaved maid Sukey. In 1818, Dolley sent Sukey several miles away to work on another one of the farms that made up Montpelier as punishment for alleged theft. Dolley’s description of the incident reveals much about her sense of the enslaver/enslaved relationship: “Sucky has made so many depridations on every thing, in every part of the house that, I sent her to black Meadow last week but find it terribly inconvenient to do without her, & suppose I shall take her again, as I feel too old to undertake to bring up another—so I must even let her steal from me, to keep from labour myself … I would buy a maid but good ones are rare & as high as 8 & 900$.” Nothing in the written record indicates whether Sukey was glad to be relieved of field work at a distant quarter, or reluctant to be back under Dolley’s close supervision. In 1833, Dolley referred to “my most efficient House servant Sucky.” Sukey was still with Dolley ten years later, when Dolley’s niece expected Sukey to accompany Dolley to Washington. The last mention of Sukey in the documentary record is an 1847 letter to Dolley from her son John Payne Todd, explaining his lack of funds to ship items “for you & for Suckey.” Since Sukey was a nickname for Susan, Sukey was likely Susan Stewart, mother of Ellen Stewart. Several months prior to the Pearl incident in 1848, Ellen ran away rather than be sold to a slave trader. William Chaplin reported in an antislavery newspaper that Dolley “either piqued a little at the loss of the daughter, or from her necessities, offered the mother for sale.” A Washington family purchased the mother “with the prospect of freedom sometime.” Sukey’s absence from the Madison documentary record after 1847 aligns with this conclusion. Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Anna Payne Cutts, ca. July 23, 1818, Cutts Family Collection of Papers of James and Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 28586; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Richard Cutts, August 11, 1833, Charles Moorfield Storey, Boston, Massachusetts, MRD-S 25915; Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, [November 12, 1843], Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 28270; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 174-75; William Chaplin, “Mrs. Madison a Slave Dealer,” The North Star (Rochester, NY), April 14, 1848, MRD-S 296. and Daniel Carroll,31According to Dolley Madison, it was Charles Carroll of Bellevue, now Dumbarton House, who tried to hurry her departure from the President’s House, while she waited for the painting of George Washington to be secured. In 1847, Daniel J. Carroll claimed that his father deserved credit for saving the painting, igniting a debate that played out in newspaper editorials. Jacob Barker and Robert De Peyster, who had carried the painting out of the President’s House, insisted that the credit belonged to Dolley for ordering the painting’s removal. At De Peyster’s urging, Dolley contributed a letter in 1848 stating, “On the contrary Mr [Charles] Carroll had left me to join Mr Madison when I directed my servants in what manner to [remove] it from the wall – remaining with them until it was done. I saw Mr Barker & yourself (the two gentlemen alluded to) passing & accepted your offer to aid me in any way by inviting you to help me preserve this portrait – which you kindly carried between you to the humble but safe roof which sheltered it awhile. I acted thus because of my respect for Gen. Washington – not that I felt a desire to gain laurels – but should there be a merit in remaining an hour in danger of life or liberty to save the likeness of anything, the merit in this case belongs to me.” Perhaps the memory of this heated debate caused Jennings to recall the son’s name rather than the father’s.  Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Lucy Payne Washington Todd, August 23-24, 1814, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23666; Robert Gilbert Livingston De Peyster to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, May 5, 1847, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29439; Robert Gilbert Livingston De Peyster to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, February 5, 1848, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29485; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Mr. Robert G. L. DePeyster, February 11, 1848, The Peter Force Scrapbook, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia, MRD-S 31865. who took charge of them; Jo. Bolin drove them over to Georgetown Heights;32Coachman Joseph Bolen (also spelled Bolden) may have been a free servant in the Madison household. Dolley’s niece Mary Cutts recalled, “With his wages [Bolen] soon freed himself, and when Mr. Madison retired from public life, [Bolen] laid aside his whip and said he would never again use it and wept like a child on being parted from his handsome greys.” Bolen may have been the “servant Joe” who was “anxious to purchase the freedom of his wife” from Francis Scott Key in 1810. Key sent Dolley a proposed deed of manumission by which Joe and his wife would work to pay off the $200 that Dolley would advance to Key.  Sources: Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, Memoir I, [1849-1856], Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MRD-S 27600; Francis Scott Key to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, June 30, 1810, Unlocated, MRD-S 34837. the British were expected in a few minutes. Mr. Cutts,33Massachusetts Congressman Richard Cutts was the husband of Dolley’s sister Anna and a confidante of James Madison. In August 1814, Richard and Anna Cutts had five young children. Anna gave birth to their sixth child, Mary Cutts, three weeks after the attack on Washington.  Source: Cutts family name records in MRD. her brother-in-law, sent me to a stable on 14th street, for his carriage. People were running in every direction. John Freeman (the colored butler) drove off in the coachee34A coachee is similar to a coach, with a longer body and an open front.  Source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. with his wife, child, and servant;35The marriage of John Freeman and Melinda Colbert, a granddaughter of Monticello’s Betty Hemings, illustrates the difficulties faced by African Americans in directing their personal lives. In 1803, Freeman was enslaved and hired out to Thomas Jefferson, working in the hall and dining room and waiting at table in the President’s House. Jefferson brought him on a trip to Monticello, where Freeman met and made plans to marry Colbert, enslaved by Jefferson’s daughter Maria Eppes. Before Freeman could obtain permission to marry Colbert, Eppes died. Freeman appealed to Jefferson to purchase him and his intended wife. Jefferson bought Freeman in 1804, under a contract that would emancipate him in 1815, but was unwilling to buy Colbert, pointing out that Freeman would see Colbert only when Jefferson visited Monticello. Through an unclear chain of events, by 1809 Colbert was free, married to Freeman, and living with him at the President’s House. Virginia law required her to leave the state within a year of her manumission or risk re-enslavement. Because Freeman was afraid to take his wife back to Virginia when Jefferson retired, and reluctant to leave her behind in Washington, Jefferson agreed to sell Freeman to Madison, with the same requirement of future emancipation. Note that Freeman had a “servant” of his own at the time that he and his family evacuated the President’s House in 1814. Since Freeman became an activist in the anti-slavery cause, it is possible that he purchased this servant for reasons that went beyond the Freeman household’s needs. Freeman must have reunited with Madison soon after the president returned to Washington on August 27, 1814. Advising Dolley to stay in northern Virginia until it was certain that the British would not reenter the capital, Madison wrote that he would “keep Freeman till the question is decided, and then lose no time in sending him to you.”  Source: L. Cinder Stanton, “‘A Well-Ordered Household’: Domestic Servants in Jefferson’s White House,” White House History (2006): 4-24, MRD-S 25099; James Madison to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, August 28, 1814, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. also a feather bed lashed on behind the coachee, which was all the furniture saved,36Dolley Madison recalled to Mary Latrobe a few months later, “I sent out the silver (nearly all) – the velvet curtains and Gen. Washington’s picture, the cabinet papers, a few books, and the small clock– left everything else belonging to the publick, our own valuable stores of every description, a part of my clothes, and all my servants’ clothes, &c., &c….”  Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Mary Elizabeth Hazelhurst Latrobe, December 3, 1814, Unlocated, MRD-S 28298. except part of the silver and the portrait of Washington (of which I will tell you by-and-by).

I will here mention that although the British were expected every minute, they did not arrive for some hours; in the mean time, a rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House, and stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on.37Dolley Madison fled the President’s House shortly after three o’clock; it was past ten when British troops arrived. In the intervening hours, the American army pulled back through the city, heading toward the heights of Georgetown. One commander later recalled, “to preserve that order which was maintained during the retreat was now no longer practicable.” The “rabble” that Jennings described looting the White House may have been American soldiers who had broken ranks. “The wine [at the President’s House], of which there was a great quantity, was consumed by our own soldiers,” noted Margaret Bayard Smith after hearing from Dolley. Civilians were likely responsible for the looting that William Thornton tried to stem in the days following August 24: “Finding the Mayor not yet in the city, I as the only Justice of the Peace, appointed a guard at the President’s House and Offices, another at the Capitol to prevent plunderers who [were] carrying off articles to the amount of thousand[s] of dollars.”  Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Lucy Payne Washington Todd, August 23-24, 1814, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23666; James Pack, The Man Who Burned the White House: Admiral Sir George Cockburn (1772-1852) (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987), MRD-S 2363, 18; Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 90-117; Gaillard Hunt (editor) and Margaret Bayard Smith, Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society: Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), MRD-S 121, 110; William Thornton’s account of his activities, printed in the National Intelligencer, Sept. 7, 1814, and reprinted in Carole L. Herrick, August 24, 1814: Washington in Flames (Falls Church, VA: Higher Education Publications, Inc.) 139-40.

