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14. Governor of Virginia
n the 1st of June, 1779, Mr. Jefferson was elected Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and retired from the legislature with the highest dignity in their gifts. Political distinctions being then unknown, the ballot box determined the exact value put upon the abilities of public characters.
On assuming the helm of administration, Mr. Jefferson directed the weight of his station and the powers confided to him towards reclaiming the enemy to the principles of humanity in the treatment of American prisoners. He had seen that the conduct of the British officers, civil and military, had through the whole course of the war, been savage and unprecedented among civilized nations; that American officers and soldiers captured by them had been loaded with irons -- consigned to crowded gaols, loathsome dungeons, and prison ships -- supplied often with no food, generally with too little for the sustenance of nature, and that little so unsound and unwholesome as to have rendered captivity and death almost synonymous terms; that they had been transported beyond seas where their fate could not be ascertained, or compelled to take arms against their own country and, by a refinement in cruelty, to become the murderers of their own brethren.
On the other hand, the treatment extended to British prisoners by American victors had been marked, he well knew, with singular moderation and clemency. They had been supplied on all occasions with wholesome and plentiful food, provided with comfortable accommodations, suffered to range at large within extensive tracts of country, permitted to live in American families, to labor for themselves, to acquire and enjoy property, and to participate in the principal benefits of society while privileged from all its burthens. In some cases they had been treated with hospitality and courtesy. We have already witnessed the gratifying spectacle of four thousand British troops, prisoners of war, relieved suddenly from an accumulation of miseries and raised to a condition of competency and comfort, chiefly by his own private enterprise, seconded by the liberality of his fellow citizens.
Reviewing this contrast, Governor Jefferson felt impelled by a sense of public justice to substitute a system of rigorous retribution. He felt "called on," in the impressive language of his order, "by that justice we owe to those who are fighting the battles of our country, to deal out miseries to their enemies, measure for measure, and to distress the feelings of mankind by exhibiting to them spectacles of severe retaliation where we had long and vainly endeavored to introduce an emulation in kindness."
Happily, the fortune of war had thrown into his power some of those very individuals who, having distinguished themselves personally in the practice of cruelties, were proper subjects on which to begin the work of retaliation. Among these were Henry Hamilton, who for some years past had acted as lieutenant governor of the settlement at Detroit under sir Guy Carlton; Philip Dejean, justice of the peace for Detroit, and William Lamothe, captain of volunteers -- taken prisoners of war by Colonel Clarke at Fort St. Vincents and brought under guard to Williamsburg early in June, 1779. Proclamations under his own hand and the concurrent testimony of indifferent witnesses proved Governor Hamilton a remorseless destroyer of the human race instead of an open and honorable enemy. He had excited the Indians to perpetrate their accustomed atrocities upon the citizens of the United States with an eagerness and ingenuity which evinced that the general nature of the employment harmonized with his particular disposition. He gave standing rewards for scalps, but offered none for prisoners, which induced the Indians, after compelling their captives to carry their baggage into the neighborhood of the fort, to butcher them at last and carry in their scalps to the Governor, who welcomed their return and success by a discharge of cannon; and the few American prisoners spared by his blood-hounds were doomed by him to a captivity of lingering and complicated tortures, terminating in death.
Concerning Dejean and Lamothe, it was well ascertained that they had on all occasions been the ready instruments of Hamilton. The former, acting in the double capacity of judge and jailor, had instigated him by malicious insinuations to increase rather than relax his severities and had aggravated the cruelty of his orders by his manner of executing them; the latter as commander of volunteer scalping parties, Indians and whites, had desolated the frontier settlements by his marauding excursions, devoting to indiscriminate destruction, men, women, and children, and stimulating by his example the fury of his execrable banditti. (Jefferson's Works, Vol. 1, Appendix, Note A.)
Possessed by the force of American arms of such fit subjects as these on which to make the first demonstrations of retributive justice and coerce the enemy into the usages of civilized warfare, Jefferson issued an order in conformity to the advice of his council, directing the above named prisoners to be put in irons, confined in the dungeon of the public gaol, debarred the use of pen, ink, and paper, and excluded from all conversation except with their keeper.
Major General Phillips, who continued near Charlottesville in captivity, having read in the Virginia Gazette the order of the governor, immediately addressed him a remonstrance on the subject. In his communication, he endeavored to invalidate the testimony against Hamilton and to extenuate his conduct. He expressed doubts respecting the authority of any particular State to enter upon retaliation, which he supposed belonged exclusively to Congress, and expatiated largely on the sacred nature of a capitulation, which in the present case, he contended, exempted the prisoner from the severe punishment inflicted on him whatever his previous conduct might have been. In conclusion, he entreated the governor to reconsider the subject. "From my residence in Virginia," he adds, "I have conceived the most favorable idea of the gentlemen of this country, and from my personal acquaintance with you, Sir, I am led to imagine it must have been very dissonant to the feelings of your mind to inflict such a weight of misery and stigma of disgrace upon the unfortunate gentleman in question."
