Please see below for a scan and transcription of Webster’s letter.įor a more complete history of Jennings’s life, please see:Ī Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons, by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). We have now updated the description in the finding aid to make specific mention of this letter. The letter is filed with the SHC’s Alfred Chapman Papers (#1545). Recently, archivists in the Southern Historical Collection re-discovered a short recommendation letter written in 1851 by Daniel Webster on behalf of Paul Jennings. Webster then arranged for Jennings to work to purchase his freedom, which Jennings obtained in 1847. Senator Daniel Webster interceded and bought Jennings from the agent for $120. Struggling financially after her husband’s death, Dolley Madison eventually sold Paul Jennings to an insurance agent for $200. Jennings was with Madison when he died in 1836. He served as President Madison’s personal body servant before and during Madison’s time in the White House. Paul Jennings was born a slave at Montpelier, James and Dolley Madison’s Virginia plantation home, in 1799.
0 kommentar(er)
