Miracles and Massacres Read online

  Unaware that Jouett was dashing ahead via the backwoods trails to Monticello, Tarleton and his men rested for several hours at a large plantation near the Louisa Court House. Tarleton sat near at his own private fire at the edge of camp, satisfied that they’d ridden that night with duty and purpose, if not breathless urgency.

  Weeks earlier, General Cornwallis had been provided with an intercepted dispatch revealing that Thomas Jefferson and members of the Virginia legislature had convened in Charlottesville. Cornwallis assigned the task of tracking and capturing Jefferson to Colonel Tarleton, an officer Cornwallis admired for his athleticism, strength, and daring. For better and sometimes, Cornwallis knew, for worse, Tarleton was known for impatience in battle.

  Tarleton had found great personal satisfaction and public acclaim for early-war success in raids carried out in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. When the war moved south, Tarleton added to his fearsome reputation at the battles of Cowpens, Blackstocks, Fishing Creek, Camden, Monck’s Corner, and Charleston. But it was at Waxhaws, South Carolina, that his legacy had finally been sealed. There Tarleton attacked the unprepared Continental Army with a vengeance and overwhelmed them. With surrender the Americans’ only option, Tarleton coldly ignored their white flag and allowed his troops to butcher as many patriot soldiers as they could. More than one hundred Continentals died and another two hundred were injured or captured.

  “Sir, may I?” One of the younger British Dragoons approached Tarleton at the fire’s edge as the other men rested to prepare for the rest of the ride to Monticello.

  Tarleton nodded without looking up, and the two men sat in silence for a long time. “Did you know I was just twenty-three years of age when promoted to lieutenant colonel of the British Legion?” Tarleton finally asked.

  “I did not,” the young soldier said.

  Tarleton looked at him. “But they say my legend is even older than I am.” For the next half hour the leader of the Dragoons spoke in the third person, painting himself as a rare breed who was simultaneously fearless and feared by others.

  “Colonel Banastre Tarleton doesn’t desire acclaim from the throne for his courage alone, but also for his genius. Our gracious Royal does not always appreciate a soldier whose mind is as sharp as his sword.”

  After another round of silence, the young soldier finally mustered up the courage to voice the question he’d come over to ask. “So is it true? About the names they use for you?”

  Tarleton smiled, knowing he’d earned his monikers honestly. “You refer to ‘Butcher Man’ and ‘Bloody Tarleton,’ I assume?”

  The soldier nodded.

  “I am, indeed, more hated by the traitors than most of our countrymen. Some of the things they say I’ve done are true. Some are not. But Colonel Banastre Tarleton does not choose to quarrel with the differences.” He paused to stifle a little chuckle—one tinged more with cruelty than wit.

  Tarleton poked the fire and a dozen embers raced up into the night sky. “They say that to ask you,” he pointed to the soldier, “and my other Green Dragoons for surrender is futile. I hear they now call it ‘Tarleton Quarter.’ ”

  The soldier sat motionless as Tarleton described how the enemy had turned the phrase back on the Legion. When encountering surrendering British troops, the Colonials took no mercy. Hardly offended, Tarleton told the young man and several others who’d now gathered at the fire that he took pride in the enemy adopting the term and tactic. “Imitation, after all, is the greatest form of flattery.”

  The dragoon laughed nervously until Tarleton pulled him up short with an order, raising his thunderous shout so that all around him might hear. “Now, let us show them through action whether the words they say about Banastre Tarleton are indeed true. To Charlottesville!”

  • • •

  Several miles up the road from where they’d rested, Colonel Tarleton came across a caravan of twelve American supply wagons with clothing and arms headed for South Carolina. He took great pleasure in burning it.

  As flames filled the Piedmont sky, Tarleton hoped the winds would move the thick smoke away from Monticello. He wondered aloud to a lieutenant whether Jefferson’s servants would be taking turns throughout the night watching guard. Or perhaps Jefferson thought the grounds of his cherished Monticello provided ignorant, blissful security. “Let them sleep,” he said, watching another supply wagon smolder.

