Jefferson and Hamilton (23 page)

Only a month remained of Jefferson’s second term as governor when Phillips brought to an end his costly raid. Perhaps no Revolutionary War governor had faced greater difficulties, or had to make more burdensome decisions, than Jefferson. He led an exhausted and war-weary state. On taking office, Jefferson discovered that those free men who were willing to serve in the Continental army had long since enlisted, leaving him to lament the “difficulty, nay impossibility, … to get men.” So widespread was what he called the “Spirit of disaffection” against military service, that by late 1780 he wondered whether the militia in much of southwest Virginia would respond to a call to arms.
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Jefferson also presided over a state that was averse to a strong government. Aside from his year in the Continental Congress, Jefferson had been a Virginia assemblyman for nearly a decade before becoming governor. He knew the mentality of Virginia’s legislators, and he understood the limits they imposed on the state’s governor. That realization restrained him from asking for emergency powers, and when he refused to confiscate the property of civilians, it was partially from personal reservations, but also from an understanding that to do so would only arouse opposition to the war in a state already suffering with war fatigue. Continentals such as Steuben and Greene thought Jefferson weak and unsuited for leadership in a time of crisis, and a case can be made for their viewpoint. However, an effective leader has to understand the governed, and from the outset Jefferson recognized that he walked a fine line in coaxing from civilians as much as possible effort without extinguishing their continued support for the war.

Could he have done more? Yes. He might have sought at least some small
increase in his authority. To be sure, he might have wielded his mighty pen to rally a greater war spirit. But rhetorical appeals were not common practice among the Revolutionary War governors, or even by Congress.

Toward the end, Jefferson burned his bridges with many Continentals by refusing to support Steuben’s plan for a campaign against Cornwallis in North Carolina. It might have succeeded, though war plans that look good on paper are not always successful, as the scheme for the joint Lafayette-Destouches campaign demonstrated. Nevertheless, Jefferson’s opposition exposed a timidity and shortsightedness unbecoming of a leader in an emergency. His role in thwarting the Steuben plan was a greater blunder than his better-known failure of having responding languidly to intelligence that Benedict Arnold was bearing down on the state in January 1781. Even had Jefferson acted with alacrity at the news of Arnold’s approach, it is difficult to imagine that Virginia could have offered a more effective resistance. Given the state’s resources, Arnold’s greater mobility, and the incredible expanse that had to be defended, there was little that Jefferson or any other governor could have done to lessen the damage that the raiders inflicted. Indeed, no one accused Jefferson of permitting the state to be caught off guard by Phillips’s raid, yet that incursion was no less successful than its predecessors.

