The Fabulous History Of The Dismal Swamp Company Part 9

James Parker and two other loyalists in the king's service accompanied Leslie's "tedious and turbulent" three-week voyage to Charleston. Learning that another invading force had entered Chesapeake Bay five weeks after their departure, they headed back to Virginia "to be usefull in that part of America, from their Connections and Knowledge of the Country." But after Parker and his friends sailed back to the capes on board HMS Romulus Romulus, their frigate was captured by French men-of-war under the command of Captain Arnaud Le Gardeur de Tilly. Virginia's delegates in Congress asked French officers to hold these loyalists "in the most effectual manner" as "state Prisoners." Parker spent the next eighteen months in a series of cells: on board a French prison s.h.i.+p, in a dungeon in Saint-Domingue, and in close confinement in the citadel of Dinan, then in the castle of Saint-Malo on the northern coast of Brittany. He never again tried to control the Dismal Swamp.

The British soldiers arriving in the bay at the end of December 1780 were commanded by the newly commissioned Brigadier General Benedict Arnold. Three months earlier, while a major general in the Continental Army, he had narrowly escaped arrest after George Was.h.i.+ngton learned that he was in the pay of the British. Sir Henry Clinton gave the defector a British commission and sent him to attack Virginia. Arnold's first campaign in service to the king did not begin well. Still at sea, his force was. .h.i.t by a northwest gale. Sailing into Chesapeake Bay, a man-of-war, HMS Charon Charon, ran aground on the shoal which jutted from Willoughby Point east of the Elizabeth River. She spent the night on the mud, giving naval officers time to agree that "intelligent pilots" were "much wanted to conduct the s.h.i.+ps and troops up James River." For the next seven months, British soldiers moved up and down the James, raiding into the countryside.

Until Major General William Phillips arrived three months later with 2,000 more men, Arnold and his 1,600 soldiers showed their flag. They could not do much to suppress rebellion, but they punished rebels. Arnold began with Mary Willing Byrd, harming her not by destroying Westover but by making it his base for a raid on the new state capital, Richmond. Arnold's wife, Margaret s.h.i.+ppen Arnold, colleague in his treason, was Mary Byrd's cousin. At Westover, his officers received "a very good breakfast." The force he took to Richmond demolished arms, ammunition, tobacco, other supplies, and several buildings, then returned. When the British departed, some of Mary Byrd's slaves went with them. Her light sufferings raised new suspicions that she was a Tory, which grew after Virginians heard that an officer serving in HMS Swift Swift, Lieutenant Charles Hare, brother of a brother-in-law of Mary Byrd's, had brought in his cabin not only many letters from her but also a cache of merchandise obviously designed to support the Byrds at Westover: china, linen, broadcloth, port, brandy, and other goods. After his first raid, Arnold dropped downriver to reoccupy the familiar British lines around Portsmouth. His men entered the town, he reported, "to the great joy of the inhabitants." A junior officer wrote in his diary: "The whole town had been abandoned by its inhabitants, except for three families."

In February, some of Arnold's soldiers were "spreading ruin in the area and severely hara.s.sing the few good loyalists." About 250 black people entered his lines. He put them to work repairing earlier fortifications and erecting new ones. Militiamen did not rally in numbers large enough to endanger his force. On March 26, Major General Phillips arrived in the bay with 2,000 men. The following month Phillips and Arnold took a large force up the Appomattox River to Petersburg "to break up the communication from Virginia to Carolina." From the heights where Samuel Gist's agent, Thomas Sh.o.r.e, lived they dispersed the militia with expert artillery fire, then burned warehouses, vessels in the river, and 4,000 hogsheads of tobacco. Slaves showed the British where white people had concealed themselves and their property. British officers took spoils of war down the Appomattox and the James, but they soon had to return to Petersburg to meet Cornwallis. By the time this force arrived from North Carolina on May 20, Phillips had died of typhoid fever. Arnold returned to New York.

Ever since Arnold had left Westover in January, Mary Byrd had proclaimed her innocence of any loyalist sentiments or collaboration with the enemy. She knew that she was "much watch'd." An officer accosted her in her bedroom, seeking incriminating papers. Someone tried to burn the mansion at Westover. Her husband's last years had been embittered by such "persecutors." She wrote to Thomas Jefferson: "I cannot express violent, enthusiastic opinions, and wish curses [and] distraction on the meanest individual on earth. It is against my religion. I wish well to all mankind, to America in particular. What am I but an American?" Unluckily for her, the first stop for Earl Cornwallis's army after he left Petersburg on May 24, 1781, was Westover.

Almost 4,000 men camped in the once pristine meadows spread along the James. The soldiers tore down fences, turned horses loose in fields of ripening wheat, made Mary Byrd's garden nursery a stable for the general's horses, knocked her milk cows on the head and butchered them before her eyes. In her house, at the foot of the carved bal.u.s.trade on the central staircase, Cornwallis posted guards to protect her "if she remained quiet and kept to the upper stories." He promised that she would be compensated by someone. He said he had no cash.

The Marquis de Lafayette arrived in Virginia with three Continental Army regiments-not enough to challenge Cornwallis but enough, with militia and new Continentals, to make the British notice. Since Cornwallis originally was supposed to secure Britain's hold in the deeper South, no one, not even his superior, Sir Henry Clinton, could tell what he expected to accomplish by marching here and there in Virginia. After three nights, his army headed northward. With the soldiers went forty-nine slaves from Westover. Although no one dared to say it to her face, Mary Byrd knew about "those who tauntingly say aye you see how well her good Friends the British has done for her & Laugh & say all she'll ever get will be promises." The following year she wrote: "extreme grief found its way to my heart-conscious rect.i.tude, alone has saved me from the grave."

In the last week of May and the first week of June, Cornwallis sent raiding parties westward under Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe and Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. Along the Pamunkey and Mattaponi rivers, Cornwallis's chief concern seemed to be destroying tobacco, supplies, and other property. Lieutenant James Hadden wrote from Westover: "Tobacco, alone has gained the Rebels Allies, and I hope the destruction of it will give the Rebellion a severe check." One detachment visited Samuel Gist's plantation in Hanover County. His agent, Benjamin Toler, watched as soldiers burned 12 hogsheads of tobacco and took away five horses and sixteen head of cattle, as well as brandy, bacon, and corn. About forty of Gist's slaves left with the British. By applying to higher-ranking officers, Toler got all but two of the black people returned to slavery on the plantation. To any officer who would listen he mentioned "in a particular manner" that "Samuel Gist then was a british subject residing in London."

The legislature had abandoned Richmond to convene in Charlottesville on Monday, June 4. Sunday night, at Castle Hill, Dr. Thomas Walker played host to Newman Brockenbrough, a member of the House of Delegates, Senator John Syme, former partner in the Dismal Swamp Company, and Judge Peter Lyons, who was still protecting Samuel Gist's interests. Early Monday morning, Walker came into the bedroom Brockenbrough and Lyons shared. He told them that the British had come to Castle Hill. If they lay still, Tarleton might not know they were in the house. Looking out an upstairs window, Lyons saw a yard full of soldiers. He went back to bed. Tarleton had come to Albemarle County in search of legislators and Governor Jefferson. Soon all Dr. Walker's guests were summoned downstairs.

