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Daniel Webster's House

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Paul Jennings' 1847 work agreement with Daniel Webster.

Credit: Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University

If we could go back in time to the 1840s, the corner of H Street and Connecticut Avenue would look very different than it does today. Instead of the Chamber of Commerce Building, a simple three-and-a-half story brick home would stand there. The home’s original owner was Daniel Webster, a Congressman from both New Hampshire and Massachusetts who also served as Secretary of State for three Presidents.

In March of 1847, Webster purchased an enslaved man named Paul Jennings, who had previously been owned by fellow Lafayette Square resident Dolley Madison.  Webster paid $120 for Jennings and allowed him to buy his freedom in $8 monthly installments.  While Jennings was in Webster's household, he reportedly took part in a daring plot to free more than 70 enslaved African Americans in the capital. 

According to a book published in 1930 called Fugitives of the Pearl, sometime in 1847—perhaps while traveling with Daniel Webster—Paul  Jennings met a sea captain named Daniel Drayton, who was sympathetic to the plight of the enslaved.  Jennings and Drayton began planning for a group of slaves to flee Washington aboard a boat and Jennings helped spread the word about the escape in the city's African-American community. On the night of April 15, 1848, after leaving a letter for Webster, Jennings went to the 7th Street Wharf where Drayton had docked a borrowed schooner named the Pearl.  However, for reasons unknown to us today, Jennings decided not to escape on the Pearl.  He returned to Webster's house that night and retrieved his un-read letter.

More than 70 men, women, and children did attempt to escape on the Pearl, but the ship only made it 144 miles away from Washington when it encountered poor weather and had to drop anchor near Point Lookout in Maryland. There it was overtaken by a group of slaveowners who had learned of the escape route. Though some of those aboard the Pearl were legally free, all were jailed and many were sold. Paul Jennings went on to work in the Department of the Interior and his role in the escape plot was not publicly known until the publication of Fugitives of the Pearl in 1930.

Listen to:

Daniel Webster's House Tour Audio

Call 1 (202) 595-1859, then 114#.  (Quicktime Version)

Related Images:

The Webster House Today Click Image to Enlarge The site of the Webster house is now the location of the US Chamber of Commerce.

Related Subjects:

Paul Jennings

Resistance to Slavery

Enslaved People

Related Websites:

“The Washington of Paul Jennings, White House Slave, Free Man, and Conspirator for Freedom” by G. Franklin Edwards & Michael R. Winston. Scroll to last link of the bottom of the page for a pdf of this article.

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/08/subs/whitehousehistory_a.html

An electronic edition of Paul Jennings’ 1865 Memoir “A Colored Man’s Reminiscences of James Madison”

http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jennings/menu.html

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