Life of Thomas Jefferson

15. British Invasion of Virginia

The hostile armament of General Leslie had scarcely left the coast of Virginia when that state was surprised by another invasion of a more formidable character from an unexpected quarter. The parricide Arnold, apprised of the vulnerable condition of Virginia on the sea-board undertook a second attack by a naval force. He embarked from New York at the instance of Sir Henry Clinton, and on the 30th of December, 1780, was seen entering the Capes of Virginia with twenty-seven sail of vessels. He ascended James River and landed about fifteen miles below Richmond. On the approach of a hostile force into the heart of the State, the inhabitants were thrown into consternation. The Governor made every effort for calling in a sufficient body of militia to resist the incursion; but being dispersed over a large tract of country, they could be collected but slowly. Richmond being evidently the object of their attack, every effort was necessary for immediately securing the arms, military stores, records, etc., from the ravages of the wanton invader. He hastily marshaled about two hundred half-armed militia for the purpose of protecting the removal of the records, military stores, etc., to the opposite side of the James River. He superintended their movements in person, and was seen urging by his presence the business of transportation and issuing his orders until the enemy had actually entered the lower part of the town preceded by a body of light cavalry. Soon after, the whole regiment poured into Richmond and commenced the work of pillage and conflagration. They burnt the foundry, the boring mill, the magazine, a number of dwelling houses, the books and papers of the auditor's and council office, and retired the next day. Within less than forty-eight hours, they had penetrated thirty-three miles into the country, committed the whole injury, and retreated down the river. The Governor himself narrowly escaped being taken, owing to the suddenness of the attack and his continuance on the scene of danger at an unreasonable hour for the purpose of securing the public property. He had previously sent his family to Tuckahoe, eight miles above Richmond on the same side of the river, but did not join them himself until 1 o'clock in the night. He returned the next morning and continued his personal attendance in the vicinity of the metropolis during the whole invasion, to the imminent endangerment of his life.

Arnold shortly after encamped at Portsmouth, where he remained for a long time in close quarters. The capture of this execrable traitor had, from the moment of his perfidy, been an object of eager pursuit with all the patriots. Mr. Jefferson was induced to consider it practicable while in his present extremity, and secretly offering a reward of 5,000 guineas for his apprehension, incited some venturous spirits to undertake it by stratagem. But Arnold had become cautious and circumspect, beyond the reach of artifice. He lay buried in close confinement at Portsmouth, suffered no stranger to approach him, and never afterwards unguardedly exposed his person. The enterprise was thus rendered ineffectual.

The real situation of Virginia at this period is depicted in the letters and dispatches of the Governor. "The fatal want of arms," he wrote on the 8th of February, 1781, "puts it out of our power to bring a greater force into the field than will barely suffice to restrain the adventures of the pitiful body of men they have at Portsmouth. Should any more be added to them, this country will be perfectly open to them by land as well as water." (to George Washington. ME 4:156) "I have been knocking at the door of Congress," he again wrote on the 17th to General Gates, "for aids of all kinds, but especially of arms, ever since the middle of summer. The speaker, Harrison, is gone to be heard on that subject. Justice, indeed, requires that we should be aided powerfully. Yet if they would repay us the arms we have lent them, we should give the enemy trouble, though abandoned to ourselves." (ME 4:162) On the same day he addressed the Commander in Chief as follows: "Two days ago I received information of the arrival of a sixty-four gun ship and two frigates in our bay, being part of the fleet of our good ally at Rhode Island. Could they get at the British fleet here, they are sufficient to destroy them; but these being drawn up into Elizabeth River, into which the sixty-four cannot enter, I apprehend they could do nothing more than block up the river. This, indeed, would reduce the enemy, as we could cut off their supplies by land; but the operation being tedious would probably be too dangerous for the auxiliary force. Not having yet had any particular information of the designs of the French Commander, I cannot pretend to say what measures this aid will lead to." (ME 4:159)

This desperate situation of affairs was aggravated by the arrival in the bay of two thousand additional British troops under the command of Major General Phillips. This reinforcement shortly thereafter formed a junction with Arnold, and the combined forces under Phillips immediately renewed on a more extensive scale than heretofore their system of predatory and incendiary incursions into all parts of the unprotected country. They captured and laid waste Williamsburg, Petersburg, and several minor settlements, and pursued their destroying advances from village to village until they were arrested by the gallant defender of universal liberty, the immortal Lafayette.

During the ferocious and diffusive operations of Phillips and Arnold, the Governor remained constantly in and about Richmond, exerting all his powers to collect the militia and provide such means for the defense of the State as its exhausted resources allowed. Never assuming a guard, and with only the river between him and the enemy, his lodgings were frequently within four or five miles of them, and his personal exposure was consequently very great.

