Thomas Jefferson's Broken Promise to Thaddeus Kosciuszko

History Network News article, "Why We Should All Regret Jefferson's Broken Promise to Thaddeus Kosciuszko," by Gary B. Nash and Graham Russell Gao Hodges .

Thomas Jefferson

In March 1798, Tadeuz Kościuszko, a hero of the American and Polish revolutions, and Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States, huddled in a cramped second-story room in Philadelphia to make a pact of honor centered on the Pole’s sizable American estate. Kościuszko, who had returned to the United States to a hero’s welcome less than a year before, anxiously wanted to leave for Paris to avoid entrapment by the Alien and Sedition acts. (Jefferson, estranged from President John Adams and hoping to use Kosciuszko’s prestige on a secret mission to convince the French not to wage war with the United States, prepared a fake passport for Kosciusko.) Before the Pole departed, he and Jefferson constructed a will to dispose of $15,000 (Kosciuszko’s Revolutionary pay) after his death. The two men labored together to produce a document with the potential to alter American history.

Tadeuz Kościuszko

Kościuszko’s first version deserves quotation. Though the spelling and syntax are eye-straining, the crude yet eloquent prose convey how passionately the romantic Polish revolutionary had embraced abolitionism.

I beg Mr. Jefferson that in the case I should die without will or testament he should bye out of my money So many Negroes and free them, that the restante [remaining] sums should be Sufficient to give them aducation and provide for thier maintenance, that . . . each should know before, the duty of a Cytyzen in the free Government, that he must defend his country against foreign as well as internal Enemies who would wish to change the Constitution for the worst to inslave them by degree afterwards, to have good and human heart Sensible for the Sufferings of others, each must be married and have 100 Ackres of land, wyth instruments, Cattle for tillage and know how to manage and Gouvern it well as well to know [how to] behave to neyboughs [neighbors], always wyth Kindnes and ready to help them . . . . T. Kościuszko.

Thomas Jefferson

In this unconventional but emotion-packed will, Kościuszko expressed the convictions and commitments that made him such an admirable man for black Americans. Drawing on his long-standing belief that the downtrodden could prosper--peasants, as well as slaves--if given their freedom under favorable conditions, he tried to promote universal liberty and give Jefferson the opportunity to lead Southerners in a quest to remove the stain of slavery from the new nation.

Tadeuz Kościuszko

A second revised will, entirely in Kościuszko’s hand like the first, included a change of immense significance. Rather than the vague reference in the original version to use Kościuszko’s legacy to free “so many Negroes,” the rewritten will specified that “I do hereby declare and direct that should I make no other testamentary disposition of my property in the United States I hereby authorize my friend Thomas Jefferson to employ the whole thereof in purchasing Negroes from among his own or any others.” Kościuszko surely made this crucial change with Jefferson’s consent, for Jefferson agreed to be the executor, as well as the beneficiary, of the will. Was Jefferson thinking of Sally Hemings, her daughter Harriet who was now not quite three, and the newborn Beverley, born just ten days before Jefferson witnessed Kościuszko’s signing of the will?

Jefferson endorsed Kościuszko’s scheme with a full heart, regarding the Pole as “the truest son of liberty I have even known.” For Jefferson, a promise at any time was a serious matter; but given freely under these conditions, it was to be held sacred. And for the next twenty years, Jefferson did not waver in his commitment to his Polish friend, maintaining a warm correspondence with Kosciuszko and, as they grew old together on opposite sides of the Atlantic, even invited him to live out his last years at Monticello and bury his bones alongside those of the Sage of Monticello.

Thomas Jefferson

Kosciuszko died on October 15, 1817. After several years of vacillation, Jefferson withdrew from his pact of honor with Kosciuszko by pleading in a Virginia court in Charlottesville that he could not serve as executor of his friend’s estate and would not use the money to free his slaves. As William Lloyd Garrison would say many years later, “What an all-conquering influence must have attended his illustrious example,” if he had taken the lead to abolish slavery. Merrill Peterson, for all his admiration for Jefferson, was anguished by this retreat: “The object of [Kosciuszko’s] will was lost. Had Jefferson felt stronger about the object, he would have ventured the experiment, despite statutory obstacles and the shortness of years, for the experiment [of freeing his slaves] was one he often commended to others and, indeed, one he may have himself suggested to Kosciuszko.”

Tadeuz Kościuszko

Thaddeus Kosciuszko was one of the first European volunteers to aid the American revolutionary cause in 1776. A brilliant Polish military engineer, Kosciuszko designed and constructed fortifications to help defeat the British, most notably at Saratoga and West Point in New York.

