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field. I have undertaken to hint this matter to your Excellency, not only on my own sense of its importance to us, but at the solicitations of many members of weight in our legislature, which has not yet assembled to speak their own desires.

A few days will bring me that relief which the constitution has prepared for those oppressed with the labours of my office, and a long declared resolution of relinquishing it to abler hands, has prepared my way for retirement to a private station: still, as an individual, I should feel the comfortable effects of your presence, and have (what I thought could not have been) an additional motive for that gratitude, esteem, and respect, with which I have the honour to be," &c.

No country, certainly, was ever worse prepared for defence than was Virginia at the time of this hostile irruption; her troops had been drawn off to distant quarters, her resources had been exhausted to supply other states, and she was alike destitute of military stores and of funds to obtain them. The whole burden of affairs, too, had been thrown on the Governour; the legislature had hastily adjourned on the invasion of Arnold in January, to meet again at Charlottesville on the 24th of May; in the mean time he had no resource but to make the best of the means which Providence had given him, and to depend on that good fortune which had already so often befriended his country, at moments the most gloomy and unpromising.To resist invasion, the militia was his only force; and the resort even to this, was limited by the deficiency of He used every effort, however, to increase its efficacy. When it was sent into the field, he called

arms.

into service a number of officers who had resigned, or been thrown out of publick employment by reductions of continental regiments for want of men, and gave them commands; an expedient which, together with the aid of the old soldiers scattered in the ranks, produced a sudden and highly useful degree of skill, discipline, and subordination. Men were drafted for the regular regiments, and considerable detachments of the militia were sent to the south, and a number of horses, essentially necessary, were rapidly obtained by an expedient of Mr. Jefferson's. Instead of using a mercenary agency, he wrote to an individual, generally a member of Assembly, in each of the counties where they were to be had, to purchase a specified number with the then expiring paper money. This expedient met with a success highly important to the common cause. Nor was it sufficient to protect his own state alone; aid was demanded for the Carolinas, and this, though increasing the destitution and distress at home, was furnished to a considerable extent. length, however, exhausted by her efforts to aid her sister states, almost stripped of arms, without money, and harassed on the east and on the west with formidable invasions, Virginia appeared at last without re

sources.

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In this state of things, the 24th of May arrived, but it was not until the 28th that the legislature was formed at Charlottesville, to proceed to business. On that day, the Governour addressed that letter to the commander in chief which we have last inserted. On the 2d of June, the term for which Mr. Jefferson had been, elected, expired, and he returned to the situation of a

private citizen, after having conducted the affairs of his state through a period of difficulty and danger, without any parallel in its preceding or subsequent history, and with a prudence and energy that might have gained him more fame, had the times been less unpropitious, but which, from that very reason, have been, and will be, more appreciated and honoured in succeeding times. "I resigned," says he, "from a belief that, under the pressure of the invasion under which we were then labouring, the publick would have more confidence in a military chief, and that, the military commander being invested with the civil power also, both might be wielded with more energy, promptitude and effect, for the defence of the state."

Two days after his retirement from the government, says the biographer who has already afforded us our information of the military events during his administration, and when on his estate at Monticello, intelligence was suddenly brought that Tarleton, at the head of two hundred and fifty horse, had left the main army for the purpose of surprising and capturing the members of Assembly at Charlottesville. The house had just met, and was about to commence business, when the alarm was given; they had scarcely taken time to adjourn informally to meet at Staunton on the seventh, when the enemy entered the village, in the confident expectation of an easy prey. The escape was indeed narrow, but no one was taken. In pursuing the legislature, however, the Governour was not forgotten; a troop of horse under a Captain M'Leod had been despatched to Monticello, fortunately with no better success. The intelligence received at Charlottesville was

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soon conveyed thither, the distance between the two places being very short. Mr. Jefferson immediately ordered a carriage to be in readiness to carry off his family, who, however, breakfasted at leisure with some guests. Soon after breakfast, and when the visiters had left the house, a neighbour rode up in full speed, with the intelligence that a troop of horse was then ascending the hill. Mr. Jefferson now sent off his family, and after a short delay for some indispensable arrangements, mounted his horse, and taking a course through the woods, joined them at the house of a friend, where they dined. It would scarcely be believed by those not acquainted with the fact, that this flight of a single and unarmed man from a troop of cavalry, whose whole legion, too, was within supporting distance, and whose main object was his capture, has been the subject of volumes of reproach, in prose and poetry, serious and sarcastick.

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In answer to some inquiries from Dr. Gordon, Mr. Jefferson gives the following account of the treatment his property received, both from Tarleton and Lord Cornwallis : You ask in your letter of April the 24th, details of my sufferings by Colonel Tarleton. I did not suffer by him. On the contrary, he behaved very genteelly with me. On his approach to Charlottesville, which is within three miles of my house at Monticello, he despatched a troop of his horse, under Captain M'Leod, with the double object of taking me prisoner, with the two Speakers of the Senate and Delegates, who then lodged with me, and of remaining there in vidette, my house commanding a view of ten or twelve miles round about. He gave strict orders to

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Captain M'Leod to suffer nothing to be injured. The troop failed in one of their objects, as we had notice of their coming, so that the two Speakers had gone off about two hours before their arrival at Monticello, and myself, with my family, about five minutes. But Captain M'Leod preserved every thing with sacred care, during about eighteen hours that he remained there. Colonel Tarleton was just so long at Charlottesville, being hurried from thence by the news of the rising of the militia, and by a sudden fall of rain, which threatened to swell the river and intercept his return. In general, he did little injury to the inhabitants on that short and hasty excursion, which was of about sixty miles from their main army, then in Spottsylvania, and ours in Orange. It was early in June, 1781. Lord Cornwallis then proceeded to the point of Fork, and encamped his army from thence all along the main. James river, to a seat of mine called Elk Hill, opposite to Elk Island, and a little below the mouth of the Byrd Creek. He remained in this position ten days, his own head quarters being in my house at that place. I had time to remove most of the effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service; of those too young for service, he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences on the plantation, so as to leave it an absolute waste. He carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would

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