Banastre Tarleton, by the age of twenty-seven, had shown himself to be arrogant and cruel. He had grown up in comfort, the son of a leading Liverpool slave trader. Contrary to his new prisoners' fears, he gave them "polite Treatment." Tarleton and his men ate breakfast at Castle Hill. A detachment rode to Belvoir, home of Dr. Walker's son, John. There the British found another partner in the Dismal Swamp Company, William Nelson, Jr., his brother, Robert, and John Walker's son-in-law, Francis Kinloch, a delegate to the Continental Congress. Tarleton released Lyons, Syme, the Nelsons, and other officeholders the same day, after they signed paroles promising not to act contrary to the interests of George III until exchanged for prisoners held by Americans. Kinloch and Brockenbrough were released a few days later. Tarleton's stay with Dr. Walker gave extra time for word of his approach to reach Charlottesville and Monticello. The legislators adjourned to meet at Staunton in the Shenandoah Valley. Jefferson left home to evade Tarleton's men. The British burned his tobacco, did the usual damage to his estate, and departed, accompanied by thirty of Jefferson's slaves. His term as governor had expired four days earlier, and the legislators had not found leisure to re-elect him or to choose a successor. He served no longer. On June 12, delegates meeting in Staunton elected Thomas Nelson, Jr. Ten years had pa.s.sed since his father had so much enjoyed a stint as acting governor between the death of Lord Botetourt and the arrival of Lord Dunmore.

During late June and early July, Cornwallis's force moved down the James River, crossing it south of Williamsburg. With few exceptions, the slaves of "all those who were near the enemy" left plantations to accompany the British. As this slow column reached the Nansemond River and the Dismal Swamp in mid-July, soldiers and black refugees suffered from heat "so intense that one can hardly breathe," from thunderstorms, and from "billions of sand-[flies] and biting-flies." After horse flies dispersed, chiggers attacked. Some soldiers looked "like people who are seized with smallpox." For a week the army lay in and around the ruins of Suffolk.

Lord Cornwallis knew that Virginians had rebuilt part of their trade through South Quay. He ordered Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Dundas to take part of the 80th Regiment, the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers, on a day's march to South Quay to destroy it. The soldiers burned warehouses, tobacco, rum, sugar, coffee, wine, and other goods. They took every horse they found and "plundered the inhabitants in a most cruel manner."

Before Cornwallis moved to Portsmouth on July 21 and 22, British soldiers visited Dismal Plantation and left the Dismal Swamp Company's efforts in ruins. Eight draft steers used for heavy work, fifty-two head of cattle, two hundred barrels of corn, twenty-seven hoes, fourteen axes, eight dozen crosscut files and whipsaw files used in making s.h.i.+ngles-all the company's means of working the swamp vanished with the raiding party. The soldiers did "great damage" to several buildings on Dismal Plantation, especially to barns. Almost all able-bodied slaves went out of the swamp with the British: a woman, a twelve-year-old girl, four small children, and twenty-two men. Eleven men, six women, and three children stayed on the plantation. The company's new agent, Jacob Collee, considered only five of them "fit for any kind of Labour." After Cornwallis withdrew into fortified lines around Portsmouth, Collee wrote to David Jameson about Dismal Plantation: "There seems a very promiseing crop Corn & a little Rice, but how its to be got in, I know not, as well as how matters are to be conducted in future, for want of help." Governor Nelson wrote to Lord Cornwallis about the large number of black people with the British, asking whether slaveowners could reclaim them. Cornwallis replied that any Virginian who had not borne arms or held office in the rebellion and who promised never to do so could come to camp and claim his slaves "if they are willing to go with him."

Sir Henry Clinton received from Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the colonies, an order to keep Cornwallis's army in the Chesapeake. Clinton directed him to establish a fortified base accessible to the Royal Navy. Cornwallis's engineers improved the elaborate works at Portsmouth, connecting redoubts and salient angles by deep trenches, erecting palisaded stakes surrounded with strong abatis, logs studded with long spikes. Within these lines, among burnt keels of unfinished vessels, skeletal remains of stocks in the s.h.i.+pyard, and the brick ruins of Robert Tucker's mills, more than 1,000 black people lived on army rations. After consulting with Captain Charles Hudson of HMS Richmond Richmond, Cornwallis decided that his fortified base should be at York Town. Evacuation of Portsmouth began on July 30. By then, smallpox was spreading among the black refugees.

In London, Samuel Gist, Anthony Bacon, and their fellow merchants formerly in the Virginia trade learned that Lord George Germain had ordered occupation of the Chesapeake and that Lord Dunmore had received the king's command to return to Virginia and resume his governors.h.i.+p. These merchants wished the ministry to remember them when drawing up Dunmore's instructions. In a memorial they reminded Germain that before the war they had given "large and extensive credits" to colonists, promoting a trade making the manufactures and commerce of Britain "the envy and admiration of all Europe." Interruption of trade since 1775 meant that "there remains large sums of money now due to your memorialists to their great loss and prejudice." They urged that Dunmore be instructed to a.s.sist them "in the protection of their property and towards the recovery of their just debts."

Lord Cornwallis moved his headquarters to York Town, leaving Brigadier General Charles O'Hara in command of the evacuation of Portsmouth. A flotilla of transports, escorted by HMS Charon Charon and other men-of-war, plied between Portsmouth and York Town for more than two weeks, s.h.i.+fting soldiers and some black laborers to the new base. Loyalists from Norfolk and Princess Anne counties also went. The sufferings of "Hundreds of wretched Negroes" dying of smallpox distressed O'Hara. He shrank from "abandoning these unfortunate beings to disease, to famine, & what is worse than either, the resentment of their enraged Masters." In the last days of his stay, O'Hara moved the remaining four hundred black refugees to the Norfolk side of the Elizabeth River and left them with food for fifteen days, "which time, will either kill, or cure the greatest number of them." The last of the Portsmouth garrison left on August 20. Later, British officers drew up an inspection roll of "Negro emigrants" in New York. It included a number of black people who gave the word "Dismal" as part of their names, in the manner of the sometime slave of the Burwell family, Jack Dismal. If these people, like Jack Dismal, were former slaves of the Dismal Swamp Company, some of the company's laborers made their way out of the United States and out of slavery with the British evacuation in 1783. and other men-of-war, plied between Portsmouth and York Town for more than two weeks, s.h.i.+fting soldiers and some black laborers to the new base. Loyalists from Norfolk and Princess Anne counties also went. The sufferings of "Hundreds of wretched Negroes" dying of smallpox distressed O'Hara. He shrank from "abandoning these unfortunate beings to disease, to famine, & what is worse than either, the resentment of their enraged Masters." In the last days of his stay, O'Hara moved the remaining four hundred black refugees to the Norfolk side of the Elizabeth River and left them with food for fifteen days, "which time, will either kill, or cure the greatest number of them." The last of the Portsmouth garrison left on August 20. Later, British officers drew up an inspection roll of "Negro emigrants" in New York. It included a number of black people who gave the word "Dismal" as part of their names, in the manner of the sometime slave of the Burwell family, Jack Dismal. If these people, like Jack Dismal, were former slaves of the Dismal Swamp Company, some of the company's laborers made their way out of the United States and out of slavery with the British evacuation in 1783.

