Jefferson and Hamilton (24 page)

On Sunday, Jefferson penned a few final official letters, closing the books on his tenure as chief executive.
³⁹
He did not know that while he was at his desk, Tarleton and his green-clad horsemen had set off for Charlottesville.

The horse soldiers moved rapidly. They covered seventy miles in twenty-four hours, and might have captured Jefferson and all the assemblymen had their arrival in Charlottesville been a total surprise. But Tarleton’s force was spotted sometime around midnight, when it was still about forty miles from its destination. John Jouett, a twenty-six-year-old native of Charlottesville, was enjoying the libation at the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa when Tarleton and his men thundered past. Jouett, the son of the proprietor of the Swan Tavern, where the legislature had sometimes met, knew instantly that Jefferson and the assembly were in great peril. He leaped on his horse and rode with abandon, taking shortcuts unknown to Tarleton. Jouett won the race to Charlottesville by some ninety minutes. His first stop was at Monticello. He may have chosen to warn Jefferson first, as he thought the governor would be Tarleton’s most likely target. Or Jouett may have begun at Jefferson’s residence because he knew that the presiding officers of both houses of the legislature, and a few assemblymen, were lodging there.
⁴⁰

Much that happened after Jouett pounded on Monticello’s front door at about four thirty A.M. remains a mystery. Over the years, Jefferson’s enemies spread the story that he had fled precipitously. Friends claimed he had carelessly lingered, eating breakfast and even having his horse shod before departing.

The truth is somewhere in between. It appears that Jefferson must have remained at Monticello for around ninety minutes after he was awakened. He
dressed, ordered that a carriage be readied for his wife and daughters, and probably loaded some valuables in it. He saw to the departure of his guests, either hid some precious possessions or directed trusted slaves to do so, and burned some papers while stuffing other documents in his satchel bags. Jefferson knew that the British would first have to come through Charlottesville, which he could look down on with his well-worn spyglass, and he took the precaution of posting reliable servants as lookouts along the steep road that led to his hilltop home. He knew that he did not have much time, but he had to know that he had some time. Though taken by surprise on that June 4 morning, Jefferson had known that such an emergency could happen, and he must have previously planned his escape in the event of a worst-case scenario. Martha and the girls were to go to Enniscorthy, an acquaintance’s estate fourteen miles to the south, where he would later join them. They left well before he did.

As Jefferson expected, Tarleton entered Charlottesville first (where he captured seven assemblymen, who had lingered to burn papers, and Daniel Boone, who happened to be in town). Only moments after Tarleton entered the village, he ordered Captain Kenneth McLeod, with a party of twenty or more, to hurry to Monticello and seize Jefferson. McLeod and his troopers spurred their mounts, galloping toward Jefferson’s mansion, never slowing as they charged up the winding and muddy road leading to it. Swinging from their sweaty horses, the troopers burst into the residence. It was empty save for Martin Hemings, a slave who was hiding his owner’s silver. He likely told McLeod that Jefferson had long since departed, and the British officer must have believed him. What sort of fool would have delayed his flight until the enemy soldiers were nearly at his front door? Even if Hemings was lying, McLeod must have suspected that Jefferson was intimately familiar with myriad paths through the virgin forest. With even the slightest head start, he would be impossible to find. McLeod did ask where Jefferson was going. Hemings insisted that he had no knowledge of Jefferson’s plans. Apparently finding it plausible that a master would not confide in his chattel, McLeod dropped the matter. He pursued his prey no further.
⁴¹

Jefferson had made his getaway. Unconfirmed reports said that he departed on Caractacus, reputed to be one of the fastest horses in the state, only five minutes before McLeod arrived.
⁴²
He probably had not cut it that closely, but Jefferson had not been gone long when the enemy reached his door.