Why did Jefferson, while throwing himself energetically into the creation of the University of Virginia, plead that he was too old and tired to carry out Kosciuszko’s will and betray the trust of his Polish compatriot? One of the key reasons was Jefferson’s allegiance to the Old Dominion aristocracy and his devotion to sustaining the economic and cultural leverage of the white South in national politics. He also feared offending friends, especially slaveowners already shaken by the actions of others in Virginia who had released slaves from bondage. In a time when we are accustomed to seeing President George W. Bush reject scientific analysis on fearsome problems, stack regulatory commissions with those devoted to non-regulation, and stake out policy positions on the basis of insider friends and their deep-pocket interests, this earlier abandonment of an honor-bound pact with Kosciuszko has a peculiar odor.

As Kosciuszko’s will, abandoned by Jefferson, made its way through the courts, many complications arose. The estate was finally awarded by the Supreme Court in 1852, 26 years after most of Jefferson’s slaves had been auctioned on the rolling lawn at Monticello to extinguish his debts, to Kosciuszko’s descendants. For years in Poland, Kosciuszko’s countrymen held the view that the American Civil War could have been averted if the Polish hero’s philanthropic, abolitionist plan had been implemented. When the slaves at Monticello mounted the auction block to be sold off after the Founding Father died—the slaves that could have been freed if Kosciuszko’s will had been honored—a small-town editor in a Susquehanna River town asked how Jefferson, “surely the champion of civil liberty to the American people,” left “so many human beings in fetters to be indiscriminately sold to the highest bidder." In biting words, the editor wrote: “Heaven inspired Jefferson with the knowledge ‘that all men are created equal.’ He was not forgetful—in his last moments he ‘commended his soul to God, and his daughter to his country;’ but to whom did he commend his wretched slaves?"

(Nash and Hodges are the co-authors of Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull; Basic Books, April 2008)

The Black History of the White House

Most of us have grown up with a particular framework about American history and particularly the history of the presidencies. For the most part it has been a cleansed history, meaning that the foibles, errors and mistakes that were made by presidents were essentially not part of that history, particularly when it comes to race. Correcting that was part of the motivation for doing the book. We can see even today that this continues to be a battle. The decision in Arizona, for example, to ban ethnic studies, meaning that the histories of people of African descent, Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians are more or less written out of the curriculum now in Arizona. Even more recently, this has been happening in Tennessee where a group of Tea Party activists also wants to rewrite history in a way in which only, as they see it, the positive parts of the lives of the Founding Fathers are taught, and any history related to what happened to African Americans as slaves, or what happened to Native Americans, who were frequently massacred, all of that should be written out. So we are always in a battle over how we understand and how we present history. (source: Political Affairs)

Clarence Lusane

Students, and I’ve been teaching close to 20 years now at the university level – each generation of students seems to forget what happened not only in the past, but almost immediately what has happened in front of them. The students who are coming in now, for example, are students who matured in the early 2000s, and we so have students now who think of Bill Clinton much as they think of George Washington – he’s an historic figure. So it becomes important that we revitalize and help them to either remember what they’ve forgotten or to learn what they have never learned. I think it has been a difficult transition, in many ways, for the universities, because the students who are coming in, this last generation, are coming in trained or in many ways educated through the Internet, and that means that a lot of the more rigorous kinds of book reading and learning that generations before went through, even with the imperfections, probably gave somewhat of a broader sense, or a more rigorous sense of history. Although students today have access to more information, they are coming with less knowledge. That’s what I’m finding and many of my colleagues are finding. (source: Political Affairs)

Official histories of the United States have ignored the fact that 25 percent of all U.S. presidents were slaveholders, and that black people were held in bondage in the White House itself. And while the nation was born under the banner of “freedom and justice for all,” many colonists risked rebelling against England in order to protect their lucrative slave business from the growing threat of British abolitionism. These historical facts, commonly excluded from schoolbooks and popular versions of American history, have profoundly shaped the course of race relations in the United States. (source: Teaching A People's History)

The Forum with Michael Fauntroy: Clarence Lusane from Michael K. Fauntroy on Vimeo.

Ulysses S. Grant: Slavery at White Haven

Slavery at White Haven

Many visitors to Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site are surprised to learn that slaves lived and worked on the nineteenth century farm known as White Haven. During the years 1854 to 1859 Grant lived here with his wife, Julia, and their children, managing the farm for his father-in-law, Colonel Dent. At that time no one suspected that Grant would rise from obscurity to achieve the success he gained during the Civil war. However, his experience working alongside the White Haven slaves may have influenced him in his later roles as the Union general who won the war which abolished that “peculiar institution,” and as President of the United States. The interpretation of slavery at White Haven is therefore an important part of the mission of this historic site.

