On the nineteenth of April of 1809, former President Thomas Jefferson sold the remaining time on the contract of an indentured servant to then President James Madison. Ironically, the 19th of April was the 34th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. The preceding day — "the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five" — marked the beginning of Paul Revere's ride which has been made famous by Longfellow's poem (see poem). The contract is not typical: like other members of the Virginia elite at that time, Jefferson and Madison relied primarily upon African-American slaves and not upon indentured servants.