About sundown I walked over to the Georgetown ferry, and found the President and all hands (the gentlemen named before, who acted as a sort of body-guard for him) waiting for the boat. It soon returned, and we all crossed over, and passed up the road about a mile; they then left us servants to wander about.38Jennings did not specify why he walked to the ferry. Perhaps he had orders to find Madison or took the initiative to evacuate the city. While Jennings would cross paths with Madison again later, he was apparently on his own for the evening and was not assigned to accompany the president’s entourage. This suggested that Jennings was accustomed to a certain degree of autonomy (certainly more than most enslaved workers at Montpelier experienced) and that Madison was not concerned that Jennings would take advantage of the confusion to run away. The narrative revealed Jennings’s familiarity with Washington’s neighborhoods and the surrounding area, a knowledge base he likely acquired while delivering messages and carrying out errands for the Madisons. In a short time several wagons from Bladensburg, drawn by Barney’s artillery horses, passed up the road, having crossed the Long Bridge before it was set on fire.39The Long Bridge at 14th Street was burned by American and British forces the next day, August 25, after gale force winds buckled the chains that controlled the draw mechanism. American troops on the Alexandria side, unable to raise the bridge, set fire to it to prevent the British from crossing. Meanwhile, British troops set fire to the Washington end of the bridge, believing that American troops might attempt to re-enter the city. Sources: Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998) 139, 141; Carole L. Herrick, August 24, 1814: Washington in Flames (Falls Church, VA: Higher Education Publications, Inc.) 121, 151; 14th Street Bridges. As we were cutting up some pranks a white wagoner ordered us away, and told his boy Tommy to reach out his gun, and he would shoot us.40Jennings was only a teenager in 1814, so it is not surprising if he joined in some horseplay and jeering. In taunting the wagoner for the army’s defeat at Bladensburg, Jennings may have been identifying with Madison and his administration, or simply reacting as a Washington resident whose city had been left undefended. Jennings did not record the wagoner’s reply, but the appearance of Madison on the scene may have defused a tense situation. I told him “he had better have used it at Bladensburg.” Just then we came up with Mr. Madison and his friends, who had been wandering about for some hours, consulting what to do. I walked on to a Methodist minister’s, and in the evening, while he was at prayer, I heard a tremendous explosion, and, rushing out, saw that the public buildings, navy yard, ropewalks, &c., were on fire.41Navy Secretary William Jones had ordered Commodore Thomas Tingey to burn the navy yard if American forces retreated or were defeated, in order to prevent the British from acquiring the yard, its stores, and the ships under construction there. Those resources, however, were too valuable to the American side to be destroyed unless defeat was certain. Tingey’s senior clerk, Mordecai Booth, traveled back and forth from the navy yard through the afternoon and evening of August 24, gathering information on troop movements. By eight o’clock it was clear that the British had entered the city. Within twenty minutes, Tingey and Booth set fires all across the navy yard and departed. Like Jennings, many people described hearing the resulting explosion, even from great distances.  Sources: David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds., Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 513; Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 90-96, 101-04, 134; Carole L. Herrick, August 24, 1814: Washington in Flames (Falls Church, VA: Higher Education Publications, Inc.) , 87-90; Grant Quertermous email to Hilarie Hicks 4/23/12.

Mrs. Madison slept that night at Mrs. Love’s,42James Madison had planned to reunite with Dolley at Charles Carroll’s house Bellevue in Georgetown. As events unfolded, Madison changed the meeting place twice, settling on Salona, the Maffitt home in Fairfax County, Virginia. Madison reached Salona that night, but Dolley did not. She stopped for the night at Rokeby, the home of Richard and Mathilda Lee Love. Mrs. Love, a friend of Dolley, occasionally stayed at the President’s House. According to Mrs. Love’s later recollections, “Mrs. Madison and a number of city people took refuge at my house the night the British took Washington; Mr. Madison had gone farther up the country. Early in the evening Mr. Monroe came to my house to look for Mr. Madison; as Mr. Monroe was weary I gave him his supper, and asked him if he thought I was safe for the night. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘as safe as if you were in the Allegheny Mountains.’ Oh, it was a trying time, for Mr. Love’s company, with all the militia of the State of Virginia, was called out, and I was in a peck of trouble.” Sources: Robert Ames Alden, The Flights of the Madisons (Fairfax County, VA: Fairfax County Council of the Arts, 1974); Ellen Anderson, Salona, Fairfax County, Virginia (Fairfax, VA: Fairfax County Publications Center, 1979), MRD-S 42098. two or three miles over the river. After leaving that place she called in at a house, and went up stairs. The lady of the house learning who she was, became furious, and went to the stairs and screamed out, “Miss Madison! if that’s you, come down and go out! Your husband has got mine out fighting, and d–you, you shan’t stay in my house; so get out!”43For more than twenty-four hours, James and Dolley Madison traveled separately within a small area of northern Virginia, hoping to reunite. Many stories, with varying degrees of legitimacy, were later told about their travels. Congressman Jeremiah Mason wrote to his wife that “poor Mrs. Madison … attempted to find refuge in a private room of an inn, about twenty miles distant, which was occupied by a lady who rudely and peremptorily ordered her to depart. The disgraceful and distressing stories told are innumerable.” Jennings described the incident taking place at a “house,” possibly meaning a “public house,” tavern, or boarding house. Some historians have suggested that the story of Dolley’s encounter with the angry militia wife may be based on Dolley’s overnight stay at the home of Mrs. Love, whose husband was serving with the militia. Mrs. Love later recalled that night as a “trying time” when she “was in a peck of trouble,” with many Washington residents seeking shelter at her home. Jennings, however, depicted two separate incidents: one stop at Mrs. Love’s home, and another at the militia wife’s “house.” Sources: Jeremiah Mason to Mary Means Mason, October 6, 1814, Unlocated, MRD-S 35072; Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), 579-80; Irving Brant, The Fourth President: A Life of James Madison (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), 573-74. Mrs. Madison complied, and went to Mrs. Minor’s, a few miles further, where she stayed a day or two,44Other accounts indicate that James Madison, not Dolley, stopped at George Minor’s home on Minor’s Hill en route to Salona on August 24. He passed over Minor’s Hill twice more the next day before reuniting with Dolley at Wiley’s Tavern, where she remained until returning to Washington.  Sources: Robert Ames Alden, The Flights of the Madisons (Fairfax County, VA: Fairfax County Council of the Arts, 1974); Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990), p. 579-80; Irving Brant, The Fourth President: A Life of James Madison (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), 573-74. Brant based his reconstruction of the Madisons’ routes on “the papers of Secretary Jones and Richard Rush, the memoirs of Matilda Lee Love, and the narrative of Mordecai Booth, a naval clerk who hunted for Madison through half the night and next day, seeking an order for the disposition of naval gunpowder carried to Falls Church.” (573). and then returned to Washington, where she found Mr. Madison at her brother-in-law’s, Richard Cutts, on F street.45Margaret Bayard Smith mentioned visiting the Madisons at the Cutts home when the Smiths returned to Washington on August 28. The Cutts family moved from F Street to a house on Lafayette Square in 1818; that house was later purchased by James Madison and was Dolley’s principal residence during her widowhood. Sources: Gaillard Hunt (editor) and Margaret Bayard Smith, Margaret Bayard Smith, The First Forty Years of Washington Society: Portrayed by the Family Letters of Mrs. Samuel Harrison Smith (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 108-110, MRD-S 121; MRD notes on “Cutts-Madison House.” All the facts about Mrs. M. I learned from her servant Sukey. We moved into the house of Colonel John B. Taylor, corner of 18th street and New York Avenue, where we lived till the news of peace arrived.46The Octagon House was the town home of Colonel John Tayloe, owner of the Virginia plantation Mount Airy. It served as the temporary President’s House from September 8, 1814 until March 1815. James Madison signed the Treaty of Ghent at the Octagon House on February 16, 1815, concluding the War of 1812. Although Jennings did not describe his living space at the Octagon House, Dolley found the environment unhealthy, particularly the basement-level servants’ quarters: “We shall remove in March to the 7 buildings, where we shall be better accomodated, in a more healthy region. Mr. M has not been well since we came to this house, & our servants are constantly sick, oweing to the damp cellar in which they are confined.” Sources: Sidney Hart and Rachael L. Penman, 1812: A Nation Emerges (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012), 255; “Octagon House,” National Register of Historic Places Travel Itinerary; MRD notes on “Octagon House;” Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin, [December 29, 1814], Gallatin Papers, The New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, MRD-S 22884.