Jefferson took his responsibilities seriously and worked hard—very hard—and there were stretches when he toiled in the depths of despair. At times during 1781 he was on the run, separated from Martha and their three daughters—eight-year-old Patsy, two-year-old Mary, and one-year-old Lucy Elizabeth—who shuffled between Richmond and Tuckahoe. Furthermore, as the spring unfolded, little Lucy Elizabeth’s health declined, and on April 15, three days after the British threatened Mount Vernon, she died. Though beset with ineffable sadness, Jefferson never ceased to be a fighter. When in 1779 the British had closed in on Charleston—with an army merely two-thirds the size of the force under Phillips—South Carolina governor John Rutledge had proposed that his state drop out of the war in return for the city being spared. Such a thought never occurred to Jefferson.
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By spring 1781, as his second term ebbed away, Jefferson remarked without exaggeration that Great Britain’s war on America “falls at present on Virginia only.”
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Greene had made a fateful choice. A week after Guilford Courthouse, he opted to take his army into South Carolina to liberate the state from the redcoats still garrisoned there. He expected Cornwallis to follow him. He was wrong. Cornwallis turned instead toward Virginia.
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By mid-May, Jefferson was aware that Cornwallis was in the state, and he knew that when Philips and Cornwallis united, a huge British army would be on Virginia soil. If that was not bad enough, intelligence indicated that Clinton was sending
reinforcements from New York. Jefferson believed that, by the summer, there would be some seven thousand redcoats in Virginia. There were perhaps two thousand Continentals, and whatever “Ill armed and untried Militia” that could be raised, to defend Virginia against them.
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When Governor Rutledge in South Carolina had proposed dropping out of the war, he did so in part because he and his lieutenant governor had lost confidence in General Washington. Rutledge thought the commander’s indifference to the war in the South was “scarcely credible”; his lieutenant governor, Thomas Bee, imagined that “the Southern states are meant to be sacrificed.”
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Jefferson shared Rutledge’s view about Washington’s strategic myopia, and on May 28, with only about a week remaining of his tenure in office, Jefferson sent Washington one final letter as governor. He pleaded yet again for Washington to come to Virginia with his army and take command of the defense of the state. “[L]end us Your personal aid…. [Y]our appearance … would restore full confidence of salvation,” he wrote. Should Washington come and bring his army, Jefferson said in closing, the only “difficulty would then be how to keep men out of the field.”
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As April was about to turn to May, Lafayette advised Jefferson that his hands were tied unless Washington sent substantial numbers of Continentals to Virginia. Helpless to take the offensive, Lafayette said he could only pursue a Fabian strategy.
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Not long after Jefferson read the young Frenchman’s letter, General Washington, with Hamilton possibly in tow, set off from his headquarters in New Windsor, New York, for Weathersfield, Connecticut, where he was scheduled to meet with Rochambeau during the third week in May. The allies were to plan their summer campaign. What Washington would seek was hardly a mystery. For years, he had fastened on retaking New York, and he had already broached the idea to an unconvinced Rochambeau at a previous meeting in September. Rochambeau had patiently explained to Washington that the allies lacked the necessary numerical superiority and naval supremacy for either an attack or a protracted siege, but a final decision had been postponed until the expected French reinforcements arrived in the spring.

Dark, cold weather had settled over Connecticut when the allied commanders at last sat down together on May 21. Rochambeau began by saying that it was possible that the French fleet in the Caribbean might come to North America to assist the armies. He then asked Washington what he envisaged for the summer of 1781. Predictably, Washington urged a joint campaign to retake New York. Rochambeau countered with a proposal that they move their armies to Virginia. At the time, Rochambeau knew that Phillips had arrived in Virginia and that his army totaled more than three thousand
men. He did not know that Cornwallis, who had set off from Wilmington, was bringing his army to Virginia as well. Washington listened, and demurred. Rochambeau subsequently recalled that his counterpart “did not conceive the affairs of the south to be [of] such urgency.” The two generals argued, but Washington held his ground. Rochambeau, who had been ordered by his government at Versailles to defer to the Americans, reluctantly agreed to a joint campaign to retake New York. The moment the conference ended and Washington began the long ride back to the Hudson River, Rochambeau wrote to Commodore François de Grasse, the commander of the French fleet, and beseeched him to sail for Virginia, not New York. Unbeknownst to Washington, the wheels had been set in motion for a Virginia campaign.
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Hamilton could not have been happy with the agreement that Washington had secured at Weathersfield. Given his apparent feelings about the commander’s limitations as a strategist, and likely aware of Rochambeau’s cogent reservations about a New York campaign, Hamilton must have doubted the wisdom of what appeared to lie ahead. In fact, he suspected that operations would never commence. As late as July 10 he remarked that “there seems to be little prospect of activity,” as only the most optimistic were persuaded that the French fleet would arrive. But Washington still controlled Hamilton’s destiny. On the eve of the Weathersfield conference, Hamilton apologized to Washington for having “embarrassed” him by requesting an independent command. Not only did he understand why Washington had turned him down, he said humbly but he also assured the commander that his only thought was for “the good of the service.”
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Hamilton groveled. He wanted to stay in Washington’s good graces, perhaps hoping against hope that some suitable position for him might turn up with Lafayette’s force in Virginia, which seemed the most likely place for action in 1781.