Fielding Lewis's brother-in-law, the commander in chief, was planning a coup de main coup de main. Days before General O'Hara left Portsmouth, Was.h.i.+ngton learned that Rear Admiral the Comte de Gra.s.se would bring twenty-eight men-of-war and more than 3,000 French soldiers to Chesapeake Bay. Having worked hard for American victory, Fielding Lewis could welcome the prospect of capturing Lord Cornwallis's army. But his declining health denied him the fullest enjoyment of his brother-in-law's greatest success.

During the hot months of 1780, Lewis traveled to the mountains for "a change of air." He had been ill since the fall of 1779. But his health did not improve in the mountains. Back at home, he remained indoors for seven months late in 1780 and early in 1781. From his windows he could see dark, undulating clouds of birds arrive in Fredericksburg, first on their way south late in autumn, then returning northward in spring.

Many worries offset in Lewis's mind his successes in the small arms factory, the little Virginia navy, and the cargoes of Fielding Lewis & Company. Beyond his old debt to Anthony Bacon, he had run up large new debts by operating the arms factory on his own credit, while the state failed to reimburse him. He also had borrowed money on Virginia's behalf-between 30,000 and 40,000, including 7,000 he lent to the state. Without his efforts the factory would have closed, he said; yet in February 1781 he found himself writing to the state treasurer: "I have distressed myself greatly, and at this time am not able to pay the collector my Taxes, and continue my business in the usual manner." Training and regulating skilled workers with a strict regimen, Lewis's partner, Charles d.i.c.k, turned out one hundred stand of new arms per month and repaired many old weapons. Displeased with the state's tardiness in paying, Lewis and d.i.c.k resigned at the end of 1780, but Governor Jefferson insisted that d.i.c.k continue to serve.

Fielding Lewis wrote gloomy letters to his brother-in-law. His second son, Fielding Junior, was still a spendthrift at the age of thirty. His fifth son, George, had embarra.s.sed himself in the Continental Army by inattention to duty, for which he drew a brusque reprimand from his uncle the commander in chief; George Lewis resigned several months later. Fielding Lewis wrote about things of which George Was.h.i.+ngton already knew: "injustice, luxury, and extravagancy" throughout Virginia; Congress's admission of fiscal desperation by its devaluation of Continental currency, setting the value of $40 in paper at $1; high prices for imported goods, which only speculators could now afford; "the ignorance of our a.s.sembly" and "the ignorance or villany of the a.s.sessors," whose actions seemed to aim at "the destruction of the large Estates in Lands & Negro's," while people who once "were needy and had little or nothing to support them, are now the best able to live, they give greater prices at Sales than any other people, dress better & I believe keep as good tables." A chicken cost $1,000 in Virginia paper. Although in 1780 Lewis bought 30,000 acres in Kentucky, partly to acquire something tangible in exchange for his depreciating currency, he saw during his long confinement in his splendid new house that he would never be a King Carter. Looking back over the twenty years since he and George Was.h.i.+ngton first had taken an interest in the Dismal Swamp, he wrote: "I have generally been mistaken in my speculations."

In the face of censure in Parliament, Lewis's partner and creditor, Anthony Bacon, did not give up without a delaying action. The more difficulties the army and the navy encountered, the more troubles Lord North's ministry met in the House of Commons. Among its most vulnerable allies were the members who held government contracts. Bacon received contracts for provisions and artillery ammunition in 1779. He expanded his iron manufactures in Wales in 1780 by leasing the Hirwaun Works, six miles west of Merthyr Tydfil, repairing them and working them "vigorously." Bacon's beloved, illegitimate family continued to grow. In 1780, Mary Bushby gave him another son, whom he named for his late brother, the Reverend Thomas Bacon.

The opposition stepped up attacks on "those who have fattened on the ruins of the country by jobs and contracts." The Earl of Shelburne accused such men of prolonging the war in order to enrich themselves. In March 1781, John Sawbridge, member for the City of London, charged Lord North with buying support in the House by allowing members to take up part of the government's new loan. No one contradicted him or called him to order for unparliamentary speech. The ministry could outvote but not refute its critics. All knew that, when North lost his majority, the next ministry would at once exclude contractors from Parliament.

In 1781 and 1782, Anthony Bacon gave up some contracts by not seeking renewal and transferred others. The s.h.i.+fts, for example, to his cousin and former partner, Anthony Richardson, did not look convincing. One critic put Bacon's name in a list of contractors who made transfers, and wrote that by holding no contracts in their own names "they think to get re-elected; but can any person suppose that they have really & bonafide no concern in them.... It is impossible & absurd." Bacon withdrew from many business concerns at the age of sixty-five. Forty years had pa.s.sed since his sailing days, when he commanded the York York, with a cargo of felons bound for servitude in Maryland. Forty years after that voyage, Anthony Bacon and Fielding Lewis, transatlantic a.s.sociates who apparently never met, understood that they would begin no new enterprises.

Growing angrier about property taxes, Fielding Lewis thought not only of his own a.s.sessment for his mansion in Fredericksburg, more than 2,500 Virginia currency, but also of the a.s.sessment on Mannsfield, the estate outside Fredericksburg where his friend Mann Page had settled after giving Rosewell to John Page. Mann Page and his son of the same name had to pay Spotsylvania County 4,000.

Less active in the Revolution than Lewis, Mann Page, who turned sixty-two in 1780, still owed debts inherited from his father and debts contracted to maintain Rosewell. If peace had returned at once, he could hardly have convinced John Norton that his debt ever would be paid. Page's contemporaries dwindled in number. Robert Carter Nicholas died in September 1780, fourteen years after offering himself as savior of Virginia's treasury from the malfeasance of Speaker Robinson. Robinson's critics, after taking power, had proven far more imaginative than the old speaker in their use of currency. Virginia's solvency now rested upon a law requiring creditors to receive depreciated paper money at face value. The new government had shown Charles Greville to be wrong in predicting America's failure at the start of the war, when he asked: "how can paper currency support its credi[t?]...people cannot for a long while give up reality for paper when its value diminishes dayly." Page's former partner in the Dismal Swamp Company, Robert Burwell, father of John Page's wife, had died in 1777, without having paid the dowry he had promised. The years after his death showed that his son and heir, Nathaniel Burwell, fared worse than Fielding Lewis, Jr.; "much addicted...to gambling," he soon dissipated his inheritance and later "died insolvent." As Robert Burwell's executor, his nephew, Thomas Nelson, Jr., a.s.sumed the burden of dealing with large debts owed by Burwell's estate.

