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 render 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 suppose 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.[14]
Again he writes:
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.[15]
At the end of the second year of his term Jefferson resigned his commission as Governor. The state of Mrs. Jefferson's health was at this time a source of great anxiety to him, and he promised her, when he left public life on this occasion, that he would never again leave her to accept any office or take part in political life. Saddened by the deaths of her children, and with a constitution weakened by disease, her condition was truly alarming, and wrung the heart of her devoted husband as he watched her failing day by day. He himself met with an accident about this time—a fall from his horse—which, though not attended with serious consequences, kept him, for two or three weeks, more closely confined in the house than it was his habit to be.
It was during this confinement that he wrote the principal part of his "Notes on Virginia." He had been in the habit of committing to writing any information about the State which he thought would be of use to him in any station, public or private; and receiving a letter from M. De Marbois, the French ambassador, asking for certain statistical accounts of the State of Virginia, he embodied the substance of the information he had so acquired and sent it to him in the form of the "Notes on Virginia."
A charming picture of Monticello and its inmates at that day is found in "Travels in North America, by the Marquis De Chastellux." This accomplished French nobleman visited Jefferson in the spring of 1782. After describing his approach to the foot of the southwest range of mountains, he says:
On the summit of one of them we discovered the house of Mr. Jefferson, which stands pre-eminent in these retirements; it was himself who built it, and preferred this situation; for although he possessed considerable property in the neighborhood, there was nothing to prevent him from fixing his residence wherever he thought proper. But it was a debt Nature owed to a philosopher, and a man of taste, that in his own possessions he should find a spot where he might best study and enjoy her. He calls his house Monticello (in Italian, Little Mountain), a very modest title, for it is situated upon a very lofty one, but which announces the owner's attachment to the language of Italy; and, above all, to the fine arts, of which that country was the cradle, and is still the asylum. As I had no further occasion for a guide, I separated from the Irishman; and after ascending by a tolerably commodious road for more than half an hour we arrived at Monticello. This house, of which Mr. Jefferson was the architect, and often one of the workmen, is rather elegant, and in the Italian taste, though not without fault; it consists of one large square pavilion, the entrance of which is by two porticoes, ornamented with pillars. The ground-floor consists of a very large lofty saloon, which is to be decorated entirely in the antique style; above it is a library of the same form; two small wings, with only a ground-floor and attic story, are joined to this pavilion, and communicate with the kitchen, offices, etc., which will form a kind of basement story, over which runs a terrace.
My object in this short description is only to show the difference between this and the other houses of the country; for we may safely aver that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the fine arts to know how he should shelter himself from the weather.
But it is on himself alone I ought to bestow my time. Let me describe to you a man, not yet forty, tall and with a mild and pleasing countenance, but whose mind and understanding are ample substitutes for every exterior grace. An American, who, without ever having quitted his own country, is at once a musician, skilled in drawing, a geometrician, an astronomer, a natural philosopher, legislator, and statesman. A Senator of America, who sat for two years in that body which brought about the Revolution; and which is never mentioned without respect, though unhappily not without regret, a Governor of Virginia, who filled this difficult station during the invasions of Arnold, of Phillips, and of Cornwallis; a philosopher, in voluntary retirement from the world and public business because he loves the world, in as much only as he can flatter himself with being useful to mankind, and the minds of his countrymen are not yet in a condition either to bear the light or suffer contradiction. A mild and amiable wife, charming children, of whose education he himself takes charge, a house to embellish, great provisions to improve, and the arts and sciences to cultivate; these are what remain to Mr. Jefferson, after having played a principal character on the theatre of the New World, and which he preferred to the honorable commission of Minister Plenipotentiary in Europe.
The visit which I made him was not unexpected, for he had long since invited me to come and pass a few days with him in the centre of the mountains; notwithstanding which, I found his appearance serious—nay even cold, but before I had been two hours with him, we were as intimate as if we had passed our whole lives together; walking, books, but above all, a conversation always varied and interesting, always supported by the sweet satisfaction experienced by two persons, who, in communicating their sentiments and opinions, are invariably in unison, and who understand each other at the first hint, made four days pass away like so many minutes.
This conformity of opinions and sentiments on which I insist because it constitutes my own eulogium (and self-love must somewhere show itself), this conformity, I say, was so perfect, that not only our taste was similar, but our predilections also; those partialities which cold methodical minds ridicule as enthusiastic, while sensible and animated ones cherish and adopt the glorious appellation. I recollect with pleasure that as we were conversing over a bowl of punch, after Mrs. Jefferson had retired, our conversation turned on the poems of Ossian. It was a spark of electricity which passed rapidly from one to the other; we recollected the passages in those sublime poems which particularly struck us, and entertained my fellow-travellers, who fortunately knew English well, and were qualified to judge of their merits, though they had never read the poems. In our enthusiasm the book was sent for, and placed near the bowl, where, by their mutual aid, the night far advanced imperceptibly upon us.
Sometimes natural philosophy, at others politics or the arts, were the topics of our conversation, for no object had escaped Mr. Jefferson; and it seemed as if from his youth he had placed his mind, as he has done his house, on an elevated situation, from which he might contemplate the universe.[16]
Mr. Jefferson—continues the Marquis—amused himself by raising a score of these animals (deer) in his park; they are become very familiar, which happens to all the animals of America; for they are in general much easier to tame than those of Europe. He amuses himself by feeding them with Indian corn, of which they are very fond, and which they eat out of his hand. I followed him one evening into a deep valley, where they are accustomed to assemble towards the close of the day, and saw them walk, run, and bound; but the more I examined their paces, the less I was inclined to annex them to any particular species in Europe. Mr. Jefferson being no sportsman, and not having crossed the seas, could have no decided opinion on this part of natural history; but he has not neglected the other branches.
I