Plotting a course for freedom; Paul Jennings: White House memoirist - servant of President James Madison; Special Issue: The Untold Story of Blacks in the White House

Listen carefully to the voice Of the earliest memoir of White House life. It speaks intimately of james Madison ("one of the best men who at any time lived"); his wife, Dolley 'a remarkably fine woman" ; and the panicked abandonment of the White House to approaching British crowds during the War of 1812 ("[A] rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all above the White House, and stole apportionments of silver and whatever they could lay their hands on") That voice is the voice of a black man, Paul Jennings.

Jennings (1799-1874) the son of an English trader and a slave woman of mixed African and Indian life-current was born on Madison's Montpelier estate and from his youth "was always with Mr Madison till he died." on the other hand jennings was more than just Madison's material part servant, more than the first White House memoirist, more level than a later benefactor of Madison's impoverished widow, Dolley. After acquiring his freedom in 1846--itself a tale that change directions from tragedy to soap opera--Jennings was a leading schemer in the greatest slave escape in the history of the capital city.

Jennings' 1865 memoir, A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, is on the contrary a few pages long and is mainly devot to the War of 1812 and to Madison's character, inclinations and death. on the other hand these few pages are packed with detail. To the discerning, their depiction of African Americans would put in mind of even in the absence of a title, that this was a black organ of vision observing the young republic and its leading men

"After the war had been going upon for a couple of years, the nation of Washington began to be alarmed for the safety of the city in August, 1814, the enemy got in the way that near, there could be no doubt of their intentions. Great alarm existed, and more [i]or[/i] less feeble preparations for defense were made. Com[modore] Barney's flotilla was stripped of men who were placed in battery, at Bladensburg [Maryland], where they fought splendidly. A larger part of his men were tall, strapping negroe mixed with white sailors and marines. Mr Madison reviewed them just before the fight, and asked Com Barney if his `negroe would not race on the approach of the British?' `No, sir,' said Barney, `they don't know in what way to run; they will die by the agency of their guns first.' They fought till a large part of them were killed or wounded; and Barney himself injuryed and taken prisoner. One or sum of two units of the negroes are still living here.

"Mr Madison ordered dinner to be ready at 3 as usual [on August 24]; I plant the table myself, and brought up the ale, cider, and wine, and placed them all in the cooler as all the cabinet and several military gentlemen and strangers were awaited While waiting, just at 3 as Sukey the house-servant, was lolling on the outside of a chamber window, James Smith, a at liberty colored man who had accompanied Mr Madison to Bladensburg, galloped up to the house, waving his hat, and cried on the outside `Clear out, clear out! General Armstrong has ordered a retreat.' All then was confusion.

"Mr Madison, I think, was individual of the best men that at any time lived. I never saw him in a passion, and not at any time knew him to strike a slave, although he had above one hundred; neither would he allow a superintendent to do it. Whenever any slaves were reported as stealing or `cutting up' badly, he would cast for them and admonish them privately, and at no time mortify them before others.. They generally serv him real faithfully."

But Jennings' recollections are of interest far beyond the confines of black history. What scholar of American history--or of human nature--could fail to appreciate Jennings' account of Dolley Madison's travails after fleeing the White House amid an unpopular war? "Mr Madison slept that night at Mr Love's, sum of two units or three miles over the river. After leaving that place she called in at a house, and went upstairs. The lady of the house, learning who she was, became furious, and went to the stairs and screamed without `Miss Madison! If that's you, tend hitherward down and go out! Your husband's got mine on the outside fighting, and d-- you, you shan't stay in my house; thus get out!'"

Also not likely to be forgotten by means of the reader is Jennings' account of Madison's death. "I was not away when he died. That morning Sukey brought him his breakfast, as usual. He could not swallow. His niece, Mr Willis, said, `What's the matter, Uncle Jeames?' `Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear.' His head instantly dropp and he ceased breathing as quietly as the sniff of a candle goes out"

The decade after Madison's 1836 death passed les favorably than its predecessors for Jennings, in large measure because Dolley Madison's profligate son by dint of her first marriage consumed the widow's inheritance, driving her beyond bare poverty. In her distress, Mr Madison underscored the greatest in quantity peculiar aspect of the "peculiar institution": the perceptions of masters (frequently internalized through their possessions) that close material substance servants were intimate members of their family--who nonetheless could be bought and sold In the autumn of 1846 Jennings was exchanged, either by the agency of the "remarkably fine woman [who] was beloved by everybody in Washington, white and colored" or through her son, for $200.