In subsequent years, Jefferson’s flight was depicted by his political enemies as a cowardly act. But if Jefferson behaved cravenly, he had plenty of company: The members of the Continental Congress had twice fled the approaching British army; Samuel Adams and John Hancock had scurried to safety
from Lexington, Massachusetts, on the day in 1775 when the British army arrived and started the Revolutionary War; General Washington had retreated on numerous occasions in the face of the enemy; and Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton had taken flight after coming under fire while on his mission to destroy flour mills outside Philadelphia. In fact, none of these men had acted in a cowardly fashion. All had acted prudently. Capture meant a lengthy, possibly lethal, confinement in a British prison. Jefferson had to know that if the war was lost—and victory was far from certain in June 1781—he might never be freed. Moreover, he could only imagine what his captors might do with him if they discovered that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence.

In the pale light of early morning, Jefferson rode down the hilltop and into the cool, dark forest, heavy with the dank scent of decay brought on by spring rains. A good horseman, he rode swiftly, up steep wooded slopes, down into foggy hollows, and now and again along flush green ridges. He was hurrying toward Enniscorthy, though he had no plans to linger there; it was too close to the British army. Jefferson was reunited with Martha and the children in mid-morning, but he paused only briefly before resuming his journey. His destination now was the home of Robert Rose, an old family friend who lived some fifty miles southwest of Monticello. Jefferson remained on horseback. Martha, who had neither physically nor emotionally recovered from her last pregnancy and the recent loss of Lucy Elizabeth, rode in the carriage with the two girls. The roads were primitive, and streams had to be forded. It was not an easy trip, and to the travelers’ general discomfort was added the omnipresent possibility of running upon a British patrol. But no enemy soldiers troubled them. The family stayed that Monday night at the residence of Thomas Jopling, probably a stranger, whom Jefferson paid a whopping £45 to cover their expenses. (According to Jefferson lore, another family had earlier refused them lodging, fearing reprisal by the British army.) Before finally reaching Rose’s estate on Tuesday, Jefferson purchased supplies for £123 at a general store.
⁴³

Satisfied that his wife and children were safe with the Roses, Jefferson started back to Monticello on Thursday, anxious to learn whether the house he had lovingly constructed over the past fourteen years was still standing. On Saturday, five days after fleeing, Jefferson completed his one-hundred-mile round-trip on horseback. To his utter amazement, he found that Monticello was undamaged and his slave labor force intact. Enemy soldiers had been on his property for eighteen hours and, aside from consuming a good bit of his wine, “Captn. Mc.leod preserved every thing with sacred care,” as Jefferson subsequently remarked. But not all of his properties were so fortunate.
He soon learned that his Elkhill plantation on the James River, which he had gained through marriage, had been Cornwallis’s headquarters for ten days. The seven thousand redcoats and hundreds of camp followers—wives, mistresses, and freedmen—had reduced the estate to “an absolute waste” and “carried off also about 30 slaves.”
⁴⁴

Jefferson and his family spent most of that summer at Poplar Forest, an estate some eighty miles southwest of Monticello that he had long before inherited. There was not the slightest possibility that the British would strike there. Still reeling from the heavy burdens and misfortunes that had been his fate as governor, Jefferson decided during that summer to take his “final leave of every thing” concerned with public life.
⁴⁵
His political career had seemed to come to an end before his fortieth birthday.

But politics would not leave him be. The legislature, which had also been on the run, reconvened in Staunton on the same day that Jefferson left the Roses to return to Monticello. With passions still at a fever pitch, the assemblymen wasted no time before adopting a motion to investigate Jefferson’s “Catalogue of omissions, and other Misconduct.” The inquiry was to take place at the autumn session of the House of Delegates. George Nicholas had introduced the motion, but Patrick Henry, once Jefferson’s friend, was the guiding light behind the probe. Jefferson was livid. He suspected that some were seeking to settle old scores and others were looking for a scapegoat. He seethed that the legislature would “stab a reputation … under a bare expectation that facts might be afterwards hunted up to boulster it.”
⁴⁶
(Ironically, two days later the United States Congress selected Jefferson to be part of the five-member team of commissioners to negotiate peace with Great Britain, if and when negotiations commenced.)
⁴⁷