Mann Page was pained by recriminations from his son, John. In 1779, Mann sold land around Tappahannock he once had promised to John. He did so, he explained, "to see if I cou'd pay off the Debts I had contracted" and still bequeath some money to his two younger sons. But John accused him of "injustice" and questioned his father's affection for him. Had Mann, his son asked, concluded that John was "less deserving"? Mann wrote: "I answer no & at the time I did it, had left you an equivalent by giving you my part of the Dismal & a Tract of Frying Pan, & after Christmas to give up those Plantations in Gloster." But John Page was not mollified by a gift of land in Gloucester County yielding too little tobacco, of King Carter's old copper mines near the Potomac, or of half a share in the Dismal Swamp Company.

Mann Page rightly suspected that his son suffered "great anxiety of Mind." John had led the Virginia Council since the beginning of the Revolution, burdened with the public's work, always in danger of prostration by an attack of vertigo. His familial obligations widened. His sister, Judith Burwell, died in September 1777, followed in March 1779 by her husband, Page's friend and neighbor, the gouty, fox-hunting Lewis Burwell, who left behind "a badly managed Estate." Page became executor of their "confused Affairs." He brought his four young Burwell nieces and nephews to live at Rosewell with the seven Page children. Large as his mansion was, so many children lived in it that he sometimes lost count and said he was caring for five little Burwells, whom he called "untractable Wards." Page resigned from the Council early in 1780, but he still performed the duties of "Executor, Guardian, Tutor, Vestry Man, Magistrate, Field Officer of Militia, & Delegate." Not to receive from his father the land and slaves at Tappahannock he had expected came as a blow at a difficult time.

Mann Page worried about bequests for his younger children because he had achieved no better success with his speculations than had Fielding Lewis. Hanover-Town on the Pamunkey River did not thrive. Twenty years after its charter, Page still owned two-thirds of the "valuable Lots on the princ.i.p.al streets." He died in November 1780, leaving an estate consisting chiefly of old debts.

The day after Lord Cornwallis's army surrendered at York Town, Fielding Lewis, knowing he was near death, wrote his will. His bequests divided his lands among his six sons, leaving his mansion and the land in and around Fredericksburg in the hands of his wife during her lifetime. In the past ten months Fielding and Betty Lewis had sold more than 2,200 acres in Spotsylvania County for almost 24,000 in currency. Their youngest sons, Robert and Howell, were twelve and ten years old. Fielding Lewis at last enjoyed some success with a crop of hemp, for which demand rose in wartime. It grew on his land in the Shenandoah Valley, not in the Dismal Swamp. He had no faith in the Dismal Swamp Company as a source of future income for his heirs. His will directed that his share in the company be sold "at the discretion of my Executors," for the purpose of paying his debts. His portion of the land he and George Was.h.i.+ngton and Thomas Walker had bought near the swamp was also to be sold. Two months later, Fielding Lewis died at the age of fifty-six.

Lewis's oldest son wrote to General Was.h.i.+ngton to explain the will, adding that his father had died "much indebted." Was.h.i.+ngton held out hope for the Dismal Swamp Company, but he agreed to the sale of land he, Walker, and Lewis's estate owned jointly. He warned: "I take it for granted, that you do not mean to sell these Lands unless you can get the value of them, or near it; because this would not only defeat the end you you have in view but do injustice to Doctr. Walker and myself." In February 1784, when Was.h.i.+ngton visited Fredericksburg and talked with John Lewis, they concluded that an immediate sale would be "imprudent." A share in the Dismal Swamp Company and the jointly owned lands nearby remained in the estate of Fielding Lewis for years. have in view but do injustice to Doctr. Walker and myself." In February 1784, when Was.h.i.+ngton visited Fredericksburg and talked with John Lewis, they concluded that an immediate sale would be "imprudent." A share in the Dismal Swamp Company and the jointly owned lands nearby remained in the estate of Fielding Lewis for years.

The French expeditionary force marched out of Philadelphia toward Head of Elk, Maryland, and Chesapeake Bay, but its commander, the Comte de Rochambeau, chose to go down the Delaware River by water with a small retinue of officers on Wednesday, September 5, 1781. They paused at Mud Island to study Fort Mifflin, then at Red Bank to study Fort Mercer. The fourteen-mile voyage to Chester was leisurely and pleasant to the eye. Beyond the river's marshy banks lay well-cultivated farmland. As Chester came into view on the right bank, the officers and Rochambeau discerned in the distance, standing near the water, a tall man in uniform, waving his hat in one hand and a white handkerchief in the other. Drawing near, they saw that he was General Was.h.i.+ngton, acting like a "child, whose every wish had been gratified." As soon as Rochambeau disembarked, Was.h.i.+ngton told him that, riding downriver three miles below Chester, the Americans had met an express messenger from the Comte de Gra.s.se. The admiral and his fleet of twenty-eight s.h.i.+ps of the line had arrived off the capes on August 26. The French were closing off Chesapeake Bay and patrolling the James River. Was.h.i.+ngton and Rochambeau "embraced warmly warmly on the sh.o.r.e." As the news spread through the French and American armies in the following days, "soldiers from then on spoke of Cornwallis as if they had already captured him." on the sh.o.r.e." As the news spread through the French and American armies in the following days, "soldiers from then on spoke of Cornwallis as if they had already captured him."

The generals reached the peninsula between the James and York rivers on Friday, September 14. By then they knew that de Gra.s.se, with most of his men-of-war, had met Admiral Thomas Graves's squadron in battle off the capes on the same day that Rochambeau had wended his way down the Delaware. From York Town to Nansemond County people heard barrages of naval guns that afternoon. Facing a superior force, Graves could not enter the Chesapeake. He waited a few days, then gave up the attempt after receiving a report "of the French fleet being all anch.o.r.ed within the Cape, so as to block our pa.s.sage." This fleet consisted not only of the s.h.i.+ps Graves had fought but also of those de Gra.s.se had waited outside the capes to cover as they arrived-a squadron of seven s.h.i.+ps of the line bearing siege artillery, commanded by the Comte de Barras in his flags.h.i.+p, the Duc de Bourgogne Duc de Bourgogne. By Friday, September 21, most of the French fleet rode at anchor across the main channel below the mouth of the York. Sir Henry Clinton in New York wrote: "when the operation in Chesapeake was ordered, I was promised a Naval superiority, why we had it not, those who promised it can best tell."

Lord Cornwallis, knowing he was trapped within his semicircle of fortifications overlooking the York, made his headquarters with Secretary Thomas Nelson at the upper end of town. The tall, white-haired old man, flinching with gout, let nothing disturb him. He acted as if his garden and library were always open to any gentleman who cared to call. Nelson saw, as easily as his guest, that Cornwallis was enc.u.mbered in a way most military men wished to avoid. The prospect of a base in the Chesapeake had attracted loyalist refugees, black refugees, and British tobacco traders. Dozens of vessels now anch.o.r.ed in the river had come in search of rich cargoes of high-priced tobacco. Secretary Nelson could have told the forty-three-year-old general many stories about royal governance in Virginia during the past fifty years. If British officials had rested content with tobacco vessels, which even now outnumbered in the York those of the Royal Navy...but it was too late.

