A Slave in the White House

Born into slavery on James and Dolley Madison's Virginia plantation, Paul Jennings went on to join the household staff at the White House. Elizabeth Dowling Taylor tells his story from correspondence, legal papers and journal entries rarely seen before. After Senator Daniel Webster freed him, Jennings gave money to the impoverished Dolley Madison, wrote the first memoir of life in the White House, and saw his sons fight for the Union during the Civil War. Jennings died at 75 in northwest Washington, a free man. Taylor also examines attitudes toward slavery, from James Madison's belief that the races could not coexist as equals and Lafayette's dismay at that view to Dolley's sale of Jennings after her husband's death.

Ryan Holiday strongly recommended it in his best books of 2012, naming it alongside 12 Years a Slave as important accounts of slavery he read that year.