During the summer, Jefferson was made aware of the details of the inquiry. The questions to be answered revolved about Arnold’s January 1781 raid. The legislature proposed to investigate the steps that Jefferson had taken, or failed to take, including the following: Had he put in place adequate lookouts, post riders, and a system of signals? Had he ignored Washington’s warning? Had he acted slowly in summoning the militia? Had he made inadequate preparations for the transport of heavy artillery? Had he abandoned some installations without a fight? Was he responsible for a “total want of opposition to Arnold.”
⁴⁸

Jefferson fumed for months as he awaited the probe. Nicholas, a “trifling” man of “natural ill-temper,” was “below contempt,” he said privately. But he was merely the “tool” of Henry, an individual who flourished in political “turbulence,” and who had pushed the investigation to further his own ends. So indignant was Jefferson that despite his vow to leave politics forever, he
successfully sought reelection to his old Albemarle County seat in the legislature. He was determined to defend his reputation and honor, and no less passionate about a face-to-face confrontation with Nicholas, Henry, and all other detractors.

What Jefferson could not know in July was that by December, a decisive military event would occur that would change everything.

About three weeks after Jefferson fled the British, Alexander Hamilton departed Albany, where he had spent a month with his pregnant wife, and rejoined Washington’s army. He sped back when he learned that Rochambeau’s army was marching from Rhode Island to rendezvous with its ally outside Manhattan.

Hamilton had been in limbo since quitting as Washington’s aide back in February. Though no longer officially an aide, he nevertheless had continued to work for the commander through the winter and spring. But when he returned to the army in June, Hamilton had no official duties. Subsequently, he claimed to have written to Washington to resign his commission, though it seems improbable that he would have taken such a rash step, especially with the allied armies gathering and a campaign at last seemingly about to occur. True, he had told his wife that marriage had “intirely changed” him, stripping away “all the public and splendid passions,” leaving him “absorbed” only with his family. But more than anything, Hamilton during the spring and summer of 1781 appears to have been conflicted, torn between a desire to be with his family and an enduring passion for acclaim. If he did write to Washington, it was probably as a last effort to persuade the commander to give him a field command. All that can be known for certain is that early in July, through an intermediary, Washington assured Hamilton that he would receive a command. Three weeks later, on the last day of the month, Hamilton was given command of a New York light infantry battalion.
⁴⁹

During the preceding six weeks, Hamilton had confessed that there was nothing of “importance to occupy my attention.” However, he was never an idler.
⁵⁰
He spent the time writing four long essays titled “The Continentalist” for a New York newspaper. In them, Hamilton reflected on America’s decentralized political system and enervated national government. It was his first public swipe at the Articles of Confederation, and the beginning of his ceaseless endeavors to establish a more powerful national government. Composed while he anguished over the unlikely prospect of obtaining glory in the coming military campaign, Hamilton’s rancor toward Washington was evident at times, though he was careful never to mention the commander by name.

When governments are too weak, he began, “the ruin of the people” was
inevitable. Implying that a law of centrifugal force was at work, he said that a weak government would “continually grow weaker,” destroying the “general interest” of the Union. This evil was already apparent. Even during the present desperate war, some states had not complied with Congress’s demands. Worse still was the economic collapse, which had occurred because “Our whole system is in disorder.” America was shackled with this toxic threat even as “a force under Cornwallis [remained] still formidable to Virginia.” (Never mentioning the British in New York, Hamilton, like Jefferson, seemed to be saying that America’s most pressing military concerns were in the South.) America, he continued, now found itself in its greatest crisis. In what likely was a criticism of Washington’s years of inactivity, Hamilton wrote that America had underestimated “how difficult it must be to exhaust the resources of a nation … like that of Great Britain.” Those in power had not only erroneously gambled that time was America’s ally, but they had also “never calculated the contingencies” that could arise in a long war. The bright prospects brought about by the victory at Saratoga were long gone; the enemy had retaken two colonies in the Lower South. But matters could be saved if “without delay” it was agreed “to ENLARGE THE POWERS OF CONGRESS,” providing it with the authority to tax and create a sovereign national government, steps which alone could lead to the “restoration of public credit.”
⁵¹