  Soon after daybreak, Tarleton and his soldiers stopped at Castle Hill, home of Dr. Thomas Walker, who had once been guardian to the young, orphaned Thomas Jefferson. Tarleton arrested two legislators in their nightshirts and grinned at the thought that the day’s successes had only just begun. Before leaving Walker’s large estate, Tarleton ordered Dr. Walker and his wife to prepare a breakfast for the hungry British Legion. With full stomachs and renewed vigor, Tarleton and his Dragoons resumed their race toward Charlottesville. But his full belly came at a high price: the cost of precious time lost in the pursuit of his great prize, Thomas Jefferson.

  Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello Estate

  4:30 A.M.

  “Faster, Sallie!” Jouett flashed through the final line of trees and across the meadow in front of Monticello. “Go!” Moments later he leapt from the horse and, without bothering to hitch her, sprinted down the brick path to the front door of Jefferson’s home.

  “Arise! Arise!” Jouett pounded on the heavy door just before sunrise. “Bloody Tarleton and his Green Dragoons are not far behind!”

  A servant appeared and rushed Jouett into the home, where Jefferson met them in the spacious front hall. “What is it?” Jefferson demanded, adjusting his silken night robe as he entered. But his concern for his own disheveled appearance vanished at the sight of the bloody and battered Jouett. “My Lord, what is it? You’ve escaped capture?”

  “No, sir,” gasped Jefferson’s visitor. “I’m Captain Jack Jouett. Sixteenth regiment of the Virginia militia.”

  “Of course.”

  “Governor, a large force of British is approaching Charlottesville. They’re led by Tarleton!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am.”

  “How many in his command?” Jefferson asked, his manner growing more grave with each syllable.

  “Two hundred, maybe more. Most of them Green Dragoons.”

  “Have they arrived in town?” Jefferson asked as his houseguests, woken by the commotion, began arriving in the hall.

  “I cannot say. I’ve ridden through the night from Louisa on back trails and they’re moving on the main road.”

  Jefferson extended a hand to Jouett and took closer notice of his torn clothes and scratched, bruised face. “Well done.” He turned to a servant. “When the soldiers arrive, raise the flag over the dome. Retract it only when they’ve left and it’s safe to return.” He pivoted to his houseguests and announced with authority, “Gentlemen, let us secure our belongings quickly and depart.”

  As the others dressed, Jefferson calmly ate breakfast, sorted through sensitive state papers crucial for the success or failure of the revolution, and gathered his wife and children to be sent twenty miles to the west. There they would take refuge at the Enniscorthy Plantation, home of his friend and business associate Colonel John Coles.

  Jefferson had not a moment to spare as Tarleton’s crack cavalrymen and Royal Welsh mounted infantry began to invade the grounds of his estate. But even under the intense pressure, he could not forgo his pronounced sense of southern hospitality. “A glass of madeira, Captain Jouett?” Jefferson asked.

  “Yes, Governor,” answered Jouett with a smile. “I think I could use one right about now.”

  Soon the preparations were complete.

  “God bless Charlottesville,” Jefferson whispered before mounting the horse that had been saddled for him. The governor looked at his home one last time before kicking the stallion and riding up nearby Carter’s Mountain. As he did, enemy horsemen clattered through his front door, riding through the entire depth of his great mansion�
�and out the back.

  And God bless Jack Jouett.

  At a safe distance from the advancing Dragoons, Jefferson stopped for one last look at his beloved Monticello—and sadly watched as a flag of occupation was raised over its stately dome.

  Swan Tavern

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  9:00 A.M.

  As Jefferson and the other legislators fled, Jouett rode furiously to his father’s inn. He burst through the front door, with the sight of his crimson British uniform startling the elder Jouett, who soon recovered his senses, however, and the two embraced. Quickly, Jack warned him and the several Virginia legislators he sheltered to flee for Staunton, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley.

  He relayed the prior evening’s ride and his father’s eyes gleamed with pride, for John Jouett Sr. was as great a patriot as his son. He had risked his life to sign the crucial Albemarle Declaration of 1779, which supported independence; provided beef for Continental armies; had two other sons in George Washington’s service; and had lost a fourth son at the 1777 Battle of Brandywine.