But the final movement against Virginia, compared to which the previous invasions were feeble and desultory efforts, remains to be noticed. On the 20th of May, 1781, Lord Cornwallis entered the State on the southern frontier with an army of four thousand men. His entry was almost triumphal. Proceeding directly to Petersburg where he formed a junction with the forces under Phillips and Arnold, he established his headquarters and commenced his plan of subduing the whole State.

This alarming event happened but a few days previous to the close of Mr. Jefferson's administration, and, in view of the impending crisis, he felt it his duty before resigning the government into other hands to make one last, solemn appeal to the Commander in Chief for those important succors on which now evidently depended the salvation of the commonwealth.

This letter was written three days previous to the expiration of his second gubernatorial year, at which time he had long cherished the determination of relinquishing the administration in favor of a successor whose habits, dispositions, and pursuits would render him better fitted for the supreme direction of affairs at such a crisis. "From a belief," said he, "that, under the pressure of the invasion under which we were then laboring, the public 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 defense of the State, I resigned the administration at the end of my second year, and General Nelson was appointed to succeed me." (Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:75) His successor was elected on the 12th of June, 1781.
The closing events of Mr. Jefferson's administration having excited much attention and occasioned some misrepresentation, a few additional observations founded on authentic documents seem owed to that portion of his public history.

Ever since the invasion of the city under Arnold in January, 1781, and the sudden dispersion by that event of the General Assembly, the legislative functions of the government had been almost totally suspended. The members had re-assembled on the first of March, but after a few days' session, were compelled to adjourn. They met again on the 7th of May, but the movements of the enemy again compelled them on the 10th to adjourn to Charlottesville to meet on the 24th. During this long and critical interval, therefore, the main burden of public affairs had devolved on the Governor.

In addition to the multiplied irruptions from the East and the South, Virginia had had a powerful army to oppose on her western frontier. The English and Indians were incessantly harassing her in that quarter by their savage incursions. At length, the powerful army under Cornwallis poured into the State and filled up the measure of public danger and distress. The legislature, which had hastily adjourned from Richmond to Charlottesville, had scarcely assembled at the latter place when they were driven thence by the enemy over the mountains to Staunton. This was on the last days of May. Pursued and hunted in this manner from county to county, with the armies of the enemy in the heart of the State, destitute of internal resources, and aided only by the small regular force under Lafayette, many members of that Assembly became dissatisfied, discouraged, desperate; and in the frenzy of the moment, began to resuscitate the deceased project of a dictator. Some, indeed, were so infatuated as to deem the measure not only salutary, but as presenting the only hope of deliverance at this juncture. Patrick Henry, who had borne a distinguished part in the anterior transactions of the revolution, was already designated for the office. But it was foreseen with dismay by those who desired a dictator that no headway could be made with such a proposition against the popularity and influence of the present executive; it was necessary as a first measure that he should be rendered powerless. For this purpose, his official character was attacked, the misfortunes of the period were imputed to the imbecility of his administration, he was impeached in a loose, informal way, and a day for some species of hearing at the succeeding session of the assembly was appointed. But no evidence was every offered to sustain the impeachment; no question was ever taken upon it disclosing in any manner the approbation of the legislature, and the hearing was appointed by general consent for the purpose, as many members expressed themselves, of giving Mr. Jefferson an opportunity of demonstrating the absurdity of the censure. Indeed, the whole effort at impeachment was a mere feint, designed to remove Mr. Jefferson out of the way for the present and to make manifest, if possible, the necessity of a dictator. It failed, however, in both objects: the effect on Mr. Jefferson was entirely the reverse of what had been intended; and as to the proposed dictatorship, the pulse of the assembly was incidentally felt in the debates on the state of the commonwealth and in off-the-floor conversations, the general tone of which foretold such a violent opposition to the measure that the original movers were induced to abandon it with precipitation. This was the second instance of a similar attempt in that State and of a similar result, caused chiefly by the ascendancy of the same individuals.

While these things were going on at Staunton, Mr. Jefferson was distant from the scene of action at Bedford, neither interfering himself nor applied to by the legislature for any information touching the charges preferred against him. But so soon as the project for a dictator was dropped, his resignation of the government appeared. This produced a new scene: the dictator men insisted upon re-electing him, but his friends strenuously opposed it on the ground that as he had divested himself of the government to heal the divisions of the legislature at that critical season for the public good, and to meet the accusation upon equal terms for his own honor, his motives were too strong to be relinquished. Still, on the nomination of General Nelson, the most popular man in the State and without an enemy in the legislature, a considerable portion of the Assembly voted for Mr. Jefferson.