In two or three weeks after we returned, Congress met in extra session, at Blodgett’s old shell of a house on 7th street (where the General Post-office now stands). It was three stories high, and had been used for a theatre, a tavern, an Irish boarding house, &c.; but both Houses of Congress managed to get along in it very well, notwithstanding it had to accommodate the Patent-office, City and General Post-office, committee-rooms, and what was left of the Congressional Library, at the same time. Things are very different now.

The next summer, Mr. John Law, a large property-holder about the Capitol, fearing it would not be rebuilt, got up a subscription and built a large brick building47Shortly after Benjamin Latrobe began rebuilding efforts at the Capitol, a group of investors hired him to design a major addition to Long’s Tavern. Investors hoped that by offering to rent the assembly rooms to Congress, they could discourage officials from relocating the capital to Philadelphia. The building, completed in five months, became known as the Brick Capitol. Congress met there from December 1815 until it returned to the rebuilt Capitol in December 1819. The building, by this time called the Old Brick Capitol, returned to private use and became a boarding house popular with southern Congressmen. The government commandeered the building for a military prison during the Civil War, as Jennings noted. It was torn down in 1867, just two years after Jennings’s book was published.  Source: William C. Allen, History of the United States Capitol: A Chronicle of Design, Construction, and Politics (Washington, Government Printing Office, 2001) 102, 107-08, 140.  (now called the Old Capitol, where the secesh prisoners are confined), and offered it to Congress for their use, till the Capitol could be rebuilt. This coaxed them back, though strong efforts were made to remove the seat of government north; but the southern members kept it here.

It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out from the frame the large portrait of Washington48Jennings refuted the long-standing myth that Dolley Madison cut the canvas out of the frame with a carving knife. Even Dolley had never claimed to have taken down the portrait herself. She later wrote that “on that very day I sent out the silver (nearly all) – the velvet curtains and Gen. Washington’s picture…” More specifically, she “directed my servants in what manner to [remove] it from the wall.” Jennings’s narrative credited individuals for their actions: Dolley saved the silver, Sioussat and Magraw saved the painting. Interestingly, Jennings did not indicate whether he had played any role in removing the portrait.  Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Mary Elizabeth Hazelhurst Latrobe, December 3, 1814, Unlocated, MRD-S 28298; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Mr. Robert G. L. DePeyster, February 11, 1848, The Peter Force Scrapbook, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia, MRD-S 31865. (now in one of the parlors there), and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment. John Susé (a Frenchman, then door-keeper, and still living)49A native of Paris, Jean Sioussat (also known as French John) played a key role at the President’s House, variously described as master of ceremonies, majordomo, maitre d’hotel, porter, or doorkeeper. Dolley Madison praised Sioussat for his “faithfulness and good conduct during your long service with us.” Following the Madison administration, Sioussat obtained a clerkship at the Bank of the United States and later at the Bank of the Metropolis. He also helped the widowed Dolley manage the upkeep of her house in Washington. Sioussat was “still living” when Jennings’s Reminiscences first appeared as an article in 1863, but died in 1864, before it was published in book form. When interviewed by Charles J. Ingersoll for a historical article published in 1849, Sioussat recalled that he and Magraw tried to break the Washington portrait’s outer frame with a hatchet, and that Magraw succeeded while Sioussat was out of the room in search of a larger ax. His descendants, however, believed that it was Sioussat who saved the painting by cutting the canvas with his penknife, a story “corroborated by the old colored coachman, Paul Jennings, who held the ladder while Mr. Sioussat cut the picture from the frame.” Contradictory details aside, this family tradition suggests that Jennings and Sioussat renewed their acquaintance when Jennings returned to Washington in the 1840s, during which time Jennings “often told [the children] the story.”  Sources: MRD and DMDE biographical notes; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Jean-Pierre Sioussat, August 9, 1831, Private Collection, MRD-S 34924; Margaret Gray, A Short Sketch of the Lives of Jean Pierre Sioussat and Charlotte Julia de Graff, his Wife (Washington, DC: Rufus H. Darby, 1888), MRD-S 39722; “Scenes of the Last War–Mrs. Madison’s Flight from Washington.,” Evening Herald (Cleveland), May 22, 1849, MRD-S 41369; John H. McCormick, MD, “The First Master of Ceremonies of the White House,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society (1904): 170-194, MRD-S 26359. and Magraw,50In Charles J. Ingersoll’s 1849 article describing Dolley’s flight from Washington, Thomas Magraw (also spelled M’Gaw or McGrath) was identified as the “Irish gardener” who finally broke the outer frame of the Washington portrait in order to remove the portrait from the wall. Following the burning of the President’s House, McGraw directed a number of repairs and improvements to the Seven Buildings, which served as the presidential residence for the last two years of the Madison administration. McGraw also purchased some of the furnishings and supplies needed for the temporary residence. Sources: “Scenes of the Last War–Mrs. Madison’s Flight from Washington.,” Evening Herald (Cleveland), May 22, 1849, MRD-S 41369; William Coltman, May 25, 1815 – October 17, 1815 (packet [A]: 22), box 237, RG 217, Entry A1-347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 32584; William Coltman, March 11, 1815 – March 24, 1815 (packet [A]: 24; 2: 3), box 237, RG 217, Entry A1-347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 32597; Thomas Magrath, June 27, 1815 (packet 1:20), box 114, RG 217; Entry A-1 347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 25856; Thomas Magrath, May 28, 1815 (packet 1:21), box 114, RG 217; Entry A-1 347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 27555; Thomas Magrath, March 6, 1815 (packet [A]: 24; 2: 7), box 237, RG 217, Entry A1-347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 32601. the President’s gardener, took it down and sent it off on a wagon, with some large silver urns and such other valuables as could be hastily got hold of. When the British did arrive, they ate up the very dinner, and drank the wines, &c., that I had prepared51It was not until Madison’s retirement to Montpelier that Jennings became his body servant or personal attendant, as Jennings indicated below. Jennings mentioned only one of his regular duties at the President’s House in his Reminiscences: preparing the dining room for a meal. In a previous paragraph, he described the preparations for this particular dinner in more detail: “I set the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed them in the coolers.” During Dolley’s widowhood, Jennings’s serving skills were frequently in demand from Washington neighbor Julia Tayloe, who wrote Dolley: “Is Paul quite well – and will you allow him to wait dinner for me to day at 6 c clock?” This resonates with Daniel Webster’s 1851 praise of Jennings as “a competent dining room servant.” Sources: Recommendation for Paul Jennings from Daniel Webster, 23 June 1851, Alfred Chapman Papers, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, MRD-S 38310; Julia Maria Dickinson Tayloe to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, [1837-1849], Special Collections Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, MD-S 23872. for the President’s party.