The Setting

Most slaveholders in Missouri owned few slaves; those who owned ten were considered wealthy. In the southeastern Bootheel area and along the fertile Missouri River valley known as “little Dixie,” large, single-crop plantations predominated, with an intensive use of slave labor. Elsewhere in the state, large farms produced a variety of staples, including hemp, wheat, oats, hay, and corn. On many of these estates the owner worked alongside his slaves to harvest the greatest economic benefit from the land. Slavery was less entrenched in the city of St. Louis, where the African American population was 2% in 1860, down from 25% in 1830. Slaves were often “hired out” by their masters in return for an agreed upon wage. A portion of the wage was sometimes paid to slaves, allowing a measure of self-determination and in some cases the opportunity to purchase their freedom.

Early Farm Residents and Slavery

Each of the farm’s early residents owned slaves during their tenure on the Gravois property. When Theodore and Anne Lucas Hunt purchased William Lindsay Long’s home in 1818, there existed “several good log cabins” on the property—potential quarters for the five slaves purchased earlier by Hunt. The work of Walace, Andrew, Lydia, Loutette, and Adie would be an important part of the Hunts’ farming venture. The Hunts sold the Gravois property to Frederick Dent in 1820, for the sum of $6,000. Naming the property “White Haven” after his family home in Maryland, Colonel Dent considered himself a Southern gentleman with slaves to do the manual labor of caring for the plantation. By the 1850s, eighteen slaves lived and worked at White Haven.

Growing Up as a Slave

White Haven Slave Quarters

In 1830, half of the Dent slaves were under the age of ten. Henrietta, Sue, Ann, and Jeff, among others, played with the Dent children. Julia Dent recalled that they fished for minnows, climbed trees for bird nests, and gathered strawberries. However, the slave children also had chores such as feeding chickens and cows, and they mastered their assigned tasks as the white children went off to school. Returning home from boarding school, Julia noted the transition from playmate to servant. She noted that the slave girls had “attained the dignity of white aprons.” These aprons symbolized slave servitude, a departure from the less structured days of childhood play.

Household Responsibilities

Julia Dent Grant

Adult slaves performed many household chores on the Dent plantation. Kitty and Rose served as nurses to Julia and Emma, while Mary Robinson became the family cook. The wide variety of foods prepared in her kitchen were highly praised by Julia: “Such loaves of beautiful snowy cake, such plates full of delicious Maryland biscuit, such equisite custards and puddings, such omelettes, gumbo soup, and fritters.” A male slave named “Old Bob,” who traveled with the Dents from Maryland in 1816, had the responsibility to keep the fires going in White Haven’s seven fireplaces. Julia thought Bob was careless to allow the embers to die out, as this forced him “to walk a mile to some neighbors and bring home a brand of fire from their backlog.” Such “carelessness” provided Bob and many other slaves an opportunity to escape their masters’ eyes.

Tending the Farm

Grant's Horses and slaves

Slave labor was used extensively in the farming and maintenance of the 850-acre plantation. Utilizing the “best improvements in farm machinery” owned by Colonel Dent, field hands plowed, sowed and reaped the wheat, oats, Irish potatoes, and Indian corn grown on the estate. Slaves also cared for the orchards and gardens, harvesting the fruits and vegetables for consumption by all who lived on the property. During Grant’s management of the farm he worked side by side with Dan, one of the slaves given to Julia at birth. Grant, along with Dan and other slaves, felled trees and took firewood by wagon to sell to acquaintances in St. Louis. More than 75 horses, cattle, and pigs required daily attention, while grounds maintenance and numerous remodeling projects on the main house and outbuildings utilized the skills of those in servitude.

Personal Lives

Grant with his family, White Haven

Slaves claimed time for socializing amidst their chores. Corn shuckings provided one opportunity to come together as a community to eat, drink, sing, and visit, often including slaves from nearby plantations. Participation in religious activities, individually or as a group, also provided a sense of integrity. Julia remembered “Old Bob” going into the meadow to pray and sing. According to historian Lorenzo J. Greene, “St. Louis…was the only place in the state where the organized black church achieved any measure of success.” Whether or not the Dent slaves were allowed to attend services is unknown.

Freedom

Ulysses S. Grant

In Mary Robinson’s July 24, 1885, recollections, during an interview for the St. Louis Republican memorial to Grant following his death, she noted that “he always said he wanted to give his wife’s slaves their freedom as soon as he was able.” In 1859, Grant freed William Jones, the only slave he is known to have owned. During the Civil War, some slaves at White Haven simply walked off, as they did on many plantations in both Union and Confederate states. Missouri’s constitutional convention abolished slavery in the state in January 1865, freeing any slaves still living at White Haven.

“I Ulysses S. Grant…do hereby manumit, emancipate and set free from Slavery my Negro man William, sometimes called William Jones…forever.”




