The Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson
By Subject
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 McLeod, 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 Captain MeLeod to suffer nothing
to be injure4. 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 McLeod preserved everything
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. (You will see all these places
exactly laid down in the map annexed to my notes on Virginia, printed
by Stockdale.) 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 have done right; but it was to consign them to
inevitable death from the small pox and putrid fever, then raging in
his camp. This I knew afterwards to be the fate of twenty-seven of
them I never had news of the remaining three, but presume they shared
the same fate. When I say that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not
mean that he carried about the torch in his own hands, but that it was
all done under his eye; the situation of the house in which he was,
commanding a view of every part of the plantation, so that he must
have seen every fire. I relate these things on my own knowledge, in a
great degree, as I was on the ground soon after he left it. He treated
the rest of the neighborhood somewhat in the same style, but not with
that spirit of total extermination with which he seemed to rage over
my possessions. Wherever he went, the dwelling houses were plundered
of everything which could be carried off. Lord Cornwallis' character
in England, would forbid the belief that he shared in the plunder; but
that his table was served with the plate thus pillaged from private
houses, can be proved by many hundred eye-witnesses. From an estimate
I made at that time, on the best information I could collect, I
supposed the State of Virginia lost, under Lord Cornwallis' hands,
that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and that of these, about
twenty seven thousand died of the small pox and camp fever, and the
rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and exchanged for rum,
sugar, coffee and fruit, and partly sent to New York, from whence
they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or England. From this
last place, I believe they have been lately sent to Africa. History
will never relate the horrors committed by the British army in the
southern States of America. They raged in Virginia six months
only, from the middle of April to the middle of October, 1781, when
they were all taken prisoners; and I give you a faithful specimen of
their transactions for ten days of that time, and on one spot only.
Ex pede Herculem. I suppose their whole devastations during
those six months, amounted to about three millions sterling.
to Doctor Gordon, 16 July 1788
|