When the news of peace arrived, we were crazy with joy. Miss Sally Coles,52British troops had not yet threatened Washington when Dolley Madison first invited her beloved cousin Sally Coles to spend the winter of 1814-15 with her. Sally replied on June 28, “I thank you my more than Friend for the wish you express for my spending the next Winter with you—but I dare not hope, or think about it—.” Despite the Madisons’ change of residence, Sally carried though with the proposed visit; Dolley wrote to a friend on January 14, “Miss Coles is with me.” The first word of the arrival of the peace treaty reached Washington on February 13, 1815. Congress ratified it, and Madison signed it, on February 16. As Jennings correctly recalled, Coles was unmarried in 1815; she married Andrew Stevenson the following year.  Sources: Sarah Coles Stevenson to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, June 28, 1814, Cutts Family Collection of Papers of James and Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 28415; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin, January 14, 1815, Gallatin Papers, The New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, MRD-S 23340; Sidney Hart and Rachael L. Penman, 1812: A Nation Emerges (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012), 255; MRD biographical note on Sally Coles Stevenson. a cousin of Mrs. Madison, and afterwards wife of Andrew Stevenson, since minister to England, came to the head of the stairs, crying out, “Peace! peace!” and told John Freeman53Freeman continued to work for Madison in Washington after gaining his freedom in 1815. He remained in the capital city, later working at Gadsby’s Hotel as a waiter, and at the State Department as a messenger. He owned a house on K Street by the time he died in 1839.  Source: L. Cinder Stanton, “‘A Well-Ordered Household’: Domestic Servants in Jefferson’s White House,” White House History (2006): 4-24, MRD-S 25099. (the butler) to serve out wine liberally to the servants and others. I played the President’s March on the violin,54It is uncertain what march Jennings played. Several composers, including Louis Dubois, Alexander Reinagle, Charles Southgate, Peter Weldon, and Peter Waddell, wrote commemorative pieces entitled “President Madison’s March.” Jennings was not the only violin player within the Montpelier enslaved community. Dolley’s niece Mary Cutts recalled hearing enslaved workers play the violin for dances following the Madison’s barbecues, describing the players as “good musicians.” After the guests departed, “the slaves … when their duties are over, assemble in the largest cabin, call in house servants and field hands, tune up the violin and make the plantation resound, until morning.” Sources: Footnote to “To James Madison from Louis Dubois, 5 March 1809,; C. Southgate, “President Madison’s March,” The Visitor, Richmond, VA, 1809; Alexander Reinagle, “President Madison’s March”; P[eter] W[eldon], “President Madison’s March”, Library of Congress; P[eter] W[addell], “President Madison’s March”; Baylor University; Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts Memoir II, [1849-1856], Cutts Family Collection of Papers of James and Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23538. John Susé and some others were drunk for two days, and such another joyful time was never seen in Washington. Mr. Madison and all his Cabinet were as pleased as any, but did not show their joy in this manner.

Mrs. Madison was a remarkably fine woman.55Jennings (or Russell) interrupted the narrative of the War of 1812 to insert brief character sketches of Dolley and James Madison. Jennings’s unqualified praise of his enslavers may seem surprising, but the Reminiscences are far from an exposé on slavery. Rather, they originated in the anecdotes that Jennings likely felt were appropriate to tell to his white Pension Office coworker. If Jennings harbored anger or resentment toward either of the Madisons, he refrained from including it in this narrative. Especially because the Madisons were highly regarded by potential readers of the Reminiscences, criticism of his former enslavers would have reflected poorly on Jennings himself in a tense Washington climate. There are few surviving letters that hint at the nature of Jennings’s relationship with Dolley. In 1844, Dolley allowed Jennings to leave Washington for a visit with his dying wife Fanny Gordon Jennings, who was enslaved on a plantation near Montpelier. Jennings expressed “a thousand thanks for your kindness in permitting me to stay with my wife until her departure from this life.” A year later, another visit by Jennings to his family became a source of contention. Dolley’s prickly letter to her son gives insight into her understanding of the enslaver/enslaved relationship: “I wish to say a few words on the subject of Paul … I hired him to the President [Polk], who (as well as myself) gave him the privilege of 2 or 3 weeks to visit his family – when he was to have returned & entered upon his duties again – It was of importance to me that he shd. have been punctual, but he has not appeared or written an apology…” Dolley’s belief that Jennings owed her an apology suggests the degree of deference she expected from him.  Sources: Paul Jennings to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, August 6, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30628; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Payne Todd, July 17, 1845, Private Collection, MRD-S 26466. She was beloved by every body in Washington, white and colored. Whenever soldiers marched by, during the war, she always sent out and invited them in to take wine and refreshments, giving them liberally of the best in the house. Madeira wine56Although Madison purchased a wide variety of wines, many of Madison’s close friends mentioned his preference for Madeira. Madison’s private secretary Edward Coles wrote of Madison’s “favorite being Madeira, of wh[ich] he was an excellent judge.” Robley Dunglison, Madison’s physician and friend, noted, “Whilst he was President, he had imported a large stock of madeira wine.” Sources: Edward Coles to Hugh Blair Grigsby, December 23, 1854, box 1, folder 1854, Coles Family Papers, MS 1458, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, MRD-S 24513; Samuel Radbill (editor), “The Autobiographical Ana of Robley Dunglison, M.D.,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1963): 1-212. MRD-S 28926; Hilarie M. Hicks, References to Wine in the Montpelier Research Database, September 2011, updated August 2013, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 41082. was better in those days than now, and more freely drank. In the last days of her life, before Congress57Congress made two purchases of Madison’s papers, in 1837 and 1848. The initial purchase was of Madison’s copious notes taken during the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Madison had determined “to preserve as far as I could an exact account of what might pass in the Convention” and directed in his will that Dolley should arrange for the notes to be published. After unsuccessful attempts to secure a publisher, friends proposed that Dolley offer the notes to Congress. Certain members of Congress opposed the purchase because part of the $30,000 paid to James Madison’s estate would fund his $2,000 bequest to the American Colonization Society, an organization that supported the relocation of freed slaves to Liberia. In this paragraph Jennings referred to the 1848 sale, in which Congress purchased four trunks full of additional Madison papers for $25,000. Dolley received the first $5,000 from Congress just over a year before her death, with the remaining $20,000 placed into a trust managed for her benefit. Sources: James Madison, excerpt from the preface to his report on the Debates of the Federal Convention, quoted in “The Madison Papers,” National Intelligencer (Washington, DC), April 13, 1839, MRD-S 40879; James Madison, Will dated [April 15, 1835], and Codicil [April 19, 1835], Will Book 8: 134-138, Orange County Courthouse, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 23094; David W. Houpt, “Securing a Legacy: The Publication of James Madison’s Notes from the Constitutional Convention,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2010) 118:1, 4-39; Benajah Ticknor, account of visit with Mrs. Madison in Washington, May 1848, Benajah Ticknor Journey to Michigan, 1848-1850, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, MRD-S 24034; James Buchanan to John Y. Mason, June 27, 1849, Unlocated, MRD-S 40087. purchased her husband’s papers, she was in a state of absolute poverty,58Dolley Madison was never a wealthy widow. Even before her husband’s death in 1836, the family finances had been plagued by poor harvests, low crop prices, and mounting debts. Madison sold land to buyers who did not follow through on their financial commitments, bought the Washington house of his brother-in-law Richard Cutts to save it from creditors, and assumed debts from Dolley’s son John Payne Todd. As a widow, Dolley was sued for her own debts and for money that had been in dispute since the 1801 death of James Madison’s father. She mortgaged the Cutts house in Washington, borrowed money from the bank and from friends, and sold several enslaved people as assets. Dolley’s financial situation was dire enough for her to write her son in 1844, “tell me when you will come to offer the papers to Congress …we are without funds and those we owe are impatient.” Dolley sold Montpelier later that year, including a number of the enslaved community in the sale. In 1846 she lamented, “The writings of my Husband will be purchased by Congress, but no one can say at what time, as the Members are moor interested in the acquermt of Oregon, & other speculations…” By the time Congress purchased the papers, Dolley owed over $1000 to creditors in addition to the $3000 mortgage on the Washington house. Sources: James Madison to George Graham, March 27, 1824, MRD-S 22744; James Madison to Richard Cutts, October 14, 1822, MRD-S 22572; James Madison to John Payne Todd, April 26, 1826, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, MRD-S 22231; James Madison to Chester Bailey, 1826, MRD-S 17961; James Madison to Chester Bailey, December 20, 1826, Philip D. Sang, Chicago, Illinois, MRD-S 22190; James Madison to Edward Coles, February 23, 1827, box 1, folder 27, Edward Coles Papers, MS C0037, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey, MRD-S 22196; Richard M. Chapman vs. Dolley Payne Todd Madison, 1842-1855, Multiple Repositories, MRD-S 31648; James W. Walker vs. Dolley Payne Todd Madison, John Payne Todd, Henry W. Moncure and Thomas A. Robinson, 1846-1851, Multiple Repositories, MRD-S 33316; David Graham vs. Dolley Payne Todd Madison, John Payne Todd and Henry W. Moncure, 1846-1848, Multiple Repositories, MRD-S 33299; James W. Walker, Richard C. Booton, Executors of William Madison vs. Dolley Payne Todd Madison, 1844, Multiple Repositories, MRD-S 34629; Mortgage, Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Jacob Astor, August 16, 1842, box 159, RG 21; Entry NC-2 20, U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Chancery Records, Chancery Dockets and Rules Case Files 1804-1863, Rules 5, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 24705; John Payne Todd and Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to the Bank of the Metropolis, October 17, 1847, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30722; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory note to Richard Smith, April 26, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30363; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to Richard Smith, June 19, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29760; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to Richard Smith, October 20, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29773; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to William Wilson Corcoran, August 10, 1847, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 31041; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to William Wilson Corcoran, August 18, 1847 with postscript from William Wilson Corcoran, June 19, 1848, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29548; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Promissory Note to Charles W. Pairo, August 18, 1848, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois, MRD-S 25117; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Payne Todd, January 22, 1844, Cutts Family Collection of Papers of James and Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 28612; Dolley Payne Todd Madison and John Payne Todd to Henry W. Moncure, Indenture of Land, August 1, 1844 , Deed Book 39: 416-419, Orange County Courthouse, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 26203; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Payne Todd, February 19, [1846], Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MD-S 29904; Agreement of Court on Paid Debts, n.d., box 162, RG 21; Entry NC-2 20, U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Chancery Records, Chancery Dockets and Rules Case Files 1804-1863, Rules 5, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 24689. and I think sometimes suffered for the necessaries of life. While I was a servant to Mr. Webster, he often sent me to her with a market-basket full of provisions, and told me whenever I saw anything in the house that I thought she was in need of, to take it to her. I often did this, and occasionally gave her small sums from my own pocket, though I had years before bought my freedom of her.59Dolley Madison had apparently thought for some time about freeing Jennings. She drew up a will in 1841, specifying, “I give to my mulatto man Paul his freedom.” (Dolley, like many enslavers, seemed reluctant to acknowledge that the enslaved used surnames.) In 1845, she drew up a draft deed of emancipation for “my man servant Paul, sometimes called Paul Jennings,” proposing that he purchase his freedom at the price of $200. On the same day, she also drew up an alternate deed to sell Jennings to her son John Payne Todd. Jennings did not buy his freedom from Dolley directly. A receipt dated September 27, 1846 shows that Dolley received $200 “for my negro man named Paul Jennings aged about 45 years this day sold by me to said Pollard Webb.” Little is known of Webb, beyond his listing in the Washington Directory as an “agent” in 1850 and as a “fire and life insurance agent” in 1858. The March 19, 1847 document signed by Daniel Webster, mentioned in the Preface to the Reminiscences, did not indicate the person to whom Webster “paid $120 for the freedom of Paul Jennings.” Presumably it was Webb. The $80 reduction in price may indicate that Jennings had already reimbursed Webb for a portion of the price of his freedom. Jennings offered no explanation for his gifts of money to Dolley. His readers probably interpreted them as evidence of Jennings’s warm feelings for the woman he described as “beloved by every body in Washington, white and colored.” Jennings could also have been motivated by pity, a residual sense of duty, or the ironic satisfaction of having the power to help the woman who had once held power over him.  Sources: Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Will dated February 1, 1841, Crittenden Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23302; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Deed Manumitting Paul Jennings, July 8, 1845, box 2, folder May–Dec 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC , MRD-S 28676; Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Deed selling Paul Jennings to John Payne Todd, July 8, 1845, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 29325; Receipt for sale of Paul Jennings, Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Pollard Webb, September 28, 1846, Private Collection, MRD-S 41930; G. Franklin Edwards and Michael R. Winston, “Commentary: The Washington of Paul Jennings- White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom,” White House History Journal (1983): 52-63; Daniel Webster, flyleaf, concerning the purchase of the freedom of Paul Jennings, 1847, Unlocated.

