![]() ![]() ![]() 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. 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. The complex relationship between a president and his bondman abounds in ironies in this revealing study. ![]()
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