Was.h.i.+ngton and Rochambeau began their siege on Sat.u.r.day, October 6. Three days later their new batteries opened fire, General Was.h.i.+ngton putting the match to the first gun. For skilled artillerymen, York Town-sloping down from bluffs to the river and to an estuary filled with s.h.i.+pping-presented so many targets in so small a s.p.a.ce that the bombardment hit everywhere. The second day it fell silent for a while, in response to a white flag. Secretary Nelson came out of town to enter American lines: "his House was no longer tenable he says." One shot had killed a slave by his bedside. Sitting at Was.h.i.+ngton's headquarters, surrounded by young officers, "he related to us, with a serene countenance, what had been the effect of our batteries, and how much his house had suffered from the first shots."

Cornwallis held out for another week. By then a person "could not take three steps without running into some great holes made by bombs, some splinters, some b.a.l.l.s, some half covered trenches, with scattered white or negro arms or legs, some bits of uniforms." Rich furniture lay broken amid ruins. Decomposing corpses of men and horses were only partly covered by dirt. Among the ruins stood piles of books-Pope's works, Montaigne's essays, theology, history, and law. Like the secretary's house, David Jameson's house and outbuildings were destroyed. The night after Secretary Nelson left town, the unlucky HMS Charon Charon was. .h.i.t by a red-hot sh.e.l.l from a French battery. She went up in flames, fire running quickly up her masts, along her yards, into her sheets and furled sails. Cornwallis's last gamble-to cross the York and break through American and French lines around Gloucester-was thwarted on the night of October 16 by heavy rain and high wind. He could feed soldiers and refugees for one more week. The time to surrender had come. was. .h.i.t by a red-hot sh.e.l.l from a French battery. She went up in flames, fire running quickly up her masts, along her yards, into her sheets and furled sails. Cornwallis's last gamble-to cross the York and break through American and French lines around Gloucester-was thwarted on the night of October 16 by heavy rain and high wind. He could feed soldiers and refugees for one more week. The time to surrender had come.

Word of Cornwallis's surrender reached London in less than six weeks. A leading East India merchant described reactions among the king's ministers: "'Tis well, in the dejection it occasions, if we do not yield everything to France." The Earl of Shelburne, part of a fragmented but vehement opposition to Lord North, was fond of quoting his old acquaintance Benjamin Franklin, who liked to quote himself. "Dr. Franklin used to say," Shelburne wrote, "that Experience was the school for fools." Lord North must go, and the war must stop. Beyond those goals, the opposition split. But these enabled Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay to secure American independence in negotiations among the belligerents.

Less than two weeks after word arrived from Virginia, the City of London urged the king to end the war and to dismiss his ministers. At the end of February 1782, the House of Commons voted on the war. Opponents of the ministry won by a majority of 19, Anthony Bacon voting with the ministry. Three weeks later, to forestall losing a vote of confidence, Lord North announced that the king would change his ministers. A kindly critic of Frederick North's overlong complaisance toward the king wrote of the outgoing minister: "He was an accomplished orator, an able financier, irreproachable in his individual character, and fully adequate to conduct the national affairs in ordinary times. His crime was the American war. In that abyss he became ultimately engulphed." One of the joint secretaries of the Treasury, Edward Chamberlayne, had become almost indispensable: "he made all Lord North's calculations, but...would never appear in it." Others attributed his att.i.tude to diffidence. The new ministry begged Chamberlayne to continue in office: "he talked with great disgust of his place." Reluctantly, he agreed to serve, but after a friend "remonstrated with him on the absurdity of the apprehension with which he appeared to be actuated," Chamberlayne went up to his office in Whitehall, jumped headfirst out of a Treasury window, and broke his neck in the fall. Thirty-six hours afterward, he died.

The new ministry, led by the Marquis of Rockingham, lasted only a few months, until Rockingham's death. In it Shelburne became secretary of state for home, colonial, and Irish affairs. And, by Clerke's Act of 1782, government contractors could no longer sit in Parliament. Anthony Bacon arranged for Francis Homfray to take his contract to supply artillery, Homfray renting Bacon's iron mill and foundry and using only pig iron from Bacon's Cyfarthfa furnace. Before summer ended, Bacon's name appeared on no government contracts. He remained in Parliament and voted against the preliminary terms of peace a year after he had voted against ending the British war effort.

Forming a ministry after Rockingham's death, Shelburne gave the colonial secretarys.h.i.+p to Thomas Townshend. Both Shelburne and Townshend, during their brief tenure in that office, received pet.i.tions and memorials from merchants formerly trading to America. As usual, these reminded the government of large debts Americans still owed to British merchants. Many important names at Lloyd's appeared among the signers. One of the first memorials reached Shelburne three weeks after he became colonial secretary. It was signed by Samuel Gist and the heads of nineteen other firms. They said they were "anxiously looking forward" to the time "when the happy period arrives that restores peace between Great Britain and America." They trusted that Shelburne would make it his "peculiar care to protect & guard the legal demands of your Memorialists for such Debts as were contracted under the faith and sanction of the British Laws before the unhappy dispute commenced." The final treaty of peace gave British creditors the same legal recourse as creditors who were American citizens.

Such a promise did not inspire confidence. James Mercer's law practice in Virginia made him cynical. He not only expected a debtor to evade payment; he also expected a county justice to suggest to the debtor "the propriety of offering me Lands in the moon or some Hemp instead of money." British merchants hoped that this well-known, incurable evasiveness would move the ministry to help them collect. In 1783, William Jones, of Farell & Jones-creditors of William Byrd, James Parke Farley, and many others-said that the death of his brother-in-law and partner, Joseph Farell, during the war "was entirely owing to his anxiety of mind for our large property in Virginia." Lord North's ministry had created the war. The least his successors could do was repair some of its damage to Britons.

No one trusted the Earl of Shelburne. "The old Lord Holland used to say that many people were bred Jesuits, but that Lord Shelburne was born one." Amid the multiple attempted betrayals in negotiating a treaty of peace, Shelburne received messages from people hoping to win favor and to be of use. Silas Deane, taking the waters at Spa, devised a scheme to preserve "some Degree of Union" between America and Britain. Lord Dunmore proposed to arm and supply a force of loyalists to settle in the Mississippi Valley. There they would soon produce indigo, rice, tobacco, corn, lumber, hemp, flax, pitch, and tar. They would connect Canada to New Orleans, offering to Americans asylum from "the Tyranny and oppression of Congress." With a.s.sistance from Indians, Dunmore told the ministry, "you have it at any time in your power to drive the Thirteen united Provinces into the sea, besides securing the Fur Trade." Experience was not always a school for fools. Opening the session of Parliament on December 5, 1782, George III acknowledged that the treaty of peace must recognize American independence.

London in the summer of 1782 suffered from falling prices on its stock exchange and from an epidemic of influenza which killed many people. These concerns did not distract Samuel Gist from thinking about his property in Virginia. He wrote to William Anderson twice in October, saying peace was near. He intended to resume control of his plantations and slaves through Benjamin Toler. Gist told Anderson to send a list of slaves and livestock; he expected his son-in-law to visit the Dismal Swamp and report on the company's activities.