Mr. Madison, I think, was one of the best men that ever lived. I never saw him in a passion, and never knew him to strike a slave, although he had over one hundred;60Though entrenched in the “peculiar institution,” neither of the Madisons condoned the beating of enslaved workers. Madison instructed an overseer in 1790 to “treat the Negroes with all the humanity & kindness consistent with their necessary subordination and work.” Dolley wrote to her son in regarding the selection of a new overseer in 1842, “no whipper of Negros shd ever have our people or any others, to tirenize over.” Beyond the issue of physical cruelty, Madison’s views on slavery were conflicted. He acknowledged “the magnitude of this evil among us,” yet believed the abolition of slavery was complicated by “the physical peculiarities of those held in bondage, which prelude their incorporation with the white population.” His 1783 decision to sell his enslaved man Billey Gardener into short-term servitude in Philadelphia, rather than bring him back to Montpelier or sell him elsewhere for full price, reflected a mixture of motives: “I am persuaded his mind is too thoroughly tainted to be a fit companion for fellow slaves in Virga.” after three years in the Revolutionary-era capital, “but [I] cannot think of punishing him … merely for coveting that liberty for which we have paid the price of so much blood, and have proclaimed so often to be the right, & worthy the pursuit, of every human being.” While still a young man, Madison envisioned a land speculation project that would allow him to “depend as little as possible on the labour of slaves,” but he eventually settled into the role of slaveholding plantation owner. An ardent member of the American Colonization Society, Madison hoped for the gradual abolition of slavery and the resettlement of free blacks to Liberia, writing to General Lafayette that “it seems to be indelible that the two races cannot co-exist, both being free and equal.” Harriet Martineau noted on a visit to Madison in 1835, “He talked more on the subject of slavery than on any other, acknowledging, without limitation or hesitation, all the evils with which it has ever been charged.” Martineau was unconvinced by Madison’s arguments in favor of colonization: “How such a mind as his could derive any alleviation to its anxiety from that source is surprising.” Sources: James Madison, Instructions to Mordecai Collins, Lewis Collins, and Sawney, November 8, 1790, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 21794; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Payne Todd, [ca. September 1, 1842], Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 27439; James Madison to Frances Wright Darusmont, September 1, 1825, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 17676; Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990) 148-49; David James Madison to James Madison Sr., September 8, 1783, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 10510; James Madison to Edmund Randolph, July 26, 1785, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 10586; James Madison to Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, November 1826, Dean Collection of Lafayette, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, New York, MRD-S 22171; Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (London: Saunders & Otley, 1838), MRD-S 23545. neither would he allow an overseer to do it. Whenever any slaves were reported to him as stealing or “cutting up” badly, he would send for them and admonish them privately, and never mortify them by doing it before others. They generally served him very faithfully. He was temperate in his habits.61Madison was “temperate,” that is, moderate in his consumption of alcohol. He considered wine and beer to be more healthful than hard liquor, writing in 1819, “It wd. doubtless be a great point gained for our Country … if ardent spirits could be made only to give way to malt liquors, to those afforded by the apple & the pear, and to the lighter & cheaper varieties of wine.” Madison attempted to encourage this style of temperance among the Montpelier enslaved community. James Kirke Paulding recalled, “Mr. Madison had undertaken to substitute Beer in the room of whiskey, as a beverage for his slaves in Harvest time, and on one occasion, I remember, stopt on a wheat field where they were at work to enquire how they liked the new drink—‘O, ver fine—vere fine, masser’ said an old grey head—‘but I tink a glass of whiskey vere good to make it wholesome.’ He was excessively diverted at this supplement of the old fellow, and often made merry with it afterwards.” Source: James Madison to Thomas Herttell, December 20, 1819, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 16681; Ralph Ketcham (editor) and James Kirke Paulding, “An Unpublished Sketch of James Madison by James K. Paulding,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (October 1959): 432-437, MRD-S 23753. I don’t think he drank a quart of brandy in his whole life. He ate light breakfasts and no suppers, but rather a hearty dinner, with which he took invariably but one glass of wine. When he had hard drinkers at his table, who had put away his choice Madeira pretty freely, in response to their numerous toasts, he would just touch the glass to his lips, or dilute it with water, as they pushed about the decanters. For the last fifteen years of his life he drank no wine at all.

