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CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Jefferson elected Governor of Virginia. Difficulties of his situation. George Rogers Clarke. Retaliation on Governor Hamilton and others. Its effects. Claims of Virginia to the Western Territory. Resisted by other states. Her cession of the Territory. Difficulty of providing military supplies and of transporting them. Arnold's predatory incursion. Its success explained. Abortive attempts to capture Arnold. Invasion under Phillips and Arnold. Their operations. Correspondence between the Governor and General Phillips. Meeting of the Legislature. It adjourns to Charlottesville. Lord Cornwallis invades Virginia. The Governor declines a re-election. His motives. Tarlton detached to Charlottesville. Mr. Jefferson and the members of Assembly narrowly escape capture.

1779-1781.

BUT Mr. Jefferson was now about to enter on a new field of public service, for some of the duties of which he was little qualified by his previous habits and pursuits. On the 1st of June he was elected Governor of the state; Mr. Henry having served as long as the constitution allows. It was not, however, an uncontested honour, as his friend, Mr. Page, was his competitor. This gentleman had been a member of the Council of state under the regal government; but as, on the breaking out of the disturbances, he had taken sides with his country, he had thereby acquired great popularity, and the greater from the contrast which his course presented to that of some of his associates. It is gratifying to know, that the delicate position in which Mr. Jefferson and he were now placed by others, produced no interruption to their friendship.

It was, however, for the time, painful and embarrassing

to both. Mr. Page wrote to Mr. Jefferson on the occasion, in a style suited to his amiable and disinterested character, and Mr. Jefferson, in reply, expressed lively regret that the zeal of their respective friends should have ever placed them" in the situation of competitors;" but he adds, "I am 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 disposition toward each other been such as to admit those sensations."

Mr. Page was a member of the first Congress, under the new Constitution, and in 1822 succeeded Mr. Munroe as Governor of Virginia, in which office he continued the constitutional term of three years.

At the age then of thirty-six, Mr. Jefferson, who had already so signalized himself as a legislator and jurist, was about to test his talents for executive duties. The period when he was thus called upon to act was one of peculiar difficulty. In the beginning of the year 1779, there was an evident relaxation, on the part of the states, from their former efforts to carry on the war. This was not owing to any cooling of their ardour in the cause of independence, nor yet to the continued pressure of heavy taxation; but to a too sanguine reliance on the recent treaty with France, as well as the known favourable dispositions of other European powers; and, naturally overrating their results, they considered the war as almost virtually terminated. The evil was not despondence, but too confident security. Congress partook somewhat of the popular languor which was thus produced, and the requisitions of General Washington met with a tardy and inadequate compliance. These untoward circumstances, as the Commander-in-chief had foreseen, were perceived by the enemy, and he determined to avail himself of them by a vigorous campaign in the South.

It was on this occasion that General Washington, in a letter to a friend in Virginia, thus expresses himself: "I have seen, without despondency, even for a moment, the hours which America has styled her gloomy ones; but I have beheld no day, since the commencement of hostilities, when I have thought her liberties in such imminent danger as at present."

He afterwards adds, "let this voice, my dear sir, call upon you, Jefferson, and others. Do not, from a mistaken opinion, that we are to sit down under our vine, and under our own fig-tree, let our hitherto noble struggle end in ignominy. Believe me, when I tell you, there is danger of it. I have pretty good reasons for thinking that the administration, a little while ago, had resolved to give the matter up, and negotiate a peace with us upon almost any terms; but I shall be much mistaken, if they do not now, from the present state of our currency, dissensions, and other circumstances, push matters to the utmost extremity. Nothing, I am sure, will prevent it, but the interruption of Spain, and their disappointed hope from Russia."

The British Commissioners, who conducted the war, having determined to transfer the theatre of its operations to the South, Georgia was accordingly invaded in the latter end of 1778, and reduced to submission. While the British were following up their success by marching into South Carolina, General Matthews made a descent on the southcastern part of Virginia. But the object of this incursion, being merely plunder and the destruction of stores and shipping, began and ended in the month of May, before Mr. Jefferson's administration commenced. From that time, until 1781, Virginia seems not to have been the scene of active hostilities, and the military duties of the Governor had been limited to the raising and equipping the quota of troops which the state was required to furnish to the general

army-duties of no very casy execution, at that period; but in the discharge of which, Governor Jefferson appears to have exhibited the requisite activity, judgment, and decision.

One of the first occasions in which he was called upon to exercise his executive functions, was to retaliate on some British prisoners the cruelties they were said to have stimu lated the Indians to perpetrate on the western frontier, and had even practised themselves.

Some time in the previous year, an expedition had been proposed and undertaken by George Rogers Clarke, against a military station at Vincennes, on the Mississippi, which, now a part of the state of Illinois, was then within the limits of the original charter of Virginia. Colonel Hamilton, the British Governor of Detroit, a brave and skilful officer, had made himself master of this fort in the December preceding; and having repaired the fortifications, he meant, in the spring, to get possession of Kaskaskias, another fort; and when joined by about 700 Indian warriors of the neighbouring tribes, to penetrate to Fort Pitt, sweeping Kentucky on his way; and he thus hoped to subjugate all the country comprehended under the name of West Augusta. Clarke, who seems to have been endowed with every military virtue and talent, having learnt that Hamilton had weakened his garrison, immediately formed the daring scheme of attacking him in Vincennes, before he was strengthened by his Indian allies; and his enterprise was crowned with complete sucWith a hundred and thirty raw unpractised men, such as he was able to pick up, he marched, in the depth of winter, through woods, and swamps*, and hostile Indians,

cess.

The difficulties of the march may be conjectured from the fact, that when within three leagues of the enemy, it took them five days to cross a piece of swampy land in the Wabash. They reached the fort in the evening, and, without waiting for rest or refreshment, immediately made the attack. The surrender took place on the evening of the next day.

to the fort then commanded by Colonel Hamilton, and attacked it with so much vigour that the garrison, which had consisted of 79 regulars, surrendered themselves prisoners of war. Hamilton and two others he sent through Kentucky to Williamsburg, and they arrived soon after Mr. Jefferson had entered on the duties of his office.

It appears by the advice of the council on the subject of these prisoners, that according to the papers which had been sent on with them, Hamilton had incited the Indians to perpetrate their accustomed cruelties, without distinction of age, sex, or condition; that his treatment of American prisoners had been inhuman; and that he had offered "standing rewards for scalps," but none for prisoners. Charges of a similar character were alleged against the other prisoners, Dejean, a magistrate, and Lamotte, a captain of volunteers; in consequence of which evidence, and the general ill-treatment which American officers, when in captivity, had occasionally experienced from the enemy, the Governor, by the advice of council, ordered that Hamilton and his associates should be put in irons, confined in the dungeon of the public jail, debarred the use of pen, ink and paper, and excluded from all converse except with their keeper.

The confinement of Governor Hamilton in a dungeon, and in irons, was soon made a matter of complaint by General Phillips, the senior officer of the Convention troops, and such treatment was alleged to be equally unwarranted by the facts of this case, and by the usages of war in capitulations, generally. On the 17th of July, Mr. Jefferson wrote to consult General Washington on this point, and his answer, received in the Governor's absence, having advised a more lenient course, either on the ground taken by General Phillips, or on principles of general policy, the irons were accordingly taken off the prisoners, by order of the council.