[1] His book was A Colored Man's Reminiscences of James Madison, described as "a singular document in the history of slavery and the early American republic.

"[2] Living in Washington, D.C., from 1837 on, Jennings made many valuable connections and was aided by the northern Whig Senator Daniel Webster in gaining freedom.

In the 1850s, Jennings traveled to Virginia, where he tracked down his children, who had grown up on a neighboring plantation with his wife, Fanny, who was also enslaved.

[5] In his 1865 memoir, he noted that the East Room was yet unfinished from the first construction, most of the Washington streets were unpaved; the city was "a dreary place" in those years.

In his memoir, Jennings wrote that a French cook and one other person did the physical work of taking down the painting.

[9] Struggling financially, in 1844, Dolley Madison sold Montpelier and all its property, including its slaves, to raise money to live on.

[8] Fearing for his future, Jennings tried to arrange a purchase price with Madison, but she sold him to an insurance agent for $200 (equivalent to $6,782 in 2023) in 1846.

[6][8][10] In an effort funded by white abolitionists William L. Chaplin and Gerrit Smith, the free black community of Washington enlarged the escape, gathering tens of enslaved people willing to risk the 225-mile sailing journey to freedom in the North.

The two white captains, Daniel Drayton and Edward Sayres, owner and pilot of the schooner Pearl, were convicted on multiple counts of aiding a slave escape and illegally transporting enslaved people.

[8] Jennings returned to Virginia in the 1850s as a free man and reunited with his family, whom he had been forced to leave years before.

[5] After the war, Jennings worked at the newly established Pension Bureau, part of the Department of the Interior, to handle claims of veterans and soldiers' families.

He published it for him in January 1863 in The Historical Magazine and Notes and Queries Concerning the Antiquities, History and Biography of America, to which Russell had contributed.

When that cemetery closed in 1959, the remains of those buried there were reinterred at National Harmony Memorial Park in Landover, Maryland.