After he retired from the presidency, he amused himself chiefly on his farm.62Madison’s acreage was divided into at least four farms, where approximately 100 enslaved laborers produced tobacco and wheat flour for market, as well as corn, fruit, vegetables, meat, and wool for use on the plantation. Madison had a great interest in agricultural experiments and scientific methods of farming, and served as the president of the Agricultural Society of Albemarle. His 1818 address to the Society contained valuable advice and was widely regarded. Despite being recognized as a progressive agriculturalist, Madison was not financially successful at farming. He lamented in 1826, “Since my return to private life (and the case was worse during my absence in public) such have been the unkind seasons, & the ravages of insects, that I have made but one tolerable crop of Tobacco, and but one of Wheat; the proceeds of both of which were greatly curtailed by mishaps in the sale of them.” Madison’s experiments in farming may have seemed like “amusements” to Jennings, in contrast with the hard labor performed by the enslaved farmhands: plowing fields, planting seeds, harvesting crops, curing tobacco, repairing fences, and caring for livestock. While Madison’s role was primarily managerial—riding out to inspect the farms, seeking out pest-resistant varieties of seed, corresponding with merchants to determine the best markets for crops—he nonetheless saw agriculture as a serious pursuit.  Sources: James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, February 24, 1826, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 22224. At the election for members of the Virginia Legislature, in 1829 or ’30, just after General Jackson’s accession, he voted for James Barbour, who had been a strong Adams man. He also presided, I think, over the Convention63The 78-year-old James Madison attended, but did not preside over, the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention. Madison was the only delegate who had also taken part in the convention that wrote the 1776 Virginia Constitution. “Altho’ aware of the considerations which at my age & with the infirmities incident to it … I retain too deep a sense of what I owe for past & repeated marks of confidence & favr. to my native State … not to join my efforts however feeble in the important work to be performed,” Madison wrote as the convention date approached. As a committee head, Madison succeeded in expanding the right to vote, which had been limited to landowners only, to all white male heads of households paying taxes. Madison gave only one speech during the convention, in which he proposed that Virginia adopt the federal three-fifths rule, which would add three-fifths of the enslaved population count to the total white population count for the purpose of determining political representation within Virginia. This represented a compromise between the eastern delegates, representing large-scale enslavers, and western delegates, who enslaved few people. Madison’s compromise was rejected in favor of the eastern insistence to include the total number of enslaved people in the population count, effectively maintaining the influence of the slaveholding elite. Jennings accompanied the Madisons to Richmond during the convention. In a letter to her brother living near Montpelier, Dolley wrote that “Paul is much oblig[ed] by news from his wife & children.” Sources: Ralph Ketcham, James Madison: A Biography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990) 636-40; James Madison to William Madison, March 25, 1829, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 18540; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to John Coles Payne, December 4, 1829, private collection, MRD-S 25906. for amending the Constitution, in 1832.

After the news of peace, and of General Jackson’s victory at New Orleans, which reached here about the same time,64American and British peace commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814. According to the terms of the treaty, the war would continue until both countries ratified the treaty. News of Andrew Jackson’s January 8, 1815 victory at the Battle of New Orleans reached Washington on February 4. News of the treaty arrived just nine days later.  Sources: David S. Heidler and Jeanne T. Heidler, eds, Encyclopedia of the War of 1812 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 586; Sidney Hart and Rachael L. Penman, 1812: A Nation Emerges (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, 2012), 254-55. there were great illuminations.65The city of Washington’s official celebration of the war’s end took place on Saturday, February 18. The National Daily Intelligencer reported that during the daylight hours “the star-spangled banner of America, and the red cros[s] flag of Britain were displayed together near the City Hall.” Mayor James Blake urged the citizens “to shew every rational demonstration of joy” (while requiring the local police “to be vigilant in the preservation of peace and tranquility”). A gun salute at seven in the evening was the signal for the residents to simultaneously illuminate their homes with candles and oil lamps, which were to burn until nine, creating the spectacle that lingered in Jennings’s memory. Some of the locals set off rockets, including ones that simulated the notorious British Congreve rockets fired at Fort McHenry.  Sources: Anthony S. Pitch, The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1998), 235-236; National Daily Intelligencer, February 20, 1815, p. 3. We moved into the Seven Buildings,66The Seven Buildings was a group of row houses located at 1901 through 1913 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The Madisons occupied the corner house, Number 1901, from March 1815 until Madison’s term as president ended in 1817. The federal government rented the house and paid for its renovation and furnishing as an interim executive mansion. After moving to the Seven Buildings in mid-March, the Madisons made a visit to Montpelier, returning at the end of May. Local tradition dubbed the corner house the “House of 1,000 Candles” after the reception the Madisons hosted there for General Andrew Jackson. Sources: National Park Service. Seven Buildings, 1901-1903 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, DC, HABS No. DC-59, HABS DC, WASH, 25, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 40619; Rent, Bank of Columbia, March 1, 1815 – February 28, 1817 (packet [A]: 25; Rent [no #]), box 237, RG 217, Entry A1-347, Miscellaneous Treasury Accounts, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 32588; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin, March 5, 1815, Gallatin Papers, The New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, MRD-S 32674; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Hannah Nicholson Gallatin, March 19, 1815, Gallatin Papers, The New-York Historical Society, New York, New York, MRD-S 23341; Stephen A. Hansen, “The ‘Seven Buildings:’ Some of Washington’s Earliest Townhouses Now a Building Billboard”, The InTowner, January 13, 2013. corner of 19th-street and Pennsylvania Avenue, and while there, General Jackson came on with his wife, to whom numerous dinner-parties and levees were given. Mr. Madison also held levees67The Wednesday evening drawing room party at the President’s House had been a hallmark of the Madison administration since 1809. The event was often so crowded that it was referred to as a “squeeze.” Resuming these public entertainments at the Seven Buildings assured post-war Washington society that life was returning to normal. Mary Crowninshield, wife of Navy Secretary Benjamin Crowninshield, noted in December 1815, “Last eve I went to the drawing-room. We were not crowded, but one room well filled. … We had tea and coffee on a small waiter, with four plates and a little confectionery; cake, one little frosted cake, fluted. After[wards] we had punch, wine, etc., sent round a number of times. Ice-cream, put in a silver dish, and a large cake – not good – on the same waiter … Then came in another with grapes and little cakes.” Since he waited table, Jennings was likely tasked with setting up and passing these refreshments. Jennings’s contrast of the Madison-era levees with the “present custom” may reflect general Washington knowledge about entertaining during the Lincoln’s wartime administration or might suggest that Jennings was acquainted with current White House staff. Sources: Alexander Dick, Journal Entry, 7 June 1809, Alexander Dick Journal, 1806-1809, MS 4528, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia, MRD-S 23275; Mary Boardman Crowninshield to Mary Hodges Boardman, December 7, 1815, Unlocated, MRD-S 28295. every Wednesday evening, at which wine, punch, coffee, ice-cream, &c., were liberally served, unlike the present custom.

While Mr. Jefferson was President, he and Mr. Madison (then his Secretary of State) were extremely intimate; in fact, two brothers could not have been more so. Mr. Jefferson always stopped over night at Mr. Madison’s, in going and returning from Washington.68Madison said that during his fifty-year relationship with Jefferson “there was not an interruption or diminution of mutual confidence and cordial friendship, for a single moment in a single instance.” Jefferson and Madison exchanged visits as often as circumstances permitted. In August 1804, Madison confirmed plans for a visit from Jefferson, writing, “I shall certainly be very happy to see you at my house.” Jefferson’s scribbled itineraries for trips to Washington in the autumns of 1807 and 1808 show that he traveled by way of Montpelier. In 1809, the retired Jefferson looked forward to Madison’s summer return from Washington: “I know too well the pressure of business which will be on you at Montpelier to count with certainty on the pleasure of seeing mrs. Madison & yourself here [at Monticello] … In any event I shall certainly intrude a flying visit on you during your stay in Orange.” Sources: James Madison to Nicholas Philip Trist, July 6, 1826, Papers of Nicholas Philip Trist, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 22462; James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, August 25, 1804, Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 36807; Thomas Jefferson, “Itinerary from Monticello to President’s House, Washington,” September 30, 1807, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23151; Thomas Jefferson, “Itinerary from Monticello to Georgetown Ferry, September 28-October 2, 1808″, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23152; Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, July 12, 1809, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 13510.