Whatever may have been the feelings of Mr. Jefferson, when no superior obligation stood in the way (and none had better reason to honor them than General Phillips and his fellow captives), his present situation as chief magistrate required the stern subordination of those feelings to the service of his country and the general good of mankind. His own opinion was that all persons taken in war, as well those who surrendered on capitulation as those who surrendered at discretion, were to be deemed prisoners of war and liable to the same treatment except only so far as they were protected by the express terms of their capitulation. In the surrender of governor Hamilton, no stipulation was made as to the treatment of himself or his fellow prisoners. The governor, indeed, upon signing had added a flourish of reasons which induced him to capitulate, one of which was the generosity of his victorious enemy. Generosity on a large and comprehensive scale, thought Mr. Jefferson, dictated the making a signal example of the gentleman; but waiving that, these were only the private motives inducing him to surrender and did not enter into the contract of the antagonist party. He continued in the belief, therefore, that the bare existence of a capitulation did not exempt Hamilton from confinement, there being in the contract no positive stipulation to that effect. The importance of the point, however, in a national view and his great anxiety for the honor of the government under a charge of violated faith by one of its supreme functionaries induced him to submit the question to the Commander in Chief.
General Washington saw with pleasure the executive of his native State entering upon a course of measures which the conduct of the enemy had rendered necessary. But entertaining doubts as to the real bearing and extent of the capitulation in question and concurring with Mr. Jefferson in a sacred respect for the laws and usages of civilized nations, he recommended a relaxation of severities after a fair trial of the practical effect of the present proceeding. One solemn inculcation would have been administered: Virginia would have it in her power to repeat it. This alone might produce the intended reformation and remove the necessity of individual chastisement for national barbarities.
Influenced by the advice of the Commander in Chief which harmonized with the better dictates of his heart, Governor Jefferson reconsidered the case of the captives and issued a second order in council mitigating the severity of the first, though not compromising the right in any one point.
Agreeably to this order, a parole was drawn up and tendered to the prisoners. It required them to be inoffensive in word as well as deed, to which they objected, insisting on entire freedom of speech. They were consequently remanded to their confinement, which was now to be considered voluntary. Their irons, however, were knocked off. The subaltern prisoners soon after subscribed the parole and were enlarged, but Hamilton long refused the proffer. Upon being informed by General Phillips, who had been exchanged, that his sufferings would be considered perfectly gratuitous, he at last complied.
These measures of Governor Jefferson produced the effects anticipated. In the first moments of passion, the British resorted to what they termed retaliation, being a revival in more hideous forms of their established practices -- therefore, to be deemed original and unprovoked in every new instance. A declaration was also issued that no officers of the Virginia line should be exchanged till Hamilton's affair should be satisfactorily settled. When this information was received, the Governor immediately ordered all exchange of British prisoners to be stopped, with the determination to use them as pledges for the safety of Americans in like circumstances. "It is impossible," he wrote to General Washington, "they can be serious in attempting to bully us in this manner. We have too many of their subjects in our power and too much iron to clothe them with, and I will add, too much resolution to avail ourselves of both, to fear their pretended retaliation." Effectual measures were taken for ascertaining from time to time the situation and treatment of American captives with a view to retaliate on the enemy corresponding treatment in all cases; and the prison ship fitted up on the recommendation of Congress was ordered to a proper station for the reception and confinement of such as should be sent to it. "I am afraid," he again writes to the Commander in Chief, "I shall hereafter, perhaps, be obliged to give your excellency some trouble in aiding me to obtain information of the future usage of our prisoners. I shall give immediate orders for having in readiness every engine which the enemy have contrived for the destruction of our unhappy citizens captured by them. The presentiment of these operations is shocking beyond expression. I pray heaven to avert them, but nothing in this world will do it but a proper conduct in the enemy. In every event, I shall resign myself to the hard necessity under which I shall act."
The Governor was not insensible to the aggravation of misery which the first exercises of his policy brought on those unfortunate citizens of the United States who were in the power of the enemy. On the contrary, he entered feelingly into their situation and encouraged them by appeals to their fortitude to bear up against a temporary increase of personal suffering for the lasting and general benefit of their country.
