"The Midnight Ride of…"
By Ed Moser
July 2019
Right man. In exactly the right time and place.
He had George Washington’s big, stocky build. Six-foot-four, 225 pounds. An ardent and able patriot soldier of the Revolution. Who had a score to settle.
He’d lost a brother to the forces of General Charles Cornwallis, then ravaging his native Virginia from Williamsburg to Richmond, with his ruthless and skillful deputy, Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Yet this descendant of Norman knights who’d conquered Britain in 1066 feared no Englishman.
On June 3, 1781, a warm, moonlit eve, the 27-year old soldier was resting, enjoying an ale at the Cuckoo Tavern in the Virginia hills east of the Appalachians.
Suddenly he was startled by the sight of Tarleton himself. It was hard to mistake the British commander, resplendent in his bear-fur helmet and green jacket. He was leading 70 mounted infantry and 180 elite dragoons, or cavalrymen. They rushed by the public house. Heading west, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were way behind American lines, on a raid of some sort.
The patriot soldier, John “Jack” Jouett, Jr., instantly realized what was up. Virginia’s legislature, having been chased out of its original capital of Williamsburg, and then sent packing from the new, war-time capital of Richmond, had reconvened in the temporary capital of Charlottesville. Gathered there were other luminaries of the Revolution in the South.
Namely, former and future Governor Patrick Henry, of "Give me liberty or give me death!" fame. The able future Gov. Thomas Nelson, Jr. Also, Benjamin Harrison V, the grandfather and great-grandfather of two future Presidents: William Henry Harrison and his namesake, Benjamin Harrison. Then there was John Tyler, Sr., the Speaker of the General Assembly and father of future President John Tyler, Jr. A few other assemblymen were staying nearby at the Monticello estate of the war-time Governor, and future President, Thomas Jefferson.
Jouett, a Captain in the Virginia militia, put himself in Tarleton’s spurs. If the Brit could bag the patriot assembly in a sneak attack, he could put Jefferson, Henry, Harrison, and the others in a stockade, or on the gallows. And perhaps crush the American Revolution in its then-largest, wealthiest, and most populous state. And maybe deal a death blow to the Revolution as a whole.
The militia officer jumped on his steed. He had to warn the Assembly. Yet he couldn’t take the main route that Tarleton’s force was hurtling along. So, garbed in his own arresting attire of a plumed hat and blood-red cloak, he began racing toward Charlottesville on backcountry trails.
In the dark, along rolling, twisting hills, Jouett felt overhanging branches and low-lying brushes cut into his face and legs. In the light of the moon he raced on, spots of blood sparkling on his flesh. Risking a breakneck fall, he urged his horse onward.
While Jouett spurred his steed non-stop, Col. Tarleton and his raiders paused three times that night. At first to seize eleven wagons of munitions bound for Nathaniel Greene, America’s commanding general in the South. Later for a three-hour rest for his weary horses and men. The third stop during the 70-mile journey was at Castle Hill, the residence of explorer Dr. Thomas Walker.
According to local lore, Walker, a devout patriot, plied Tarleton’s men with a heavy breakfast, complete with wine, thus dulling their minds and slowing their progress. In fact, Tarleton paused but briefly there to water his horses.
Meantime, Jouett rode relentlessly, ignoring the cuts to limbs and head, and the soreness in his arms and back. The bitter memory of his brother’s slaying and his burning affection for the patriot cause blocked out everything else.
At half past four in the morning, after a remarkable, six-and-a-half-hour sprint, he arrived at Monticello. He rode up the steep hill to where the Governor was staying. Accounts differ on whether Jefferson was rustled from bed in robe and slippers or, as an early riser, was working in his gardens. In any case, after lauding Jouett for his exploit, he refreshed the weary soldier with several glasses of Madeira. Jouett then rode on to Charlottesville, two miles away, and warned the assemblage of lawmakers.
Patrick Henry skedaddled, as did Benjamin Harrison V, Thomas Nelson, Jr., John Tyler, Sr., and most of the others. They reassembled 40 miles away in Staunton, Virginia, safely west of the Blue Ridge.