In subsequent months Gist wrote to debtors in Virginia. James Taylor was surprised to receive a demand for payment of more than 1,500 sterling due since January 1, 1776. True, Gist had sent goods to the firm Phripp, Taylor & Company in Norfolk for five years before the war. But, as Taylor reminded him, Norfolk now lay in ruins. He hoped that Gist had recovered his money through fire insurance on the stores and goods, since "little or Nothing will be Collected" from the defunct company.

Apparently dissatisfied with his son-in-law's reply, Gist wrote to Benjamin Toler, demanding detailed accounts and "wresting the estate out" of Anderson's hands. This left Anderson's feelings "much hurt" and brought Gist a reproof from Judge Peter Lyons: "I wish on many accounts the letter had not been wrote." Gist, he pointed out, would have lost all his property in Virginia if William and Mary Anderson had not rescued it from confiscation. In the spring of 1779 the General a.s.sembly went beyond sequestering estates of Britons and loyalists. A new law prescribed seizure of real property, mainly land and slaves, by escheat and of personal property by forfeiture. The state would sell these to help pay for the war. When this bill came before the House of Delegates, Speaker Benjamin Harrison took an interest in William and Mary Anderson. He persuaded a narrow majority of delegates to exclude from the law the property of Virginians who were widows, wives, or children of British subjects. During a long, heated debate, Lyons heard some of the minority "rave" against such a "partial unjust" provision on Gist's behalf. They said that Gist was "reaping benefit from the war." They accused him of collusion with Hardin Burnley of Hanover in buying captured tobacco in New York. Harrison prevailed only by arguing that Gist was "dead to this country" and that the Andersons were a deserving, patriotic couple.

William Anderson made a point of "shewing a chearful disposition to oppose the enemy on all occasions." He also extended hospitality to his critics. Though people in Hanover County and nearby spoke "violent and insolent" words, he maintained a steady conduct. He became a vestryman, and he was elected to the House of Delegates. Anderson's demeanor proved helpful when resentment of the British reached new heights after Cornwallis's men did so much damage in Hanover County. Lyons thought that, if the war had continued, "not only british property, but half the great fortunes in this country belonging to suspected men, could have been confiscated and sold." In June 1782, William and Mary Anderson pet.i.tioned the House of Delegates to vest Gist's estate in Mary Anderson and her heirs. The law pa.s.sed with "the strong a.s.sistance of his friends."

Lyons tried to impress upon Gist the risk Gist had run in writing to Toler to claim his land and slaves. If the letter had fallen into the hands of "some of our flaming patriots," it would have shown that Gist's critics in the House of Delegates had been right-that vesting the land and slaves in Mary Anderson had been a ruse to save this property for Gist. His letter might have led to confiscation of everything, including his three quarter-shares in the Dismal Swamp Company: "indeed my friend," Lyons wrote, "there is danger yet in talking of it." Throughout the war, Anderson and Toler treated the plantations and slaves as Gist's, paying profits to his order, as Gist knew by receiving Anderson's wartime letters. Anderson bought more land on Gist's behalf from Gist's brother-in-law, Thomas Ma.s.sie, and from the state, which had confiscated land of the loyalist Samuel Martin. Lyons chided Gist: "is all this to be forgot in a moment, and a strict account of profits to be exacted?-surely not."

While Lyons fretted about Gist's indiscretion, William Lee, at home outside Williamsburg, warned a merchant in Ostend not to heed proposals from William Dolman of Westmoreland County. "Dollman is really Non Compis Mentis.-that is quite crazy headed," Lee wrote. "I hear that somebody has trick'd him out of all his right to the Estate." Dolman died five months later, bequeathing his property to his sons and daughters. The trickster turned out to be Samuel Gist, but he faced a rival claimant. Lee said: "I will not pretend to decide whether either of them have any legal claim to meddle in this business." Virginians' attempts to penetrate Gist's designs on Dolman's property by approaching another London merchant met this reply: "Mr Gist has studiously avoided giving me any information about the matter." of them have any legal claim to meddle in this business." Virginians' attempts to penetrate Gist's designs on Dolman's property by approaching another London merchant met this reply: "Mr Gist has studiously avoided giving me any information about the matter."

David Jameson reported to Gist on the condition of the Dismal Swamp Company, a.s.suring him that the company would pay for the equipment and supplies he had furnished ten years earlier. Without tools for ditching, draining, or making s.h.i.+ngles, Jacob Collee had settled for cultivation of rice and corn by the slaves remaining at Dismal Plantation. These crops brought little more than the cost of expenses and taxes. Nansemond County's a.s.sessors raised the tax bill in 1783 by setting the value of the company's land at 3s. 4d. per acre, rather than the previous a.s.sessment of 2s. 6d. To establish the company's tax bill during the war, Jameson and Dr. Walker had to specify a number of acres. The company had not done this in the past, simply claiming all the swamp on the Virginia side. Dr. Walker picked the figure 40,000 acres, which he "supposed was the whole," though it was only a corner of the swamp. Jameson rea.s.sured Gist: "The Land will be valuable." At that moment, Jameson wrote, "many" thought it worth 1 currency per acre. Land around Fredericksburg sold for about 10 per acre.

On Monday, October 6, 1783, peace was proclaimed in London. Large crowds gathered to see the formal procession and to hear the proclamation read at St. James's Palace, at Charing Cross, at the Royal Exchange, and elsewhere. Two days later, Samuel Gist started writing to Virginians, inviting them to resume sending consignments of tobacco and orders for manufactured goods. He pointed out that "by Death, and Misfortunes the old Virginia Merchts in this place are reduced to a very small Number indeed." He a.s.sured his correspondents that in his handling of their consignments, "your Interest shall be as much attended to in the sale as tho' it was my Own." He added: "I take this first safe Oppy, since the return of peace to Inclose your Acct. Currt. The Balance...I have no doubt on Examination you will find right, & that you will with your first Convenience, remit it to me, as well as the Interest due thereon."

Gist told his correspondents that William Anderson would take charge of s.h.i.+pping consignments from Virginia. Earlier in 1783, Gist had suggested that the Andersons move to London, and he offered financial support. They had made a good life in Hanover County and in Louisa County. They owned a prosperous plantation and used "very elegant" mahogany furniture. Mary Anderson, "a most amiable woman," was "in fine health and very fat." She rode in a "genteel carriage," while her husband acquired two "high blooded stud Horses." They had no children of their own, but they took into their home an orphaned two-year-old girl, Maria Anderson, and a boy, Francis Anderson, niece and nephew of William. He wrote: "I a.s.sure you we are very happy in our little boy & girl." Nevertheless, they were willing to live in London.