(source: http://www.nps.gov/ulsg/historyculture/slaveryatwh.htm)

Madison and the White House, Through the Memoir of a Slave

A COLORED MAN'S REMINISCENCES

OF JAMES MADISON.

BY PAUL JENNINGS.

BROOKLYN: GEORGE C. BEADLE, 1865.

PREFACE.

Among the laborers at the Department of the Interior 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; his mother, a slave of Mr. Madison, and the grand-daughter of an Indian. Paul was a "body servant" of Mr. Madison, till his death, and afterwards of Daniel Webster, 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 down in almost his own language.

Daniel Webster

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, was sold, among other curious lots, an autograph of Daniel Webster, containing these words: "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

Mar: 19. 1847.--

I have paid $120 for the freedom of Paul Jennings--He agrees to work out the sum, at 8 dollars a month, to be [illegible] with board, clothes + washing--to begin when we return from the Lorette--His freedom papers I gave to him; they are recorded in this district.

--Daniel Webster, Washington

REMINISCENCES OF MADISON

President James Madison

About ten years before Mr. Madison was President, he and Colonel Monroe 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.

When Mr. Madison was chosen President, 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.

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.

Before 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.

Soon after war was declared, Mr. Madison made his regular summer visit 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.

James Madison at the Constitutional Convention

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, 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's flotilla was stripped of men, who were placed in battery, at Bladensburg, where they fought splendidly. A large part of his men were tall, strapping negroes, mixed with white sailors and marines. 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.

Signing of the US Constitution

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. Mrs. Madison ordered dinner 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, was lolling out of a chamber window, James Smith, a free colored man who had accompanied Mr. Madison to Bladensburg, gallopped 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, and then jumped into the chariot with her servant girl Sukey, and Daniel Carroll, who took charge of them; Jo. Bolin drove them over to Georgetown Heights; the British were expected in a few minutes. Mr. Cutts, 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 coachee with his wife, child, and servant; also a feather bed lashed on behind the coachee, which was all the furniture saved, except part of the silver and the portrait of Washington (of which I will tell you by-and-by).

The original Star-Spangled Banner, the flag that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the song that would become our national anthem, is among the most treasured artifacts in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

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.

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. 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. 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. 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.

Dolly Madison

Mrs. Madison slept that night at Mrs. Love's, 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!" Mrs. Madison complied, and went to Mrs. Minor's, a few miles further, where she stayed a day or two, and then returned to Washington, where she found Mr. Madison at her brother-in-law's, Richard Cutts, on F street. 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.

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.

Old Capitol Building Columns at the National Arboretum in Washington, DC.

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 building (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.

Portrait of George Washington

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 Washington (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) and Magraw, 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 prepared for the President's party.

When the news of peace arrived, we were crazy with joy. Miss Sally Coles, 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 Freeman (the butler) to serve out wine liberally to the servants and others. I played the President's March on the violin, 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. 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 wine was better in those days than now, and more freely drank. In the last days of her life, before Congress purchased her husband's papers, she was in a state of absolute poverty, 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.

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; 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. 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. 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 Convention 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, there were great illuminations. We moved into the Seven Buildings, 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 levees 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.

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. 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.

James Madison's home in Montpelier, Virginia

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 weeks--till Mr. Jefferson's death, in 1826.

I was always with Mr. Madison till he died, 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, 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, and was followed to the grave by an immense procession of white and colored people. The pall-bearers were Governor Barbour, Philip P. Barbour, Charles P. Howard, and Reuben Conway; the two last were neighboring farmers.
[http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jennings/jennings.html]

Paul Jennings was President James Madison's enslaved manservant

Paul Jennings, who was born a slave on President James Madison’s estate at Montpelier in 1799, was a "body servant" who attended the president until his death in 1836. Jennings later purchased his freedom from Daniel Webster. Webster acquired Jennings from Pollard Webb who in turn bought the manservant from Dolley Madison in 1846. After meeting the terms of his agreement with Webster, Jennings became a free man and found work at the Department of the Interior. In 1865, Jennings published, Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison, the first memoir about the White House by one who had lived there. The publication remained obscure for many years because it was printed in a limited edition, but today it is acknowledged by scholars as a classic. It provided details about one of the most critical periods in the history of the city of Washington–the War of 1812–and the formation of the city’s enterprising free Negro community in the antebellum period. It also recounted Jennings’s involvement in a plan in 1848 to undertake a large-scale escape of slaves from the capital aboard the schooner Pearl.

Twelve presidents owned slaves

Twelve presidents owned slaves:

• George Washington
• James Madison
• Thomas Jefferson
• James Monroe
• Andrew Jackson
• Martin Van Buren
• William Henry Harrison
• John Tyler
• James K. Polk
• Zachary Taylor
• Andrew Johnson
• Ulysses S. Grant