His wife, Dolley Madison, had been raised by a Quaker father who emancipated his own enslaved people after the Revolution, but she does not seem to have shared his convictions regarding the immorality of slavery.Ī letter to his friend and former secretary Edward Coles offers some insight on Madison’s attitudes toward slavery. 5 Otherwise, he generally accepted slavery as a way of life. An attempted revolt in Richmond in 1800 stoked fears of mass slave uprisings, and the British willingness to take in fugitives during the War of 1812 only heightened those fears. 4 Like many in his time, he was concerned about the possibility that slaves might revolt. Madison maintained control, but avoided the kind of excessive cruelty that might have drawn judgment from his peers. Enslaved people worked from dawn to dusk, six days a week, with the customary Sunday off. James Madison was, according to historian Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, a “garden-variety slaveholder.” He adhered to the established social norms of Virginia society when it came to the treatment and living conditions of his enslaved household. James Madison, like many of his contemporaries, continued to make use of this system throughout his lifetime.
In Washington, D.C., where each election cycle brought new residents and new labor demands to the city, such arrangements were particularly essential. Hiring out enslaved workers provided flexibility in the labor market, especially in urban areas, allowing slave owners to temporarily expand their labor force or rent out enslaved people as a revenue source as needed. In 1801, Madison entered into an agreement with Benjamin Orr “that Plato the slave of the said Orr is to serve the said Madison for five years,” and that during that time Plato was to be “under the direction in every respect of the said Madison, as fully & completely as if he was his own Slave & property.” 2 Five years was an unusually long term of hire, but otherwise this type of arrangement was rather common. The Madisons brought a number of enslaved people with them from Montpelier, but they also hired out enslaved laborers from other slave owners in D.C., paying wages directly to the slave owners rather than to the people actually doing the work.
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