These sentiments of the executive lifted the hearts of the American prisoners. They acquiesced in the stern necessity which dictated the disregard of their private distresses in the prospect of the general amelioration of captured men. Nor was this anticipation wholly disappointed. The practical inculcation of such a lesson produced a sensible effect upon the conduct of the enemy through the subsequent stages of the war. British magnanimity was compelled to respond to the cries of their own countrymen and the admonitions of experience.
n the same spirit which guided his military operations, the Governor engaged in a civil transaction of extensive and solid utility to the commonwealth. Upon the mediation of Spain offered about this time, sanguine hopes were entertained of an approaching pacification, and Congress in settling their ultimatum had intimated that the principle of uti possidetis [as seized] should be recognized in adjusting the boundaries of the several States. Whereupon Mr. Jefferson instituted active measures for extending the western establishments of Virginia with a view to secure by actual possession the right of that State in its whole extent to the Mississippi River. He engaged a company of scientific gentlemen to proceed under an escort to the Mississippi and ascertain by celestial observation the point on that river intersected by the latitude of thirty-six and a half degrees, the southern limit of the State, and to measure its distance from the mouth of the Ohio.
The brave and enterprising Colonel Clarke, who by a series of unparalleled successes over the Indians had already secured extensive acquisitions to Virginia, was selected by the Governor to conduct the military operations. He was directed, so soon as the southern limit of the Mississippi should be ascertained, to select a strong position near that point and to establish there a fort and garrison, thence to extend his conquests northward to the Great Lakes, erecting forts at different points which might serve as monuments of actual possession, besides affording protection to that portion of the country. Under these orders, Fort Jefferson, in compliment to the founder of the enterprise, was erected and garrisoned on the Mississippi a few miles above the southern limit. The final result of this expedition was the addition to the chartered limits of Virginia of that immense tract of country north west of the Ohio river which includes the present States of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio in part, and Michigan.
The following year, 1780, on the urgent recommendation of Mr. Jefferson and in compliance with the wishes of Congress, a resolution passed the legislature ceding to the United States the whole of this vast extent of territory. This important event removed the great obstacle to the ratification of the confederacy between the States. Upon transmitting the resolution to the President of Congress, the Governor wrote: "I shall be rendered very happy if the other States of the union equally impressed with the necessity of the important convention in prospect shall be willing to sacrifice equally to its completion. This single event, could it take place shortly, would outweigh every success which the enemy have hitherto obtained and render desperate the hope to which those successes have given birth."
To this resolution were appended the well-known sentiments of Mr. Jefferson with respect to the navigation of the Mississippi and the necessity of securing a free port at the mouth of that river.
In the course of one month after the adoption of this measure the confederation was completed.
Intelligence of these menacing calculations had no sooner reached Virginia than the Governor commenced the most vigorous measures for recruiting the army and putting the country in a firm posture of defense. For this purpose, he was invested by the legislature with new and extraordinary powers. Should the State be invaded, 20,000 militia were placed at his disposal; he was empowered to impress provisions and other articles for the public service, and likewise to lay an embargo in the ports of the commonwealth whenever expedient. He was authorized to confine or remove all persons suspected of disaffection and to subject to martial law individuals acting as spies or guides to the enemy, or in any manner aiding, abetting, and comforting them, or disseminating among the militia the seeds of discontent, mutiny, and revolt. He was directed to restore the workshop for the manufacture of arms which had of late been languishing, and at the same time to provide magazines for warlike stores. To meet the pecuniary exigencies of the times, issuances of paper currency were necessarily multiplied and new taxes were devised.
These defensive arrangements were scarcely made when their execution was suddenly suspended by the appearance in the Chesapeake of a strong British armament under the command of General Leslie. Resistance by maritime means being unavailable at this juncture, the Governor immediately collected as large a body of militia as he could equip to prevent the debarkation of the enemy; but the alarm of the inhabitants, whose first care was to secure their wives, children, and moveable property, together with the insufficiency of arms rendered his exertions ineffectual. It was to him a source of anguish and mortification to think that a people, able and zealous to repel the invader, should be reduced to impotence by the want of defensive weapons.
The enemy landed at different points but soon concentrated their forces in Portsmouth, fortified themselves, and remained in close quarters until they retreated on board their ships. It appears this force had been detached by Cornwallis to invade Virginia by water, occupy Portsmouth for the purposes of support and safe rendezvous, and join the main army under his command on its entrance by land into the southern borders of the State. But the precipitate retreat of Cornwallis into South Carolina in consequence of serious reverses in that quarter defeated Leslie's anticipated junction with the main army and compelled his sudden departure from the State, leaving his works unfinished and undestroyed. The principal injury resulting from this invasion was the loss of a quantity of cattle intended for the southern army, which were seized by the enemy immediately after disembarking. Indeed, the conduct of this detachment whilst in Virginia was an honorable exception, in all respects, to the predatory system which had hitherto marked the footsteps of British conquest. "I must," wrote the Governor to General Washington, "do their General and commander the justice to observe that in every case which their attention and influence could reach, as far as I have been informed, their conduct was such as does them the greatest honor. In the few instances of wanton and unnecessary devastation, they punished the aggressors." To the firmness of Mr. Jefferson in the case of Hamilton, history ascribes in great part this reputable deviation from a mode of warfare which all mankind must abhor. (History of Virginia, Vol. 4, p. 421.)
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© 1997 by Eyler Robert Coates, Sr.