15 years later, in 1796, Alexander Hamilton, that recent star of Broadway, and then fresh from Cabinet battles with his rival Jefferson, accused him of cowardice during the Tarleton raid. The head “of the ancient dominion dwindled into the poor, timid philosopher”, declared the former Treasury Secretary, “and, instead of rallying his brave countrymen, he fled for safety from a few light-horsemen and shamefully abandoned his trust!"
In fact, Jefferson was even-tempered at the approach of the Brits. After seeing off Jouett, he sifted through stacks of state papers to save the most important from the enemy. He instructed several of his household slaves to hide his family valuables.
After strapping on a small sword, Jefferson departed the estate on his horse. Then at some point he realized he’d dropped the blade, and returned to locate it. At which point a second patriot soldier, after riding up to Monticello, gave him the alarming news Tarleton’s men were nearby. With a telescope, the Governor peered down from his mountaintop into Charlottesville. He was startled to see its streets filled with the bright red coats of Tarleton’s mounted infantry and the green-and-white uniforms of his cavalrymen. Some of the troopers were rushing up to Monticello, eager to bag the declarer of America’s fledgling independence.
Jefferson leapt on his horse, and scampered away along a back trail. Just as he did, Tarleton’s men alighted on his front lawn. According to Jefferson family lore, as the Brits approached the mansion, the Governor’s body servant handed the family silverware to Caesar, a slave who was standing in a small cellar beneath the porch. As the royalists came nearer, the body servant sprung the trap door. Caesar remained there silently in the dark for the better part of a day, safeguarding the items until the British left. The time of slavery seems a strange time indeed.
When the British soldiers entered the mansion, they were disappointed at not finding its owner. Following Tarleton’s directives, they left the place untouched, apart from pilfering some cellar wine. (At another of Jefferson’s estates, however, Cornwallis slit the throats of the horses, burned the barns and crops, and packed slaves into a smallpox-infested stockade where many of them perished.)
Jefferson galloped westward, and met up with his family at the home of another plantation owner. According to oral accounts of Monticello slaves, along the way he spotted some British scouts, and hid inside a large oak tree to elude them.
In Charlottesville, Tarleton’s raiders found that some of the assemblymen had tarried. They managed to bag seven of them. They tried capturing Jouett, conspicuous in his red hat, but he and his horse proved too fast for the pursuing dragoons.
The British had lost their big chance to strike a killing blow against the rebellion in the South.
Later in 1781, Cornwallis, pestered by French forces under Lafayette, retreated to the state’s south side, to a village called Yorktown. There, Washington’s men, including a valiant Hamilton, and Lafayette, and a French army under General Rochambeau, forced the British host to surrender. In effect winning the war for America’s independence.
The members of the Virginia Assembly, their necks saved by Jouett, resolved to award him a fine sword and a pair of elegant pistols. After initially censuring Jefferson for failing to adequately defend the state, they threw out the censure, and officially lauded him. (The book Flight from Monticello details this tumultuous time in Jefferson’s life.)
After the Revolution, a restless Jouett headed west to explore the Kentucky frontier, then part of Virginia’s vast dominion. On the way, he rode past a cabin where he heard a woman screaming within. Rushing inside, he saw the woman being beaten by her husband. Jouett knocked the fellow to the floor. The wife reacted with rage—at Jouette assaulting her husband! Seizing a frying pan, she slammed her would-be protector over the head. The bottom of the pan fell off, and its ring lodged snugly on Jouett’s neck. He rode over 30 miles before finding a metalsmith to cut it loose.
Jack Jouett settled in Bluegrass Country. He befriended two future political giants of the frontier: General and future President Andrew Jackson, and future House Speaker and Secretary of State Henry Clay. Elected to high office, he helped Kentucky reach statehood. He acquired much land and, like many seeking higher status on the southwest frontier, he acquired slaves. He also bred racehorses in the region later known for the Kentucky Derby.
