Paul Jennings, an enslaved teenaged servant, working in the Madison White House when the British sacked Washington D.C. on August 24, 1814.
“…in the meantime, a rabble, taking advantage of the confusion, ran all over the White House and stole lots of silver and whatever they could lay there hands on.”
Born into slavery on James Madison’s Montpelier plantation, Paul Jennings was taken to the White House in 1809 at about age ten as a servant. He witnessed the burning of the White House by the British in 1814 and many other extraordinary events. He served as Madison’s enslaved valet until James Madison died in 1836. Long after Madison’s death, Paul Jennings gained his freedom and provided the first published account of a servant working in the White House, A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison (1865).
Read more about Paul Jennings and his life as the enslaved servant of James and Dolley Madison in the forthcoming book, IN THE SHADOW OF LIBERTY: The Hidden History of Slavery, Four Presidents, and Five Black Lives.