I have heard Mr. Madison say, that when he went to school, he cut his own wood for exercise. He often did it also when at his farm in Virginia. He was very neat, but never extravagant, in his clothes. He always dressed wholly in black — coat, breeches, and silk stockings, with buckles in his shoes and breeches. He never had but one suit at a time. He had some poor relatives that he had to help, and wished to set them an example of economy in the matter of dress.69Edward Coles, Madison’s onetime secretary, made similar comments on Madison’s consistent choice of clothing: “… in his dress, he was not at all excentric, or given to dandyism, but always appeared neat & genteel & in the costume of a well-bred & tasty old school gentleman. I have heard in early life he sometimes wore light-colored clothes. But from the time I first knew him, wh. was when he visited at my Fathers when I was a child, I never knew him to wear any other color but black. His coat being cut in what is termed dress fashion, his breaches short with buckles at the knees, black silk stockings, and shoes with strings, or long fair top boots, when out in cold weather, or when he rode on horse back, of wh. he was fond. His hat was of the shape & fashion usually worn by gentlemen of his age.” Jennings presents Madison’s choice to own “one suit at a time” as an example of economy, in contrast to the choices made by his relations. By comparison, it was typical for enslaved field hands to have only one outfit of simple clothing at a time; enslavers commonly issued one winter outfit and one summer outfit. A man’s clothing might include a shirt, breeches or trousers, shoes, stockings, a waistcoat (vest), a hat, and a jacket. A woman’s clothing could include a petticoat worn over a shift (a long-sleeved underdress), shoes, stockings, a hat, and a jacket. Enslavers issued better-quality clothing to domestic servants, whose appearance reflected more directly on the household. Sources: Edward Coles to Hugh Blair Grigsby, December 23, 1854, box 1, folder 1854, Coles Family Papers, MS 1458, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, MRD-S 24513; Linda Baumgarten. “’Clothes for the People,’ Slave Clothing in Early Virginia,” Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts, 1998. He was very fond of horses, and an excellent judge of them, and no jockey ever cheated him. He never had less than seven horses in his Washington stables while President.

He often told the story, that one day riding home from court with old Tom Barbour (father of Governor Barbour), they met a colored man, who took off his hat. Mr. M. raised his, to the surprise of old Tom; to whom Mr. M. replied, “I never allow a negro to excel me in politeness.” Though a similar story is told of General Washington, I have often heard this, as above, from Mr. Madison’s own lips.70A number of “similar stories” have been told of well-known Southern plantation owners, depicting them as both courteous and patronizing. In his 1901 autobiography Up from Slavery, Booker T. Washington repeated the already familiar story of George Washington tipping his hat to an enslaved man. George Johnson, whose father and grandfather were enslaved by Confederate president Jefferson Davis, stated that Davis also routinely tipped his hat to the people he enslaved. Thomas Jefferson Randolph remembered being corrected by his grandfather Thomas Jefferson for failing to reply to an enslaved man who greeted him. While some stories may be apocryphal, they illustrate what Booker T. Washington described as “the conduct of the old-school type of Southern gentleman when he is in contact with his former slaves or their descendants.”  Sources: Hilarie M. Hicks, The “Similar Story” of Washington Tipping His Hat to A Slave, research memo, November 28, 2011, Montpelier Foundation, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 41738; Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1901) found at http://www.bartleby.com; George Johnson, 1940 interview; Memoirs of Thomas Jefferson Randolph, 1874, Edgehill-Randolph Papers, University of Virginia, cited in Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 80.

After Mr. Madison retired from the presidency, in 1817, he invariably made a visit twice a year to Mr. Jefferson–sometimes stopping two or three weeks71During Madison’s retirement, Jennings accompanied him on visits to Jefferson at Monticello and on trips to the University of Virginia for meetings of the Board of Visitors. During one such trip in 1827, Jennings spoke to the nephew of Sally Coles Stevenson and relayed her travel plans to Madison. “Paul tells me he saw John Carter from whom he learned that Mrs. Stephenson would not make the promised visit to us for a week or two,” Madison wrote home to Dolley.  Sources: James Madison to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, November 5, 1824, Gratz Collection, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin, MRD-S 22014; James Madison to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, [July 17, 1827], box 2, folder 29, Richard John Levy and Sally Waldman Sweet Papers, New York Public Library, New York, New York, MRD-S 33636.–till Mr. Jefferson’s death, in 1826.

I was always with Mr. Madison till he died,72Jennings was written out of Madison’s final chapter by a 1902 biographer: “On the morning of June 28 [Madison] was moved from his bed to his chair as usual, and his niece brought him his breakfast and left it with him, urging him to eat. When she returned to the room a few minutes later he was dead. No one was with him at the time; he made no parting speeches and took no sorrowful farewells.” Jennings was not the only enslaved person to be omitted from a slaveholder’s deathbed scene. Thomas Jefferson’s daughter described Jefferson being led from his dying wife Martha’s chamber by his sister-in-law, with no mention of enslaved people at the bedside. Hemings family tradition, as well as an account by overseer Edmund Bacon, placed several members of the enslaved Hemings family at the scene. Martha Jefferson is said to have given a handbell to nine-year-old Sally Hemings, who was in fact her half-sister. Contemporary accounts confirmed the general nature of Madison’s death, though lacked Jennings’s intimate details. Madison’s friend and physician Robley Dunglison noted his rapid pulse and shortness of breath, writing that “although he was still cheerful, he felt, that his end was approaching; and I left him, I believe on the 23d of May, with no expectation of his existence being protracted for any length of time.” Stepson John Payne Todd wrote on June 28, 1836, “Mr. Madison died this morning. He has been some time declining gradually, and at half-past six o’clock he breathed his last.” “His death was remarkably tranquil. – He expired without a groan,” reported one newspaper. Niece Mary Cutts later recalled that “the physicians would have prolonged his life until the 4th of July — but he would not be unnecessarily stimulated and died in the full possession of all his noble faculties.”  Sources: Gaillard Hunt, The Life of James Madison (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1902), 384-5, MRD-S 26428; Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 208) 141-48, 688; Henry S. Randall, The Life of Thomas Jefferson (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858) 1:382; “Room in which Martha Jefferson died,” Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia; Samuel Radbill (editor), “The Autobiographical Ana of Robley Dunglison, M.D.,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society (1963): 56, MRD-S 28926; John Payne Todd, letter of [June 28, 1836] quoted in “By last Evening’s Mail,” Richmond Enquirer (Richmond, Virginia), July 1, 1836, 3, MRD-S 39626; “Ex-President Madison,” S. R. Telegraph [Washington], n.d., The Peter Force Scrapbook, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia, MRD-S 31798; Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts Memoir II, [1849-1856], Cutts Family Collection of Papers of James and Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23538. and shaved him every other day for sixteen years. For six months before his death, he was unable to walk, and spent most of his time reclined on a couch; but his mind was bright, and with his numerous visitors he talked with as much animation and strength of voice as I ever heard him in his best days. I was present when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mrs. Willis,73Nelly Conway Madison Willis, a 56-year-old widow, had been Madison’s ward after the death of her father Ambrose, Madison’s brother, in 1794. She lived at the neighboring plantation Woodley. Dolley’s niece Mary Cutts described Willis as “ever a favorite neice [sic]” of Madison. Willis was a frequent visitor to Montpelier, as when Dolley described an outdoor dinner at Montpelier for ninety guests in 1816: “We had no ladies except Mother M[adison] Mrs Macon [Madison’s sister Sarah] & Nelly Willis.” Sources: Biographical notes for MRD-N 0175; Holly C. Shulman, “Madison v. Madison: Dolley Payne Madison and Her Inheritance of the Montpelier Estate, 1836–38,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2011):377, MRD-S 41725; Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts, Memoir I, [1849-1856], Mary Estelle Elizabeth Cutts Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MRD-S 27600; Dolley Payne Todd Madison to Anna Payne Cutts, July 5, 1816, George B. Cutts Microfilm, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts, MRD-S 40710. said, “What is the matter, Uncle Jeames?” “Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.” His head instantly dropped, and he ceased breathing as quietly as the snuff of a candle goes out. He was about eighty-four years old,74Born on March 16, 1751, Madison was eighty-five when he died on June 28, 1836. and was followed to the grave75Madison was buried in the family cemetery at Montpelier. Governor James Barbour, a friend and neighbor, described Madison’s funeral with “his slaves decently attired in attendance, and their orderly deportment; the profound silence was now and then broken by their sobs … At this part of the service [the words ‘dust to dust’] it was not only the body servant, who was standing directly by me, that, by his sobs and signs, showed by how severely he felt his bereavement in the loss of a kind and indulgent master, but the hundred slaves gave vent to their lamentations in one violent burst that rent the air…” While Barbour interpreted the lamentation of the enslaved simply as evidence of grief and love, the death of an enslaver was also a time of uncertainty, giving the enslaved community ample reason to fear sale and separation as the estate was settled. Source: James Barbour, “Eulogium Upon the Life and Character of James Madison,” Nile’s Weekly Register (November 12, 1836): 170-175, MRD-S 39023. by an immense procession of white and colored people. The pall-bearers76The choice of pallbearers was a representation of Madison’s professional and private life. The Barbours were Madison’s colleagues in state and national service. Howard and Conway were connections to Madison’s family through his father’s and mother’s sides, respectively. Significantly for Paul Jennings, Charles P. Howard enslaved Jennings’s wife, Fanny Gordon Jennings, and the couple’s children. Jennings undoubtedly made many visits to the Howard Place plantation (later renamed Mayhurst.) Writing to Dolley while visiting his wife in April 1844, Paul Jennings noted “mr & mrs howards sends thair kindes love to you an miss Annay.” Jennings’s letter to Dolley announcing Fanny’s death in August 1844 is not in his own handwriting, and appears to have been dictated to Charles Howard. Howard emancipated twenty-three of the people he enslaved during his lifetime, including Jennings’s sons William in 1853 and Franklin in 1856. Sources: Biographical notes on MRD-N 56355 and MRD-N 0435; Paul Jennings to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, April 23, 1844, Dolley Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 26439; Paul Jennings to Dolley Payne Todd Madison, August 6, 1844, Papers of Dolley Madison, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 30628; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 192-94, 269. were Governor Barbour, Philip P. Barbour, Charles P. Howard, and Reuben Conway; the two last were neighboring farmers.

