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Title details for A Slave in the White House by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, PhD - Available

A Slave in the White House

Paul Jennings and the Madisons

by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, PhD
Kevin Kenerly
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Paul Jennings was born into slavery on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison in Virginia, later becoming part of the Madison household staff at the White House. Once finally emancipated by Senator Daniel Webster later in life, he would give an aged and impoverished Dolley Madison, his former owner, money from his own pocket, write the first White House memoir, and see his sons fight with the Union Army in the Civil War. Based on correspondence, legal documents, and journal entries rarely seen before, this amazing portrait reveals the mores and attitudes toward slavery in the nineteenth century, and sheds new light on famous characters such as James Madison, French General Lafayette, Dolley Madison, and many other long-forgotten slaves, abolitionists, and civil rights activists.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    April 10, 2012

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781611748604
      • File size: 309097 KB
      • Duration: 10:43:57

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Paul Jennings, a freed man who once was a slave owned by James Madison, wrote about his experiences with the president. His brief account--only the last 16 minutes of this audiobook--concentrates on the War of 1812, including anecdotes about black soldiers and the removal of Washington's portrait. Kevin Kenerly's reading sets the mood well, particularly in the war stories. Judith West reads Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's history of the Madisons and the times Jennings lived in with emphasis on the attitudes of the era. Taylor sets the stage well for Jennings's writing. Still, Jennings's book will likely be just enough to make listeners wish that more of his words had survived. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      September 26, 2011
      The complex relationship between a president and his bondman abounds in ironies in this revealing study. Historian Taylor reconstructs the life of Jennings, a slave belonging to President James Madison who became his valet, barber and major-domo, bought his freedom from Madison’s widow Dolly, and published admiring reminiscences of the couple. Taylor fleshes out slender sources into a convincing recreation of Jennings’s relatively privileged but precarious existence, setting it against a vivid portrait of the deeply conflicted Madison, a theorist of liberty who lived off of slave labor and a master who prided himself on his paternalism yet broke his vow never to sell his “charges.” At the heart of the story is the tension between the warm human relationship between Madison and Jennings and the remorseless inhumanity of slavery as an institution and ideology; in one tragicomic vignette, Madison declaims into a guest’s ear trumpet about slaves’ unfitness to live free among whites—while his servants studiously pretend not to hear him. Taylor paints a fascinating portrait of slavery, hypocrisy, and one man’s quiet struggle to overcome its injustices. Photos.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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