Flashback, June 1781: “Other Midnight Ride” Saves Jefferson

In her cockamamie way, Sarah Palin’s recent visit to Boston has reminded Americans again about how Paul Revere’s ride serves as our eternal symbol of patriotic vigilance. The Beantown jack-of-all-trades got lucky in the afterlife in being lionized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (though I imagine he’s turning over in his grave, angry and thoroughly confused, at the thought that a contemporary politician believed he “warned the British” about their own plans).

To my knowledge, no versifier of similar renown has performed such magic for Jack Jouett Jr. But without the all-night ride, completed June 4, 1781, of this Virginian, not only might Thomas Jefferson have been executed, but the American Revolution as a whole might have been snuffed out with Britain’s capture of members of the government of the large, strategically important state of Virginia.

For the rest of Jefferson’s life, opponents would charge that Jouett’s arduous and brave ride would not have been necessary at all if the Sage of Monticello had adequately performed his duties as governor of Virginia. As with so many politically inspired charges down to this very day, this aspersion on Jefferson’s record blended manifest unfairness with at least some amount of truth.

In my American Presidency seminar in college, our professor tossed out the possibility of one theme for the semester: the performance of those Presidents who served as governors before they reached the White House. Their triumphs and disasters in state capitals, he thought, often foreshadowed how they performed as President.

That observation was especially true of Jefferson’s two years as governor of Virginia. The best way to gauge what he thought of it can be glimpsed by observing the three achievements mentioned on his tombstone at Monticello: “author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia."

Those three items are primarily intellectual, not political, achievements. Nowhere does Jefferson mention that he had gained the highest office in both his state and nation. No wonder: In both cases, he left office profoundly depressed, with his achievements called into question by near-disasters that were at least partly of his own making.

Jefferson had just finished his second one-year term as governor the day before Jouett, a resident of Charlottesville, took off to warn him that the British were on their way to capture him. Jefferson couldn’t have been happier to relinquish his post: Virginia, suspicious of executive power, had not only vested its governor with no independent veto power, no appointive power, no power to call out the militia, but had left him bound by the decisions of an eight-man Council of State elected by the Assembly.

At key moments in the developing military crisis of early 1781, the Council of State hamstrung Jefferson, being unable several times to meet a quorum and, in one instance, rejecting his plea to create a standing Virginia army. However, in several ways, Jefferson made critical errors of his own in dealing with British invaders into Virginia’s heartland:

* he had ignored intelligence, in September and December 1780, from both Generals Horatio Gates and George Washington, that the British were planning assaults southward from New York or, more specifically, directly at Portsmouth;
* he had dispatched as many troops from the state as he could to assist George Rogers Clark on his military mission into present-day Ohio, Indiana and Illinois—giving later American negotiators in Paris an invaluable assist in claiming this as American territory, but in the meantime leaving Viriginia's coastal defenses badly undermanned;
* he had waited two days after learning that unknown ships had landed in the Chesapeake before calling out the militia or requesting an emergency meeting of the Council of State.

One element in particular made Jefferson’s two terms as governor an unfortunate dress rehearsal for his two terms as President: a ghastly underestimation of the value of naval power. After six weeks in office, he had concluded that “we should be gainers were we to burn our whole navy.” Thirty years later, as the War of 1812 was just about to ensue, the ex-President advised one confidante that seizing Canada would be “a mere matter of marching,” and his belief that small coastal gunboats instead of frigates would be sufficient to defend the country proved a dismal failure when the British came ashore and burned Washington.

It’s hard to know how Jefferson, who implemented so many ingenious schemes around Monticello, could be so impractical about defense matters. Perhaps it was a byproduct of a visionary nature that could see so much in the distance but so little in front of his own nose. (Of the three Virginian Democratic-Republicans, it was James Monroe, the one judged blessed with the smallest amount of intellect, who had the best grasp of military matters—but that might have resulted from his three years he spent in the Continental Army—three years more than Jefferson and Madison spent combined.)

The result, in the first half of 1781, was a pair of near-catastrophes at the hands of two of the British army’s most despised officers. In early January, Jefferson and the legislature had to flee Richmond (a site chosen as state capital because, ironically, it would be easier to defend that Williamsburg, located closer to the coast) to avoid capture at the hands of Benedict Arnold. Then in early June, Col. Banastre Tarleton made a dash toward Charlottesville to capture the assembly, which were planning to reconvene there following Arnold’s raid on Richmond.