On the day appointed for the hearing before mentioned, Mr. Jefferson appeared in the House of Delegates, having been intermediately elected a member. No one offered himself as his accuser. Mr. George Nicholas, who had been seduced to institute the proceeding and who afterwards paid him deference equally honorable to both (in his letter to his constituents in Kentucky), had satisfied himself in the interim of the utter groundlessness of the charges and declined the further prosecution of the affair. Mr. Jefferson nevertheless rose in his seat, addressed the house in general terms upon the subject, and expressed his readiness to answer any accusations which might be preferred against him. Silence ensured. Not a word of censure was whispered. After a short pause, the following resolution was proposed and adopted unanimously by both houses. [note]

A few days after the expiration of Mr. Jefferson's constitutional term of office and before the appointment of his successor, an incident occurred which has been so strangely misrepresented in later times as to justify a relation of the details.

Learning that the General Assembly was in session at Charlottesville, Cornwallis detached the "Ferocious Tarleton" to proceed to that place, take the members by surprise, seize on the person of Mr. Jefferson, whom they supposed still in office, and spread devastation and terror on his route.

Elated with the idea of an enterprise so congenial to his disposition and confident of an easy prey, Tarleton selected a competent body of men and proceeded with ardor on his expedition. Early in the morning of June 4th, when within about ten miles of his destination, he detached a troop of cavalry under captain M'Cleod to Monticello, the well-known home of Mr. Jefferson, and proceeded himself with the main body to Charlottesville, where he expected to find the legislature unapprised of his movement. The alarm, however, had been conveyed to Charlottesville about sunrise the same morning, and thence quickly to Monticello, only three miles distant.[note] The speakers of the two houses were lodging with Mr. Jefferson at his house. His guests had barely time to hurry to Charlottesville, adjourn the legislature to Staunton, and, with most of the other members, effect their escape. Mr. Jefferson immediately ordered his carriage, in which Mrs. Jefferson and her children were conveyed to the house of Colonel Carter on the neighboring mountain, while he himself tarried behind, breakfasted as usual and completed some necessary arrangements preparatory to his departure. Suddenly, a messenger -- lieutenant Hudson -- who had descried the rapid advance of the enemy, drove up at hasty speed and gave him a second and last alarm, stating that the enemy were already ascending the winding road which leads to the summit of Monticello and urging his immediate flight. He then calmly ordered his riding horse, which was shoeing at a neighboring blacksmith's, directing him to be led to a gate opening on the road to Colonel Carter's, whither he walked by a cross path, mounted his horse, and instead of taking the high road, plunged into the woods of the adjoining mountain and soon rejoined his family.

In less than ten minutes after Mr. Jefferson's departure, his house was surrounded by the impetuous light-cavalry, thirsting for their prey. They entered the mansion with a flush of expectation proportioned to the importance of their supposed victim. And, notwithstanding the chagrin and irritation which their disappointment excited, an honorable regard was manifested for the usages of enlightened nations at war. Mr. Jefferson's property was respected, especially his books and papers, by the particular injunctions of M'Cleod.

This is the famous "Adventure of Carter's Mountain." Had the facts been accurately stated, it would have appeared that this favorite fabrication amounted to nothing more than that Mr. Jefferson did not remain in his house and there fight, single-handedly, a whole troop of cavalry, whose main body, too, was within supporting distance, and suffer himself to be taken prisoner. It is somewhat singular that this supposedly egregious offense was never heard of until many years after when most of that generation had disappeared and a new one risen up. Although the whole affair happened some days before the abortive attempt at impeachment, neither his conduct on this occasion nor his pretended flight from Richmond in January previous were included among the charges.

Having accompanied his family one day's journey, Mr. Jefferson returned to Monticello. Finding the enemy gone, with few traces of depredation, he again rejoined his family and proceeded with them to an estate he owned in Bedford, where, galloping over his farm one day, he was thrown from his horse and disable from riding on horse-back for a considerable time. But the partisan version of the story found it more convenient to give him this fall in his retreat before Tarleton some weeks before, as a proof that he withdrew from a troop of cavalry with a precipitancy which Don Quixote would not have practiced.

M'Cleod tarried about eighteen hours at Monticello, and Tarleton about the same time at Charlottesville, when the detachments reunited and retired to Elkhill, a plantation of Mr. Jefferson's. At this place, Cornwallis had now encamped with the main army and established his headquarters. Some idea may be formed of the vandalism practiced by the British during their continuance at Elkhill and the whole succeeding part of that campaign from the fact that their devastations in those six months are estimated by Mr. Jefferson at about three millions sterling. Under Cornwallis's hands, Virginia lost about thirty thousand slaves that year. Wherever he went, the country was plundered of everything that could be carried off; but over Mr. Jefferson's possessions he seemed to range with a spirit of total extermination. He destroyed all his growing crops of corn and tobacco; burned all his barns containing the last year's crops; used, as was to be expected, all his stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs for the sustenance of his army; carried off all his horses capable of service, cutting the throats of the rest; and burned all the fences on the plantation so as to leave it an absolute waste.

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