Dolley Madison may indeed have had such a character and deserve the derision of the author and myself, but the damning evidence she ignored James Madison's directive to manumit their slaves upon her death was diminished by the subsequent presentation in the narrative of a clearly inaccurate recollection of a former slave who claimed the former First Lady lied to his mother for apparently no other purpose than having her infant son named Madison. I thought the purpose of this book was to relate historical fact, so when the author drew 'obvious' conclusions and stated inferences based on personal opinions and subjective criteria as fact in cases where documentation did not exist, the history seeker in me cringed.įor example, by choice of tone and wording the author conveyed (to me) a strong dislike of Dolley Madison, using pejorative phrases and declaring her a liar, a women who kept no faith with her slaves, and a woman willing to plot betrayal against those in her charge. My second gripe is because of a personal misconception I had about the purpose of the book.

Since I read it cover to cover over the course of two days, I found the various repeated passages/facts annoying and a detraction. The first is redundancies, which may be useful for someone using this book as a source for research papers and utilizing the index to find what they need as opposed to reading the book cover to cover. The chapters covering the earliest slave residents of the White House, however, I found less compelling, since (as with most information from that time period) fewer reliable primary source documents existed and there was a larger amount of supposition. The chapters on the slaves of Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson I found particularly well researched and compelling.

The portions of this book based on documented fact were fascinating. By reading about these relationships, readers will better understand some of the views that various presidents held about class and race in American society, and how these slaves contributed not only to the life and comforts of the presidents they served, but to America as a whole. During these years, slaves were the only African Americans to whom the most powerful men in the United States were exposed on a daily, and familiar, basis. The Invisibles chronicles the African American presence inside the White House from its beginnings in 1782 until 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation that granted slaves their freedom. Interest in African Americans and the White House are at an all-time high due to the historic presidency of Barack Obama, and the soon-to-be-opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American Culture and History. THE INVISIBLES: Slavery Inside The White House and How It Helped Shape America is the first book to tell the story of the executive mansion's most unexpected residents, the African American slaves who lived with the U.S.

The Invisibles by Jesse J. Holland