  When the young captain finished, the elder Jouett told him, “Your work isn’t done yet, son. General Edward Stevens is here and he’s wounded in the thigh. He was hit at Guilford Court House in North Carolina and is still too unsteady to run. He’s healing, but not yet strong enough, I fear, to survive a chase.”

  Jouett knew that Tarleton’s potential capture of Stevens, who was also a state senator, would fuel British confidence. The general’s lack of mobility was a problem, but he had a plan. With his father’s help, Jouett assembled a small militia to meet the British at the river. Then they disguised the general in a shabby cloak and helped him mount a borrowed horse.

  Meanwhile, Jack Jouett dressed himself in a clean blue Continental uniform and made off in the other direction aboard Sallie. He was barely finished and mounted when the British began to close in. Tarleton and his men soon spotted Jouett, whom they correctly assumed to be an American officer, and gave frantic chase, ignoring Edwards entirely.

  Jouett led the British on a winding pursuit through the woods, smiling all the way. Just as his all-night ride had allowed Jefferson to escape, this midmorning ride would do the same for General Stevens.

  When the exhausted British finally gave up, Jouett stopped to let his horse drink from a creek not far from where he’d started the previous night at Cuckoo Tavern. Jouett took a long drink, too, letting the cool water run down his neck and into his uniform.

  A breeze kissed the trees and his faithful horse gave a grateful whinny.

  “I know, Sallie. I know.”

  EPILOGUE

  Colonel Tarleton had arrived in Charlottesville not long after Jouett had come through to warn its citizens. Tarleton and his men destroyed goods and uniforms, along with hundreds of muskets and barrels of gunpowder. They also freed a number of prisoners and captured seven remaining assemblymen, including Daniel Boone. All were later released unharmed.

  When the Virginia legislature reconvened in Staunton three days later, they voted to reward Jouett’s heroics with an elegant sword and a pair of pistols. They recognized immediately what many others would not learn for days, months, years, or, perhaps, ever: Jack Jouett’s courageous ride may have saved not only Jefferson and a slew of other patriots, but also the very country they were so desperately fighting to free.

  Later that year, in October 1781, Lieutenant General Lord Charles Cornwallis found himself outwitted and surrounded at Yorktown. Brigadier General Edward Stevens, whose life Jouett very well may have saved, led the Third Brigade—750 men—during the battle.

  Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the revolution that, if not for Jack Jouett, the “Paul Revere of the South,” and his incredible ride four months earlier, might have been lost.

  2

  Shays’ Rebellion:

  A Loud and Solemn Lesson

  Mount Vernon

  Fairfax County, Virginia

  October 12, 1785

  “I’ll ride out to the front gate with you, James,” George Washington said to his young visitor upon the end of his three-day visit.

  “Oh, you don’t have to do that, sir,” answered thirty-four-year-old James Madison. But the look on Washington’s face indicated that this offer wasn’t simply a courtesy; his host had something more to say.

  Madison, returning to his beloved Virginia from official business in Philadelphia and New York, had stopped at Mount Vernon to consult with Washington—and to vent his frustrations. The nation, the Confederation, was falling apart. The states could not agree on anything, be it taxes, a common defense, or trade either with foreign nations or among themselves. They were not so much a patchwork quilt of pieces sewn together, but thirteen shards of jagged glass, lying haphazardly upon the ground, ready to cut anyone foolish enough to try to reassemble them.

  Before his visit, Madison had strongly suspected that Washington shared his concerns.

  Now, Madison knew he did.

  Riding out to Mount Vernon’s front gate, Washington fumed once more that a stronger national government was essential to protect everything the revolution had been fought for. Madison nodded silently in agreement, his small hand firmly on his large traveling carpetbag.

  The carriage reached the gate and came to a sharp halt. Washington, limber for his fifty-three years, jumped out. Rather than saying goodbye to Madison, he instead handed him a copy of Noah Webster’s new pamphlet advocating a strong national government. “Read this,” he counseled. “We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of general concern, act as a nation. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it.”