Several prominent patriots—including Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee in town and Jefferson in Monticello—were within the reach of the man that the patriots had taken to calling “Bloody Ban” for what they saw as his war crimes. In his characteristic vigorous fashion, Tarleton had covered tremendous ground in bringing his troops to this point.

Tarleton had stopped his men to rest on June 3 at a tavern when Jouett overheard their plans. As inconspicuously as he could, the 26-year-old Charlottesville resident—a bear of a man—dashed out of the Cuckoo Tavern and made his extraordinary ride to Charlottesville.

Though Jouett’s adventures over the next 24 hours are unsung nowadays, his ride was more astounding than Revere’s:

* Revere’s ride to Concord was only 15 miles; Jouett’s was more than 40;
* Revere had the help of two other riders, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott, the last of whom actually completed the ride to Concord; Jouett made the trip entirely by himself.
* Jouett, to escape British detection, rode virtually the entire way on backroads, through vines, brambles, and potholes.

Jouett reached Jefferson by 4:30 in the morning. The latter is said to have coolly offered the rider some of his choice Madeira to fortify him for the last leg of his trip to Charlottesville to warn members of the assembly gathered there to leave.

You can only imagine how Jefferson must have felt when he heard this latest bit of news from Jouett: anxiety for his household, relief that he’d be able to make his getaway just in time, but also a feeling something like that great line from Dorothy Parker: “What fresh hell is this?” His wife Martha had just experienced another difficult pregnancy, and she was showing less resiliency than before. (She would, in fact, die a year later, leaving her husband so disconsolate that he refused to leave his room for three weeks.)

Now Jefferson had to deal with a government that he technically no longer headed but whose successor was weeks away from taking office, as well as a household on the brink of danger. (Some historians have argued that, contrary to his reputation as “Bloody Ban,” Tarleton had given strict orders that private property would not be harmed. But even if that were true, the British would still be practicing a kind of predecessor of the neutron bomb: i.e., minimizing property damage while maximizing the pain felt by people. Thus, having put his signature to the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson would be on the short list of politicians measured by the British for the noose if captured.)

After sending his wife and family to safety at a friend’s home, Jefferson rode off, leaving the estate in the care of two slaves, Martin Hemings and Caesar. From the stories passed down over the years, the slaves suffered more at the hands of the British than their master did. When the first British horseman rode up to Monticello, Hemings slammed down the floorboard of the east portico on poor Caesar, who was hiding the silver plates there. For the next three days, Caesar was trapped under the porch until the redcoats departed. Martin, if the family legend is true, had an even closer call, refusing to divulge Jefferson’ s whereabouts to the redcoats despite a gun pressed against his chest.

What Jefferson faced next was not musket fire from redcoats, but potshots from his countrymen. His conduct during the defense of Richmond had disgusted the Continental Army’s General von Steuben, and now his conduct during Tarleton’s raid led to charges of cowardice. A few days after the enemy had departed, the legislature took up the issue. An impassioned defense by Jefferson led the legislators not only to withdraw the charges, but to thank him for his “impartial, upright, and attentive administration, whilst in office.”

Nevertheless, Jefferson could not embrace private life readily enough after that. That same attitude would be repeated in March 1809, after the Embargo Act--passed by his administration to punish Britain for its impressment of their former sailors on American ships—only ended up devastating American shipping, and plunging his own popularity to its great depth during his eight years as President. Now on the brink of retiring, he couldn’t wait once again to stop sailing on “the boisterous ocean of political passions.”

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Tarleton and the Making of an Atrocity Story)

May 29, 1780—The British called their brief but bloody encounter near the border of North and South Carolina the Battle of Waxhaws Creek. American patriots, however, dubbed it “Buford’s Massacre,” and blamed one commander for it: Col. Banastre Tarleton.

In his biography of Nathanael Greene, Washington’s General, Terry Golway called Tarleton, with some justice, “the most feared British commander of the war.” He was also, arguably, the most controversial: in the case of the closest possible contender, both the Americans he betrayed and the British he joined agreed that they had very little use for Benedict Arnold as a person.

British MP and man of letters Horace Walpole noted that Tarleton boasted of "having butchered more men and lain with more women than anybody else in the army.” But the colonel who headed the British Legion was not accused during and after the American Revolution of having superabundant testosterone. The question was whether or not he was a war criminal.

