Miracles and Massacres (3 page)

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.

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!' ”

“Yes, we will tell them all of that,” Colonel Bonney reassured him. “That's what we have agreed to by the vote of all free men present.”

“And, one more thing!” came a Scotch-Irish burr-tinged demand from a man seated to Bonney's right. “We want our demands dispatched to the conventions meeting at Worcester and Lenox as well. They'll be very glad to hear that we Hampshire County men stand strong for our liberties.”

“Agreed, Captain Shays,” answered Colonel Bonney. “Couriers will leave in the morrow.”

And with that, Daniel Shays, a resident of nearby Pelham, tapped the residue from his simple clay pipe and took comfort in the thought that
the common people—he among them—were finally standing up to the wealthy merchants and lawyers of Boston town.

Court of Common Pleas

Hampshire County Courthouse

Northampton, Massachusetts

August 29, 1786

Captain Daniel Shays had not originally cared much for protest. But now, as he stood before Northampton's Hampshire County Courthouse and pondered the accelerating tumult around him, he quickly reconsidered that position.

Shays was approaching forty years of age and he looked every bit of it. He had been born poor, and life had not done much better by him. The little land he owned called for endless, backbreaking work and seemed to result in nothing but an increasing pocketful of debts.

Shays had earned his fine title of “captain” during the revolution, fighting at Saratoga, Bunker Hill, Lexington, and Stony Point—the last engagement under the great Marquis de Lafayette, who had bestowed upon him an elegant gold-handled sword. Shays was, by all accounts, a good soldier, but there were some things about him that rankled his fellow officers. For one thing, he had received his commission for having recruited the private soldiers who served under him, not for any actual battlefield merit. There was also the matter of that sword. Any other patriot would have treasured it, but Shays had quickly sold it to pay a twelve-dollar debt.

And there was one other thing that bothered some of the other officers: in 1780, when pay had run short and morale had run low, many—too many—of George Washington's officers ingloriously departed for home.

Captain Daniel Shays was among them.

•   •   •

Five hundred men marched on Northampton from Daniel Shays' hometown of Pelham. Another column of men, led by Captain Joel Billings, approached from Amherst. Hundreds more swaggered north from West Springfield under the leadership of Captain Luke Day,
another veteran of Lexington. Still more rough-and-ready protesters streamed in from the hill towns to the west. They sported sprigs of green hemlock in their battered hats, carried flags, and marched to the sound of fifes and the threatening beat of drums. Some came outfitted with swords and flintlock muskets; others were armed with just sticks and bludgeons. But this was a real army—at least as real as the one that had appeared in Lexington in April 1775—and look what they had accomplished.