Fifteen years of experience with Samuel Gist had made William Anderson cautious. He would live in London and join Gist in business, "provided I can do it without becoming too dependant." He noticed "with great concern" that Gist's mention of support did not state a specific sum. Nor did it offer to settle upon the Andersons a fortune giving them their own permanent income. He saw that Gist reserved the right "to give them anything or nothing." With the most discreet wording he could devise, Anderson said he wished "to be equally guarded against extravagance and parsimony." He urged Gist to be definite about providing an income, "both with respect to the mode, and the Quantum." Otherwise, the Andersons would not cross the Atlantic in the summer of 1784, as Gist wished. And they did not.

At the end of the war, Robert Munford went the way of his friend William Byrd. On April 6, 1781, his daughter, Ursula Anna, was married to Otway Byrd. Elizabeth Farley said of her: "She is an amiable Girl & makes our Brother happy." Munford had just returned from the Land of Eden, where the Virginia militia paused after taking part in the battle of Guilford Court House on March 15. Munford commanded four hundred militiamen in General Robert Lawson's brigade. With bitter fighting, Lord Cornwallis's veterans forced the Americans under Nathanael Greene to withdraw, but British troops suffered twice as many casualties-almost one-third of Cornwallis's force. That night a cold rain fell on the battlefield and on dead and dying men of both armies. Cries of the wounded, a British officer wrote, "exceed all description." The Land of Eden lay 25 miles north of the battlefield. Munford left Saura Town for Virginia on Sunday, March 18.

After Cornwallis's surrender at York Town, Munford started to translate Ovid's Metamorphoses Metamorphoses into English. Perhaps that work would distract him from thinking about Americans' behavior. He privately had written satirical verse more scathing than his two comic plays about cozening politicians and strident patriots. In "A Letter from the Devil to His Son" the devil describes plans for a new h.e.l.l: into English. Perhaps that work would distract him from thinking about Americans' behavior. He privately had written satirical verse more scathing than his two comic plays about cozening politicians and strident patriots. In "A Letter from the Devil to His Son" the devil describes plans for a new h.e.l.l: Nay More, to give you due content, I'll send you negroes to torment; An overseer, or two, besides, To help you cut and slash their hides, And if I did not know you well,(Tho' seldom any come to h.e.l.l) Some women I might send; but then, I'm sure you'd whip them back again.

Munford translated only Book One of Metamorphoses; Metamorphoses; he did not work steadily. Instead, he became a hard drinker. he did not work steadily. Instead, he became a hard drinker.

As senior magistrate he attended sessions of Mecklenburg County Court so far gone in "excess of Drink & Intoxication" that his "profane swearing" and "indecent and disorderly behaviour" prevented other magistrates from doing the court's business. They reported his condition to the governor "with sorrow and regret"; it was an abrupt change from his previous "worthy and Judicious conduct." After a year of drunken disruption, Munford resigned. By the spring of 1783, his "most uncommon intemperance" had become so habitual that his brother-in-law said, "there can be no hopes of reclaiming him." Late in December, as George Was.h.i.+ngton resigned his commission to return to Mount Vernon, Robert Munford died. He left his son-in-law and executor, Otway Byrd, to deal with "the estate's noisey creditors." William Munford, his son, had to deal with "the embarra.s.sment of my Mother's circ.u.mstances."

Fifteen years later, William Munford published his father's plays and poems. Reading The Patriots The Patriots, he found pa.s.sages in which his father's hero, Trueman, expresses scorn for his countrymen. In one of them, near the end, Trueman says: "So in spite of all the malice and censure of the times, I am at last dubb'd a whig. I am not wiser or better than before. My political opinions are still the same, my patriotic principles unaltered: but I have kick'd a tory, it seems: there is merit in this, which, like charity, hides a mult.i.tude of sins." William Munford wrote a preface for his father's works to a.s.sure readers that The Patriots The Patriots was ridicule of hypocrites, not "a satire on the conduct of America in the late revolution." was ridicule of hypocrites, not "a satire on the conduct of America in the late revolution."

VI.

THIS ELDORADO.

ON CHRISTMAS EVE, 1783, George Was.h.i.+ngton returned to Mount Vernon, which he called "this retreat from all my public employments." He had heard nothing about the affairs of the Dismal Swamp Company for more than nine years; yet he still trusted that those "sunken lands...will in time become the most valuable property in this Country."

The first reports on the company were bad. They came to Was.h.i.+ngton from Dr. Thomas Walker, who in turn heard them from David Jameson. By express messenger Jameson warned that people were taking warrants at the Land Office in Richmond, encroaching on the company's grant. He urged Walker to seek legal advice from Thomas Jefferson. Walker promised to do so. They must act quickly to protect the company's t.i.tle. There was talk in Richmond of cutting a ca.n.a.l through the Dismal Swamp to connect the Elizabeth River in Virginia with the Pasquotank River in North Carolina, creating a waterway between Chesapeake Bay and Albemarle Sound. Walker wrote to Was.h.i.+ngton: "the Company having Shewed the value of those Lands, many are so mean as to wish for what is undoubtedly their property"-that is, the partners' property. The next year, one of the men who had taken warrants with his eye on "a large Tract" in the Dismal Swamp made the mistake of calling at Mount Vernon to seek Was.h.i.+ngton's approval of running a survey in the swamp. Was.h.i.+ngton gave his opinion "unreservedly, that they had no right to." General Was.h.i.+ngton spoke "unreservedly" only on special occasions.

Jameson and Walker had taken earlier precautions. They paid property taxes and in October 1781 obtained an act of the General a.s.sembly confirming the company's t.i.tle to all land granted it by the colonial Council. The partners must file a survey in the Land Office, as they had promised twenty years earlier to file one in Secretary Nelson's office. After several delays, county surveyors marked the boundaries of the company's 40,000 acres in the summer of 1783. With some deviations on the western side, the lines formed a rough rectangle without its northwestern corner. Beginning about a mile and a half east of the road from Suffolk into North Carolina, the line ran eastward along the boundary dividing North Carolina from Virginia for about 5 miles. It ran due north just east of Lake Drummond for 14 miles, then west for about 3 miles. From that point it ran southwestward to meet the western boundary about 11 miles north of the North Carolina line. These lines enclosed all of Lake Drummond and most of the northwestern quadrant of the Dismal Swamp. Dismal Plantation and the ditch to Lake Drummond lay about halfway down the western side of the company's tract. Suffolk lay just northwest of the missing corner of the rectangle.

David Jameson tried to a.s.semble a quorum of partners in Richmond on Wednesday, November 5, 1783, hoping to get a decision about whether to file this survey with the Land Office and rest content with 40,000 acres or to press a claim to all the swamp in Virginia. Few partners gathered on the appointed day. Those present agreed to confine the company's holdings to the bounds of the survey. Jameson wrote apologetically to Samuel Gist: "I fear we shall not be able to support a claim to more-in truth if the matter is brought before a Court I wish we may be able to support our right to that quant.i.ty."

Dr. Walker did not fear courts. He said: "Lawyers are fond of Business on which I suppose their opinions are founded." He had won an important case in May. The Supreme Court of Appeals unanimously confirmed the t.i.tles of the Loyal Company and the Greenbrier Company to lands surveyed before 1776. Walker's bygone "secret Surveys," which everyone seemed to know about, were upheld.