How you answered that question often depended on whether you were British or American. Even Hollywood has waded into the controversy, with Mel Gibson’s The Patriot featuring a villain based on Tarleton.

Tarleton’s reputation owes much, though not exclusively, to what happened in the Waxhaws District of South Carolina. He’d been assigned by General Charles Cornwallis to use his mixed force of cavalry and light infantry to catch Abraham Buford, one of the few Continental commanders still at large in the Carolinas after the disastrous rebel defeat at Charleston.

Tarleton demonstrated one of his assets as a commander--the ability to move fast--in his pursuit of Buford, covering 100 miles in 54 hours by riding day and night. When he finally got wind that Buford was in the vicinity, Tarleton sent him a note that considerably exaggerated his forces and demanded the Americans' surrender. Buford wouldn’t hear of it.

Using his troops’ speed to maximum advantage, Tarleton quickly crumpled up the Continentals at the resulting battle. When it was all over, 113 Americans were dead and 203 captured.

Tarleton’s claim in his postwar memoir—that his men began to kill indiscriminately after he’d been thrown from his horse and pinned, leading his troops to mistakenly believe he’d been fatally wounded under a flag of truce—has been taken up by his admirers/apologists since then. The colonists had their own story: that Tarleton, not wanting to bother with prisoners, ordered a renewed attack after the rebels surrendered.

The colonists were not above creating atrocity stories to fan propaganda, as had happened 10 years before with the Boston Massacre. (It had fallen to John Adams to win acquittal for the British soldiers charged in that case.) But "Tarleton's Quarter" (i.e., no mercy) became a rallying cry for the Americans in the two-year campaign of escalating intimidation and reprisals that was about to occur in the Carolinas between British troops, loyalists and patriots.(One subsequent example: "Pyle's Hacking Match," when Loyalist troops, falling for the lie by "Light-Horse Harry" Lee--Robert's father--that his legion of patriots were actually Tarleton's dragoons, allowed the rebels to come beside them on the road, where they proceeded to saber, bayonet and shoot their astonished opponents.)

Tarleton’s own actions, before and after Waxhaws, also contributed to his heinous reputation. He roamed through the Carolina countryside, pillaging crops as he went along. For his efforts, the aggressive cavalry rider was dubbed “Bloody Ban” by the Americans.

Tarleton’s comeuppance came the following year, at the Battles of Cowpens, where he lost badly, and Guilford Courthouse, where he lost much of his right hand.

One indication of Tarleton's low estimation in the eyes of the colonists came after Yorktown, when, as part of Cornwallis' defeated forces, the colonel was forced to surrender. He asked special protection from French General Rochambeau, who reluctantly acceded. At a subsequent dinner, American officers invited their British counterparts to dine, but specifically asked that "Bloody Ban" not join them.

His advocates depict Tarleton as, at worst, a bit of a rake, and because of the fog of war it is not certain how much of his villainous reputation is merited. But there was, assuredly, much in his military and political career, even aside from his exploits in the American Revolution, that was not admirable:

* He inherited a good position in life--an upper-class education at Oxford and £5,000--from his father, who had been lord mayor of Liverpool. But, like many sons of the aristocracy, Tarleton gambled the latter away, forcing him to look to the military to start over.

* He did not get along particularly well with superiors. Immediately after the war, he raised a ruckus with a memoir that criticized Cornwallis. Nearly a quarter-century later, he served in the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington--by several accounts, not particularly happily.

* He also served in the military in Ireland, in the period when the British tightened its grip on that country.

* In Parliament, he opposed William Wilberforce's campaign to end slavery in the empire, at least partly because so much of his family wealth was tied up in the practice.

* Many of his countrymen regarded him as a war hero when he came home, at least partly because of his wounds. When he finally won a seat in Parliament, he was not above using these to theatrical effect. "For God and country," he would exclaim at the height of debate, waving his maimed hand in the air lest anyone miss the point.

The image accompanying this post, by the famed portrait painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, shows Tarleton as he wanted to be remembered: not as "Bloody Ban," but dashing, in the heat of battle, wearing a helmet of his own design. The "Tarleton Helmet," with its fur comb over the top and plume at the side made of metal and leather, became a familiar sight among British light cavalry during the Napoleonic Wars. Its inventor managed to live on until 1833, honored in Britain but definitely not in North America.