threw open his house, his library, his grounds, his garden, to such of them as could enjoy refined pleasures. There could be no lack of officers, among so many, who could play and sing. Many a delightful concert was improvised at Monticello, when some amateur would play violin duets with Jefferson, and the whole company surround Mrs. Jefferson's harpsichord, and join her in singing. A tradition of these pleasant musical evenings lives to this day. General Dix of New York, as Mr. Randall reports, heard them described by a Captain Bibby, who settled in New York after the war. This captain, himself a good violinist, played many a duet with Jefferson, and considered him the best amateur he had ever heard. A German officer of scientific tastes was much in the library of Monticello, a congenial companion to its proprietor. Even General Phillips, commander of the English troops, whom Jefferson describes as the proudest man of the proudest nation on earth, was not proof against his resolute civilities. "The great cause that divides our countries," Jefferson wrote to the general, " is not to be decided by individual animosities. The harmony of private societies cannot weaken national efforts. To contribute by neighborly intercourse and attention to make others happy is the shortest and surest way of being happy ourselves." General Phillips, proud as he may have been, seems to have assented to this opinion; for we find him writing to Mr. Jefferson in August, 1779: "The British officers intend to perform a play next Saturday at the barracks. I shall be extremely happy to have the honor to attend you and Mrs. Jefferson in my box at the theatre, should you or that lady be inclined to go." In winding up this polite epistle, the haughty son of Albion was careful to say that he was, "with great personal respect," Mr. Jefferson's humble servant. He was the gentleman, who, at a later day, addressed Mr. Jefferson as "Thomas Jefferson, Esquire, American Governor of Virginia;" and the governor retorted by addressing him as, "William Phillips, Esquire, commanding the British troops in Virginia." As the spring advanced, the barracks began to exhibit a truly inviting scene, particularly the quarter occupied by the Germans. The officers, who had hired every available house in the neighborhood, bought cows, sheep, and chickens, cultivated fields, and laid * Lossing's American Historical Record, vol. 1, p. 33. out gardens. If some of the decorous Virginia ladies were a little scandalized at the Amazonian habits of Madame Riedesel, who rode astride with the boldness of a fox-hunter, every one commended the liberality of the general toward his men. He distributed among them two hundred pounds' worth of seeds; and soon the whole region round the barracks was smiling with pretty gardens, and alive with cheerful laborers, conveying to the spectator, as Jefferson said, "the idea of a company of farmers, rather than a camp of soldiers." Some of the officers went to great expense in refitting their houses, even to several thousands of dollars. The health of these troops, thus agreeably situated and pleasantly employed, improved in the most remarkable manner. According to the ordinary rate of mortality, there should have been one death a day; but in three months there were but four deaths among them, and two of those were of infants. Jefferson wrote in reference to this enchanting scene, "It is for the benefit of mankind to mitigate the horrors of war as much as possible. The practice, therefore, of modern nations, of treating captive enemies with politeness and generosity, is not only delightful in contemplation, but really interesting to all the world, — friends, foes, and neutrals.” It is pleasing to reflect that the United States, from the first hour of its existence to the present time, in every instance, and in spite of the bitterest provocation to the contrary in three wars, has treated captives with "politeness and generosity." The prisoners might well be grateful to Jefferson, for he rendered them a greater service than neighborly attention. A panic fear arose, that these four thousand foreign mouths would eat Virginia out of house and home. A famine was dreaded, and Governor Henry was inundated with remonstrances against their longer stay. By the time the barracks were in order, the gardens laid out, and General Riedesel's two hundred pounds' worth of garden-seeds all nicely "come up," a terrible rumor ran through the camp, that the governor had yielded to pressure, and was about to order them away. It was Jefferson who interposed in their behalf. He wrote a most vigorous and elaborate statement of the case to Governor Henry, showing the utter groundlessness of the panic, describing the happy situation of the troops after their winter march of seven hundred miles, and exhibiting the cruel breach of faith it would be to compel them so soon to resume their wanderings. The prisoners' camp was not disturbed; and the Virginians discovered, that, if the prisoners ate a good deal of wheat and beef, they circulated a great many gold and silver coins. What strikes me as peculiar in Jefferson's letter is its extreme politeness. Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry had been friends, comrades, fellow-lodgers, partisans, every thing that was intimate and confidential, for nineteen years; but in this letter he keeps in mind that he is a member for Albemarle writing to His Excellency the Governor of Virginia, and he both begins and ends his epistle with expressions of deference and apology. He "takes the liberty of troubling" the governor with some observations on the subject. The reputation and interest of the country being involved, "it could hardly be deemed an indecent liberty in the most private citizen to offer his thoughts to the consideration of the Executive;" and there were particular reasons which justified him in so doing; such as his residence near the barracks, his public relation to the people of that county, and his being sure, from his personal acquaintance with the governor and council, that they would be "glad of information from any quarter, on a subject interesting to the public." Then, at the end of his letter, after an argument apparently complete and unanswerable, he was "sensible that the same subject might appear to different persons in very different lights." But he hoped that the reasons he had urged, even though to sounder minds they should seem fallacious, would, at least, be plausible enough to excuse his interposition. There was a reason for this extreme delicacy. The letter was written in March, 1779. The third year of Patrick Henry's governorship would expire in June; and, by the new constitution, a governor was ineligible after the third term. Jefferson was to succeed him; and it is always a delicate thing for an heir to say or do any thing that savors of interference with the management of the estate. CHAPTER XXVI. -- JEFFERSON GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA. COLLEGE friends find themselves strangely confronted, sometimes, in after life, rivals, perhaps, for prizes more important than a high place in a commencement programme. In January, 1779, the Virginia Legislature had to choose a governor to succeed Patrick Henry, whose third term would expire on the 1st of June. The favorite candidates were no other than John Page and Thomas Jefferson, fellow-students at William and Mary, who had exchanged loveconfidences, and gone with thumping hearts together to meet their sweethearts at the balls in the Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg; and not so very long before, either. In 1779 they were still young men, thirty-six both; Page being fifteen days the elder. The gilding was still bright on some parts of the state-coach which Lord Botetourt had brought over from England about the time of their entering public life; and "the palace" had not yet been defaced by vandal hands. Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts saw that tremendous vehicle, as late as 1781, in an outhouse near the palace; "a clumsy machine," he thought it; "as heavy as two common wagons; " "gilded in every part, even the edges of the tires of the wheels, and the arms of Virginia painted on every side." On the day, ten years before, when these two young friends had smiled derision at this historic coach, as it bore the new governor to the Capitol, who were less likely than they to be candidates for the right to ride in it? Things had changed, indeed, in Virginia, since young Jefferson had put his fiddle under his arm, and gone to "the palad t to take his part in one of Governor Fauquier's weekly concef su alway's strong point was, that, though born a member of the planmiglaristocracy, possessing a great estate, inhabiting the largest It house ever built in Virginia, and enjoying the honor most coveted by his class, a seat at the viceregal council-board, he had, from the beginning of the controversy with the king, sided with his country. The contest was a warm one between the friends of the candidates; but between the candidates themselves there was no contest. was part of the recognized etiquette of politics then, which both of these gentlemen observed, that the candidates for a responsible executive post should take no part, either by word or deed, in the canvass. Jefferson was elected by a majority of a very few votes. His old friend wrote him a letter of apology and congratulation, and Jefferson replied with the tact which good-nature inspires. "It had given me much pain," he said, "that the zeal of our respective friends should ever have placed us in the situation of competitors. I was comforted, however, with the reflection, that it was their competition, not ours, and that the difference of the numbers which decided between us was too insignificant to give you a pain or me a pleasure, had our dispositions towards each other been such as to admit those sensations." Twenty-three years later, when Jefferson was president, he had the pleasure of congratulating his friend Page on his election to the governorship of their native State. The governor elect took the lead in one important administrative act before he was sworn in. The war was gasping for money; for the legal-tender notes were rushing down the sharp decline that led from par to zero; and, as yet, the French troops had not begun to scatter coin about the country, nor Dr. Franklin to coax more millions from the French treasury than were needed to freight a few ships with military stores. One of Jefferson's friends in the House, who had rented four thousand acres of good land before the war to tenants at six pounds a year per hundred acres, and received his rents in 1778 in the legal-tender currency,erson's money not enough, when he began to receive it, to supply the only from that estate to buy twenty barrels of corn. magnificent salary of four thousand five hundred pounds a year was of "the palace" with food; and, when he went out of office, it woumbers buy the governor a new saddle. This was the period when of Congress the ruling power of the United States. - had to row little sums from their landladies in order not to be quite penn less. Elbridge Gerry, member from Massachusetts, a man of estate in Marblehead, was behind with his board, in 1779, a hundred good |