Prodded by Samuel Gist, in search of payment for his past s.h.i.+pments to the Dismal Swamp Company and remittance of profits, David Jameson worked to interest his partners in revival and expansion of the work. He found this difficult. George Was.h.i.+ngton showed a keen concern for the company's success and for the proposed new ca.n.a.l. Yet, twenty years after first embracing a scheme to drain the swamp, he realized that "a considerable advance" of money beyond regular expenses still would be needed to "reclaim" the submerged acres and "render them fit for cultivation." He could not add to his present expenditures. Jameson wrote to Secretary Thomas Nelson, who was nearing his seventieth birthday, to remind him that he had owed the company one more slave since 1765. In 1771 the partners had imposed a charge of 7 per year on anyone failing to provide a full complement of slaves. Jameson called upon Nelson to pay the arrears of this fee-almost 150-to defray expenses of a survey and of getting t.i.tle from the Land Office. Nelson said he had "no money," but he had an old bond for 100, signed by Dr. Walker on May 10, 1771, promising to repay Nelson for money advanced to the mother-in-law of Walker's son, John. Bernard Moore, the father-in-law, was supposed to redeem the bond. Though Moore was insolvent, if Jameson could get money from him the company was welcome to it. If not, Dr. Walker of course was liable.

From David Meade, Jameson received an opinion that the Dismal Swamp Company was "in a state of Bankruptcy," a view Jameson refused to share. One copy of his circular letter seeking to revive the company went to Rosewell. John Page, trying to ward off vertigo, still felt angry at his late father for sticking him with a failed copper mine and a half-share in the Dismal Swamp Company in lieu of a rich plantation. In search of more income, he advertised land in Gloucester County for sale, lease, or rent. He was not likely to make new investments in the Dismal Swamp.

Robert Tucker's share in the Dismal Swamp Company remained part of his estate, in the hands of his son-in-law, Thomas Newton, Jr. He stood ready to help Jameson protect the company's t.i.tle. But he could hardly be expected to sink his own money into Tucker's estate, which of course still owed more than it held in a.s.sets. Newton offered for sale 170 acres adjoining Portsmouth, site of the ruins of Tucker's mill and bakery among remains of British and American fortifications.

John Lewis, executor of Fielding Lewis's estate, found himself in a predicament similar to Newton's when he received Jameson's letter. George Was.h.i.+ngton would not sell their jointly held land, yet the estate bore a heavy burden of debt. Early in 1784, John Lewis's half brother, Fielding Lewis, Jr., was held in confinement by the sheriff of Frederick County at the suit of unpaid creditors. The younger Lewis wrote to his uncle, George Was.h.i.+ngton, asking for money. In reply he received a lecture on the virtues of being sober and frugal.

Joseph Hornsby was prosperous when he received Jameson's letter. Between April 1781 and April 1784 he entered at the Land Office for 4,800 acres in Kentucky, south and east of Louisville. He displayed his success in Williamsburg most clearly in February 1783 after the death of Elizabeth Harrison Randolph, widow of Speaker Peyton Randolph. Hornsby bought the Randolph house for 1,800 in currency. His partners in the Dismal Swamp Company, Jameson and William Nelson, Jr., witnessed the sale and deed. Thereafter, Hornsby walked among rooms paneled in pine and oak, formerly a gathering place of Virginia's greatest men since the days when the elder William Byrd returned to Virginia from London. Decorative touches "in the Chinese taste" along the bal.u.s.trade and elsewhere made this two-story frame house one of the most admired in Williamsburg. But despite his new comfort, Hornsby did not respond to hints that he should furnish money needed to get the Nansemond County surveyor's signature on the company's survey.

William Nelson, Jr., with his brother, Nathaniel, inherited President William Nelson's share in the Dismal Swamp Company. The younger William had his father's good humor without his father's application to business or desire for power. He served the company's interest as he served his own-intermittently, with good intentions. In September 1782, three years after he graduated from the College of William and Mary, Nelson was licensed to practice law. The following winter his wife, Polly Taliaferro Nelson, gave birth to their first child, a daughter. With the baby Betsey and "the pure, the modest, my affectionate Polly," Nelson found "perfect happiness." A sentimental lawyer, he did not aspire to rise to the top of his profession. He liked to read literature and philosophy amid "the calmness of the Lyceum." He was a loving husband, a loyal friend, and an inefficient partner.

The early months of 1784 brought Virginia another stormy, bitterly cold winter like the one four years earlier. In the lower James River, "great Quant.i.ties of Ice driving up and down" sank s.h.i.+ps. Trees did not begin to bud until late in April. Slaves on Dismal Plantation went without meat after the company's hogs were killed by black people from other plantations and by bears and wildcats from the swamp. Jameson told Jacob Collee to buy pork to maintain the usual allowance. Early in the harsh winter two of the company's absent slaves, Tom and Lewis, who had been "lying out" for a long time, were locked up. These two skilled evaders came into Collee's custody at almost the same time. Apparently, the winter was too cold for them to remain free as fugitives.

Though Jameson's appeals to his partners yielded little, he refused to dismiss the Dismal Swamp Company as a failure. Clinging to its original scheme, he concluded that success required a large infusion of slave labor to drain the swamp. He talked with "surveyors and several others well acquainted with the swamp." They told him that effective drainage would need "a very great force" of laborers-one hundred slaves digging ditches "throughout in certain directions." The company had eleven adult male slaves, two of whom, enduring winter confinement to get shelter and food, would not stay on, much less work on, Dismal Plantation.

Having learned that his partners "cannot or will not advance any thing like a sum necessary to prosecute the work," Jameson put the question to Samuel Gist. Would Gist lend 5,000 or 6,000 sterling to the Dismal Swamp Company? For collateral he could have a mortgage on 40,000 acres of swamp. In words reminiscent of William Byrd's first proposal more than fifty years earlier, Jameson described to Gist the "healthy young men & women" the partners could put in the swamp to work and to produce more slaves through childbirth, thereby remedying the "great oversight" of originally ignoring Byrd's advice to combine procreation with drainage.

Appealing to Gist's vanity, Jameson wrote that Gist might "easily procure" the needed sum if he did not wish to furnish it from his own funds. Appealing to Gist's greed, Jameson said: "it is shameful to let an Estate of such value lie waste." But he tempted in vain. By the summer of 1784 he saw that the best the company could do was "hiring at least at least ten strong hands for the year." He told William Nelson, Jr., that "there was not a chance" of buying slaves. ten strong hands for the year." He told William Nelson, Jr., that "there was not a chance" of buying slaves.

Ever since Samuel Gist had established himself as a consignment merchant in London, he had provoked criticism in Virginia. Though his hostility to the American Revolution was widely known, his property in Virginia evaded escheat, thanks to the special law vesting it in his daughter. She and her husband intended to join Gist in London. His Petersburg agent, Thomas Sh.o.r.e, already had done so. Gist's dunning letters seeking payment of old debts started