While Hamilton brooded over the likelihood of another summer of inactivity, Jefferson faced more action than he ever wanted. By late May, with barely a week left in his term, Jefferson was at home at Monticello. Virginia’s legislature had been scheduled to meet in Richmond at the beginning of May, but it had been nearly impossible to persuade the skittish assemblymen to come to the capital. Finally, several days late, a quorum was attained, but only after the governor sent assurances that Richmond was now “perfectly secure.” The dubious legislators came, but were not inclined to linger in the capital. They met only long enough to agree to adjourn until May 24, when they would meet again in Charlottesville, where they could be “in full Assurance of being unmolested by the Enemy.”
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Jefferson remained in Richmond for another week, but just as Rochambeau and Washington were sitting down together in Weathersfield, the governor arrived at Monticello. At almost the same instant, Cornwallis marched into Petersburg, Virginia, where he had ordered Phillips to bring his army. The British commander was eager for action, and victories. At about the same time that Virginia’s legislature convened in Charlottesville, Cornwallis crossed the James River and set off to destroy Lafayette: “The Boy cannot escape me,” he allegedly remarked. But Lafayette—as he had indicated to Jefferson—had no intention of standing and fighting. “Was I to fight a Battle I’ll be Cut to pieces,” he said. Retreating deep into the interior of the state, Lafayette escaped Cornwallis, much as Greene had in North Carolina. After a week of fruitless chasing about, Cornwallis changed course. He divided his force. He would continue to look for Lafayette, but he detached the Queen’s Rangers to go after Steuben’s small force while Colonel Tarleton, with 250 of his Green Dragoons—a troop of Tory cavalrymen—was ordered to Charlottesville to find and capture Virginia’s governor and legislature.
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Though Jefferson and the assemblymen were aware by May 29 or 30 that a sizable body of redcoats was only thirty miles away, they continued to believe they were safe. There were some Continentals and militia between Charlottesville and Cornwallis, and besides, if a threat materialized, some imagined that Lafayette would arrive to offer protection.

The legislature met daily in the Albemarle County Courthouse and the Swan Tavern. Nearby at Monticello, Jefferson tended to his heavy official correspondence—he wrote thirty-one letters in his final ten days in office—met daily with legislators (among other things he proposed the drafting of slaves to serve as laborers in the construction of fortifications), and conducted diplomacy with John Baptiste Ducoigne, a Kaskaskia sachem from the Illinois country, who called on him at Monticello. At some point after the legislature assembled—possibly when the assemblymen were still in Richmond—Jefferson formally announced that he would not accept a third term. It hardly came as a surprise. Jefferson had long since told others of his plan to leave office, confiding even in the French chargé d’affaires in Philadelphia.
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Since early in the month, some assemblymen had talked of granting the governor dictatorial powers. Some thought that Patrick Henry was conspiring not only to be reelected but also to have the assembly vest him with emergency, perhaps autocratic, powers. It was a view that Jefferson came to share. In mid-May, Jefferson tacitly recommended an increase in the chief executive’s authority. Nothing mattered now but managing the defense of the state, he told the assembly, adding that this was a job for which he was “unprepared by his line of life and education.” As the state needed someone skilled in “the
command of armies,” Jefferson urged the election of General Thomas Nelson, the commander of the state’s militia, as his successor. Furthermore, Jefferson proposed that Nelson be permitted to continue to command the militia while serving as governor, as “this … would greatly facilitate military measures.” Inexplicably, the legislators did not immediately select a new governor after reconvening in Charlottesville. They scheduled the election for Monday, June 4, forty-eight hours after Jefferson’s term ended.
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Jefferson was subsequently criticized for not having remained in office until his successor was sworn in. But he was a stickler when it came to observing the letter of the constitution, and his term was over. Besides, the legislature never asked him to stay on. His term ended on a Saturday. Had Monday been a normal day, it is conceivable that the assembly might have asked him to remain in office for a few more days until his successor arrived and took the oath of office. It is possible, too, that Jefferson would have consented. However, Monday was anything but normal.