  George Washington’s greatest fear was that these United States would fall apart. He worried that individual states would not be able to preserve their own internal order, private property rights, or the validity of their contracts. He worried about lawlessness, anarchy, and chaos taking root in one state and then spreading across the country.

  As Washington bade farewell to Madison on that crisp autumn evening, he had no way of knowing that those fears were less than one year away from becoming reality.

  The Hancock Manor

  30 Beacon Street

  Boston, Massachusetts

  Nine months earlier: January 27, 1785

  “Well, there you have it!” the tall, slim man exclaimed as he finished affixing his grand, sprawling signature to the official document before him.

  Though that signature read “John Hancock,” the document was not the Declaration of Independence, nor was the place Philadelphia, or the date July 4, 1776. Instead, it was nearly a decade later, and the Honorable John Hancock, looking far older than his forty-nine years, sat at a desk in Boston’s Beacon Hill and made his resignation as governor of Massachusetts official.

  “That’s it!” he added for emphasis, hobbling toward the door on his gout-ridden foot. “Time to rest and get well. This body is simply worn out from service to its country. And, I suppose, service to a few other things as well!”

  Everyone in the commonwealth knew very well of John Hancock’s pronounced taste for the finer things in life. Some suspected, however, that it wasn’t really gout or illness that plagued John Hancock, but rather the events occurring in Massachusetts’ rural, western areas. Farmers and townsfolk alike were angry. Personal bankruptcy cases overwhelmed the courts. Massachusetts’ state government suffered from massive debt, and its legislature, the General Court, had drastically raised property and poll taxes to pay it off.

  “I wish I had gout!” Lieutenant Governor Thomas Cushing retorted. But instead of gout, Cushing now had, at least temporarily, the governorship—and all of the problems that came along with it.

  “Yes, I hear you, Mr. Cushing,” Hancock answered. “There’s an anger out there. And it’s been brewing for years. Where will it end?” Hancock shook his head. Was the revolution really fought for this mess?

  “I don’t blame them. Not
entirely, anyway,” he continued. “The new taxes go to pay off the bonds issued during the war. But who gets the money? Not the patriots who originally bought the bonds to help secure our liberty. Or the officers and men who bled at Lexington or Concord and kept fighting on through Yorktown. No, it’s the speculators who bought the paper for pennies on the dollar. They own the bonds—and now they own the citizens of this fine commonwealth as well.”

  Hampshire County Convention

  Hatfield, Massachusetts

  Nineteen months later: August 24, 1786

  “Then, it’s agreed!”

  “Of course, it’s agreed!” came the impatient retort. “We have been here for three days and we know what we want!”

  This was an unruly group, with representatives from fifty towns located in western Massachusetts’ Hampshire County. They had aired their grievances and now had to present a united front against the state government in Boston. But deciding on exactly what that unified front would be was proving difficult.

  Many of the men at the meeting were battle-hardened veterans of the Continental Army. One of them, Colonel Benjamin Bonney, was also acting as the meeting’s chair. “So it’s settled, then,” Bonney said. “We will send the petition to the General Court and to Governor Bowdoin.”

  “Governor Bowdoin!” The name was shouted by a man in the back of the room; the words spat out as if it were Lucifer’s name itself. “That’s a waste of good Massachusetts paper! Our esteemed new governor, as we all know, is one of the biggest bondholders in the entire commonwealth. It is for him and his kind that we are bled white with taxes—so he and his Boston friends can be paid as much and as soon as possible. Yes, by all means, send our petition to King James Bowdoin—it will be fun to watch him use the paper to tally how much our taxes will increase next.”

  “Tell ’em! Tell ’em!” came a rum-soaked exclamation from a young man in a threadbare coat and torn knee breeches. “Tell ’em we can’t afford to pay neither debts nor taxes. We want—we need—paper money printed and accepted for all transactions! We want no more of our money shipped to the Continental Congress! Tell ’em loud and clear: ‘To blazes with the Senate and the courts and lawyers!’ ”