He also married a lady named Sallie Robards. They had 12 children, including a son named Matthew Jouett. When Matthew came of age, Jack sent him to law school. The father, the ultimate man’s man, was bitter when the son decided to become an artist. He complained: “I sent Matthew to college to make a gentleman of him, and he has turned out to be nothing but a sign painter.”
Not quite. The son cannily traded in on family connections in his work. In the early 1800s, he landed a plumb commission, to paint an official portrait of the President of the United States. Of Thomas Jefferson, the man his father had saved from Tarleton’s clutches. (See portrait above.) He also did portraits of Clay and Lafayette.
It’s said certain genes skip a generation. In the Civil War, Jack Jouette’s very manly grandson, James “Fighting Jim” Jouett, would rise to be a Rear Admiral in the Union Navy. In fact, he served with its most distinguished officer: Admiral David Farragut. Who was charged in 1864 with seizing the Confederacy’s last seaport, Mobile, Alabama. Taking it would end the export of its vital cash crop of cotton.
Anxious to keep the harbor Yankee-free, the Confederates lined its approach with “torpedoes”, as sea mines were then termed. But Farragut and Jouett were contemptuous of the danger.
Many school children—and the late Tom Petty, who named an album after it—recall the order Admiral Farragut issued during his assault as: “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead!”
But that’s just the shortened version. The full command was: “Damn the Torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Drayton go ahead! Jouett full speed! ” As in James “Fighting Jim” Jouett.
Thus did the grandson of the man who helped save the American Revolution place the final nail in the coffin of the South’s cotton economy--causing its currency and army to collapse.
History is a series of intricate, and sometimes startling, connections. And none more so than with the Midnight Ride of--Jack Jouett. And the daring daylight assault of his grandson.
-------------------------------------------
This is a bonus, unpublished chapter from the forthcoming book, The White House’s Unruly Neighborhood. Copyright © 2019 by Edward P. Moser, McFarland Publishing
Ed Moser was a speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush and writer for Jay Leno's The Tonight Show. Ed's latest work is an e-book, a political satire called, Foundering Fathers: What Jefferson, Franklin, and Abigail Adams Saw in Modern D.C.!
By Ed Moser
July 2019
Right man. In exactly the right time and place.
He had George Washington’s big, stocky build. Six-foot-four, 225 pounds. An ardent and able patriot soldier of the Revolution. Who had a score to settle.
He’d lost a brother to the forces of General Charles Cornwallis, then ravaging his native Virginia from Williamsburg to Richmond, with his ruthless and skillful deputy, Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Yet this descendant of Norman knights who’d conquered Britain in 1066 feared no Englishman.
On June 3, 1781, a warm, moonlit eve, the 27-year old soldier was resting, enjoying an ale at the Cuckoo Tavern in the Virginia hills east of the Appalachians.
Suddenly he was startled by the sight of Tarleton himself. It was hard to mistake the British commander, resplendent in his bear-fur helmet and green jacket. He was leading 70 mounted infantry and 180 elite dragoons, or cavalrymen. They rushed by the public house. Heading west, toward the Blue Ridge Mountains. They were way behind American lines, on a raid of some sort.
The patriot soldier, John “Jack” Jouett, Jr., instantly realized what was up. Virginia’s legislature, having been chased out of its original capital of Williamsburg, and then sent packing from the new, war-time capital of Richmond, had reconvened in the temporary capital of Charlottesville. Gathered there were other luminaries of the Revolution in the South.
Namely, former and future Governor Patrick Henry, of "Give me liberty or give me death!" fame. The able future Gov. Thomas Nelson, Jr. Also, Benjamin Harrison V, the grandfather and great-grandfather of two future Presidents: William Henry Harrison and his namesake, Benjamin Harrison. Then there was John Tyler, Sr., the Speaker of the General Assembly and father of future President John Tyler, Jr. A few other assemblymen were staying nearby at the Monticello estate of the war-time Governor, and future President, Thomas Jefferson.
Jouett, a Captain in the Virginia militia, put himself in Tarleton’s spurs. If the Brit could bag the patriot assembly in a sneak attack, he could put Jefferson, Henry, Harrison, and the others in a stockade, or on the gallows. And perhaps crush the American Revolution in its then-largest, wealthiest, and most populous state. And maybe deal a death blow to the Revolution as a whole.