Afterword to the Annotated Edition: Freedom Delayed, Freedom Denied, Freedom Achieved

Edward Coles, Dolley’s cousin and Madison’s former secretary, was “greatly astonished” to learn that Madison had not freed any enslaved people in his will. (Coles himself, a staunch advocate of emancipation, had freed the people he enslaved, after moving with them to Illinois in 1819.) Coles advised Madison in 1832, “it is due to the finale of your character & career, & to the consummation of your glory, that you should make provision in your Will for the emancipation of your Slaves. … it would be a blot & stigma on your otherwise spotless escutcheon, not to restore to your slaves that liberty & those rights which you have been through life so zealous & able a champion.” Coles believed that, in their conversations, Madison had “disclosed to me not only his wish but his intention to free his slaves in his will.” In 1849, Coles heard second-hand that Madison had told his lawyer that “he found many difficulties in the way of doing it, during his wife’s life, and had finally concluded not to free them in his will – saying … Mrs. Madison knew his wishes and views and would carry them into effect at her death.” In 1855, Coles wrote to Nelly Willis for confirmation from Madison’s “favourite Niece, who resided so near him and had better opportunities of knowing his opinions and intentions than any other of his near relations now living.” Willis’s son replied on her behalf that “There is one fact which induces my mother to think not only that Mr. Madison expected his wife to liberate his slaves but that he left with her written directions upon this subject.” Nelly Willis had sat with Dolley in her chamber during Madison’s burial, and saw that Dolley had taken “two sealed papers” from a drawer. One was Madison’s will, and the other was labeled “To be opened only by my wife should she be living at the time of my death.” According to Willis’s son, “nothing more was ever heard” about this second paper “which was thought to have contained written instructions on the subject of the slaves.” (Interestingly, the codicil to Madison’s will bears the notation “not to be opened till his death & then only by his [wife].” It is possible that the two papers Nelly Willis saw her aunt remove from the drawer were the will and the codicil. The codicil, however, did not request that Dolley should free the enslaved; it simply contained miscellaneous bequests and directives.)

Whether or not Willis had correctly guessed the contents of the second paper, the only legally binding provision Madison made for the enslaved community was in his will: “I give and bequeath my ownership in the negroes and people of colour held by me to my dear Wife, but it is my desire that none of them should be sold without his or her consent or in the case of their misbehaviour; except that infant children may be sold with their Parent who consents for them to be sold with him or her, and who consents to be sold.”

If Madison hoped that the people he had enslaved would eventually be free, those hopes were for the most part unfulfilled. Ben Stewart, formerly enslaved at Montpelier, recalled, “During the days of her poverty [Dolley Madison] sold off her servants one by one, and I remember I was bought by a Georgia man and taken to that state.” Paul Jennings, Sarah Stewart, Ralph and Catherine Taylor, and the Taylor children continued to be enslaved by Dolley after her move to Washington. Other members of the enslaved community were sold to the purchaser of Montpelier and to neighboring landowners, or transferred to John Payne Todd. Todd made the gesture of freeing enslaved people in his will, a provision that was questionable, given Todd’s debts at the time of his death in 1852. The Taylor family successfully sued for their freedom, charging that the administrator of Todd’s estate had unjustly kept them in slavery.

Ultimately, of the approximately one hundred people enslaved by Madison in 1836, only Paul Jennings, the Taylors, and Ellen Stewart (who attempted to escape on the Pearl) are known to have gained their freedom prior to the abolition of slavery. Incomplete evidence suggests that Sukey may also have become free. 77Sources: Edward Coles to Nelly C. Willis, December 10, 1855, box 2, folder 18, Edward Coles Papers, MS C0037, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey, MRD-S 27873; Edward Coles to James Madison, January 8, 1832, Edward Coles Collection, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois, MRD-S 24427; Edward Coles to Hugh Blair Grigsby, December 23, 1854, box 1, folder 1854, Coles Family Papers, MS 1458, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, MRD-S 24513; John Willis to Edward Coles, December 19, 1855, box 2, folder 18, Edward Coles Papers, MS C0037, Princeton University Library, Princeton, New Jersey, MRD-S 27875; James Madison, Codicil dated April 19, 1835, James Madison Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, MRD-S 19580; James Madison, Will dated [April 15, 1835], and Codicil [April 19, 1835], Will Book 8: 134-138, Orange County Courthouse, Orange, Virginia, MRD-S 23094; Thomas J. [T]odd, “Madison’s Servant. Uncle Ben Stewart Talks About His Master and Mistress,” Bismarck Daily Telegraph (Bismarck, ND), June 8, 1888, MRD-S 24489; Amy Larrabee Cotz, “ Dolley Madison and the Montpelier Enslaved Community” and “Dolley Madison and the Dispersal of the Montpelier Enslaved Community, 1844 ,“ Dolley Madison Digital Edition; Ralph Taylor, his wife (Catharine), and their children (Henry, Sarah, John, and Ellen) vs. James C. McGuire, Administrator of John Payne Todd Estate, 1852, box 764, folder 380-381, RG 21; Entry NC-2 6, Case Papers, 1802-1863, Civil Trials, October Term 1852, United States National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC, MRD-S 23417; Certificate of Freedom for Catharine Taylor and her children Henry, Sarah Elizabeth, John and Ellen in response to their petition for Freedom, Washington, DC, April 1853, Dumbarton House, MS 69.239, National Society of the Colonial Dames of America, Washington, DC, MRD-S 25892; Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) 174-76.