The militia officer jumped on his steed. He had to warn the Assembly. Yet he couldn’t take the main route that Tarleton’s force was hurtling along. So, garbed in his own arresting attire of a plumed hat and blood-red cloak, he began racing toward Charlottesville on backcountry trails.
In the dark, along rolling, twisting hills, Jouett felt overhanging branches and low-lying brushes cut into his face and legs. In the light of the moon he raced on, spots of blood sparkling on his flesh. Risking a breakneck fall, he urged his horse onward.
While Jouett spurred his steed non-stop, Col. Tarleton and his raiders paused three times that night. At first to seize eleven wagons of munitions bound for Nathaniel Greene, America’s commanding general in the South. Later for a three-hour rest for his weary horses and men. The third stop during the 70-mile journey was at Castle Hill, the residence of explorer Dr. Thomas Walker.
According to local lore, Walker, a devout patriot, plied Tarleton’s men with a heavy breakfast, complete with wine, thus dulling their minds and slowing their progress. In fact, Tarleton paused but briefly there to water his horses.
Meantime, Jouett rode relentlessly, ignoring the cuts to limbs and head, and the soreness in his arms and back. The bitter memory of his brother’s slaying and his burning affection for the patriot cause blocked out everything else.
At half past four in the morning, after a remarkable, six-and-a-half-hour sprint, he arrived at Monticello. He rode up the steep hill to where the Governor was staying. Accounts differ on whether Jefferson was rustled from bed in robe and slippers or, as an early riser, was working in his gardens. In any case, after lauding Jouett for his exploit, he refreshed the weary soldier with several glasses of Madeira. Jouett then rode on to Charlottesville, two miles away, and warned the assemblage of lawmakers.
Patrick Henry skedaddled, as did Benjamin Harrison V, Thomas Nelson, Jr., John Tyler, Sr., and most of the others. They reassembled 40 miles away in Staunton, Virginia, safely west of the Blue Ridge.
15 years later, in 1796, Alexander Hamilton, that recent star of Broadway, and then fresh from Cabinet battles with his rival Jefferson, accused him of cowardice during the Tarleton raid. The head “of the ancient dominion dwindled into the poor, timid philosopher”, declared the former Treasury Secretary, “and, instead of rallying his brave countrymen, he fled for safety from a few light-horsemen and shamefully abandoned his trust!"
In fact, Jefferson was even-tempered at the approach of the Brits. After seeing off Jouett, he sifted through stacks of state papers to save the most important from the enemy. He instructed several of his household slaves to hide his family valuables.
After strapping on a small sword, Jefferson departed the estate on his horse. Then at some point he realized he’d dropped the blade, and returned to locate it. At which point a second patriot soldier, after riding up to Monticello, gave him the alarming news Tarleton’s men were nearby. With a telescope, the Governor peered down from his mountaintop into Charlottesville. He was startled to see its streets filled with the bright red coats of Tarleton’s mounted infantry and the green-and-white uniforms of his cavalrymen. Some of the troopers were rushing up to Monticello, eager to bag the declarer of America’s fledgling independence.
Jefferson leapt on his horse, and scampered away along a back trail. Just as he did, Tarleton’s men alighted on his front lawn. According to Jefferson family lore, as the Brits approached the mansion, the Governor’s body servant handed the family silverware to Caesar, a slave who was standing in a small cellar beneath the porch. As the royalists came nearer, the body servant sprung the trap door. Caesar remained there silently in the dark for the better part of a day, safeguarding the items until the British left. The time of slavery seems a strange time indeed.
When the British soldiers entered the mansion, they were disappointed at not finding its owner. Following Tarleton’s directives, they left the place untouched, apart from pilfering some cellar wine. (At another of Jefferson’s estates, however, Cornwallis slit the throats of the horses, burned the barns and crops, and packed slaves into a smallpox-infested stockade where many of them perished.)
Jefferson galloped westward, and met up with his family at the home of another plantation owner. According to oral accounts of Monticello slaves, along the way he spotted some British scouts, and hid inside a large oak tree to elude them.
In Charlottesville, Tarleton’s raiders found that some of the assemblymen had tarried. They managed to bag seven of them. They tried capturing Jouett, conspicuous in his red hat, but he and his horse proved too fast for the pursuing dragoons.
The British had lost their big chance to strike a killing blow against the rebellion in the South.
Later in 1781, Cornwallis, pestered by French forces under Lafayette, retreated to the state’s south side, to a village called Yorktown. There, Washington’s men, including a valiant Hamilton, and Lafayette, and a French army under General Rochambeau, forced the British host to surrender. In effect winning the war for America’s independence.
The members of the Virginia Assembly, their necks saved by Jouett, resolved to award him a fine sword and a pair of elegant pistols. After initially censuring Jefferson for failing to adequately defend the state, they threw out the censure, and officially lauded him. (The book Flight from Monticello details this tumultuous time in Jefferson’s life.)
After the Revolution, a restless Jouett headed west to explore the Kentucky frontier, then part of Virginia’s vast dominion. On the way, he rode past a cabin where he heard a woman screaming within. Rushing inside, he saw the woman being beaten by her husband. Jouett knocked the fellow to the floor. The wife reacted with rage—at Jouette assaulting her husband! Seizing a frying pan, she slammed her would-be protector over the head. The bottom of the pan fell off, and its ring lodged snugly on Jouett’s neck. He rode over 30 miles before finding a metalsmith to cut it loose.
Jack Jouett settled in Bluegrass Country. He befriended two future political giants of the frontier: General and future President Andrew Jackson, and future House Speaker and Secretary of State Henry Clay. Elected to high office, he helped Kentucky reach statehood. He acquired much land and, like many seeking higher status on the southwest frontier, he acquired slaves. He also bred racehorses in the region later known for the Kentucky Derby.
He also married a lady named Sallie Robards. They had 12 children, including a son named Matthew Jouett. When Matthew came of age, Jack sent him to law school. The father, the ultimate man’s man, was bitter when the son decided to become an artist. He complained: “I sent Matthew to college to make a gentleman of him, and he has turned out to be nothing but a sign painter.”
Not quite. The son cannily traded in on family connections in his work. In the early 1800s, he landed a plumb commission, to paint an official portrait of the President of the United States. Of Thomas Jefferson, the man his father had saved from Tarleton’s clutches. (See portrait above.) He also did portraits of Clay and Lafayette.
It’s said certain genes skip a generation. In the Civil War, Jack Jouette’s very manly grandson, James “Fighting Jim” Jouett, would rise to be a Rear Admiral in the Union Navy. In fact, he served with its most distinguished officer: Admiral David Farragut. Who was charged in 1864 with seizing the Confederacy’s last seaport, Mobile, Alabama. Taking it would end the export of its vital cash crop of cotton.
Anxious to keep the harbor Yankee-free, the Confederates lined its approach with “torpedoes”, as sea mines were then termed. But Farragut and Jouett were contemptuous of the danger.
Many school children—and the late Tom Petty, who named an album after it—recall the order Admiral Farragut issued during his assault as: “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead!”
But that’s just the shortened version. The full command was: “Damn the Torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Drayton go ahead! Jouett full speed! ” As in James “Fighting Jim” Jouett.
Thus did the grandson of the man who helped save the American Revolution place the final nail in the coffin of the South’s cotton economy--causing its currency and army to collapse.
History is a series of intricate, and sometimes startling, connections. And none more so than with the Midnight Ride of--Jack Jouett. And the daring daylight assault of his grandson.
-------------------------------------------
This is a bonus, unpublished chapter from the forthcoming book, The White House’s Unruly Neighborhood. Copyright © 2019 by Edward P. Moser, McFarland Publishing
Ed Moser was a speechwriter to President George H. W. Bush and writer for Jay Leno's The Tonight Show. Ed's latest work is an e-book, a political satire called, Foundering Fathers: What Jefferson, Franklin, and Abigail Adams Saw in Modern D.C.!