Proceed, Sergeant Lamb

by Robert Graves

  It was not until we came to Tar River after a crooked journey of two hundred miles that, the country becoming more populous, we were able to supplement the stores carried upon the wagons; but at the same time met with some opposition at the river crossings. The militia of Halifax on the Roanoke River turned out in force, but our advanced troops bustled them away; and on May 20th, we joined forces on the borders of Virginia with General Phillips’ army.

  I was much grieved to hear that General Phillips himself was dead, only the week before, of a fever. He was a man equally beloved and respected for his virtues and his military talents. The Marquis de La Fayette, who had led down a small army with the prime object of capturing and hanging General Arnold, was not far off, but broke camp as soon as he was aware of our arrival. It seems that the young Marquis had lost his boasted French politesse since his arrival in America, for when a flag was sent to him across the river to inform him that General Phillips lay dying in a certain house, and request him to drop no more shells about it, he disregarded this embassy, and the cannonade continued. One ball passed through the room next to the death chamber. General Phillips’ last words were: ‘Now why in the world cannot that vainglorious boy let me die in peace? ’Tis very cruel.’

  The junction of the armies was at Petersburgh, a town of about three hundred houses on a tributary of the James River, which runs into Chesapeak Bay. There were fine falls at the upper end of the town and some of the best flour-mills in the country. The houses were of wood roofed with shingles: the better sort were white-plastered, with brick chimneys and glazed windows; the poorer sort were left rough outside, with wooden chimneys clay-lined and only shutters to the windows. This was an important centre of the tobacco trade and also contained a number of general stores which used to supply the back country. Now trade was at a standstill, the merchants being unable to export their tobacco, for fear of British men-of-war and privateers, and thus to replenish their shelves.

  The great warehouses and the mills of Petersburgh belonged to a Mrs. Bowling, whose mansion General Phillips, and now Lord Cornwallis, used as their headquarters. This fine mansion was situated on a vast grassy platform on a considerable slope above the town. I was quartered in the stables there, at his Lordship’s request, in order to be at hand for copying out his despatches. I remember how, early one Sunday morning, I paused entranced in the garden and thought to myself: ‘Ah, what a sweet green oasis in the desert of War!’ In my nostrils was the scent of clove pinks, of which a long border stretched down the garden path on either hand, and my eye feasted on the ripe apricots and nectarines hanging upon the well-pruned trees, the swelling green peas trained upon their sticks, and strawberries of enormous size netted against the depredations of birds. At the same time a mocking-bird was singing very finely from a plum-tree above my head, hopping incessantly from branch to branch; he was about the size of a thrush, but more slender. The mocking-bird would imitate the note of every other bird, but with increased strength and sweetness—to the discomfiture of the bird he mocked, who would fall silent and fly off. He imitated for me on this occasion the cardinal and the painted plover, and then (as if to raise a laugh) the wail and whimper of a black piccaninny! I clapped my hands and called out ‘bravo!’; whereupon he flew off.

  The interior of the mansion, one wing of which, by Virginian custom, was wholly dedicated to guests, appeared solidly but not exquisitely furnished, and rather for good cheer than for the cultivation of the polite arts; with much massive silver but no books or albums; several comfortable sofas but no cabinets of curios, and so forth.

  The people of Virginia felt sentimentally about their great magnolia bushes with the broad leaves and heavily perfumed flowers; and about a very sweet white flower of smaller size called the ‘bubby-flower’ because it was presented by gallant young men to their sweethearts to place between their breasts. In New England, contrariwise, flowers and music were alike considered luxurious and ‘a sign of slavery’. Virginia was the most mature and agreeable province in America that I had yet visited, and the nearest to my own country in manners. Fox-hunting with hounds, unknown in New England (where the chase was only for the sake of the pot), and cock-fighting (which the Yankees held un-Christian and barbarous), were with drinking and horse-racing the chief amusements of the Virginians. The fortune of the province, I must add, was founded upon tobacco, as firmly as that of the Northern provinces upon the cod-fish.

  In our passage by the James River and other streams we observed to our surprise a great deal of derelict land in what seemed to us advantageous situations. The fact was that tobacco is a crop that soon exhausts the soil, and the settlers, when they had sucked all the richness out of a piece of land did not trouble to put it into good heart again but, with the money it had fetched, bought fresh land in the interior and settled there until that in turn was worn out. The exhausted land soon threw up a spontaneous growth of pine and cedar, but did not recover its fertility for about twenty years.

  This was the season when the young plants of tobacco had just been removed from the seed-beds and transplanted into fields, where they were set out in hillocks at about a yard’s interval, each from each; as hops are planted in Great Britain. Now the slaves, who were in general less brutish, since more humanely treated then those of the Carolinas or Georgia, were constantly tending the plants, picking off a large black fly of the beetle kind and all manner of other greedy insects, and removing weeds and worms with their hoes. When the plants attained about a foot in height the slaves would break off the tops, the suckers and the coarse lower leaves, in order to encourage the fine upper leaves. The plants would reach maturity in August and then be cut down for removal to the drying-houses, where they would be smoked, damped, sweated and smoked again. This work required the most delicate judgment, lest the leaves should crumble or rot. When sufficiently dry they were then stripped from the stems, sorted, and packed by means of strong presses into hogsheads of a thousand-pound capacity. The hogsheads were sent for inspection to a State warehouse—trundled along by a couple of strong pins at either end, by way of axles—and certificates given in exchange for them; which certificates passed as currency in the province, and a man generally reckoned the value of a horse, a watch or a silver dish not in coin but in so many hogsheads of tobacco. However, much of this paper, the only American currency that had not hitherto depreciated in value, was now worthless from the raids made by General Arnold upon the tobacco warehouses.

  When we arrived at Petersburgh we found a bitter dispute in progress between General Arnold and the Royal Navy, each side claiming the tobacco stored in Mrs. Bowling’s warehouse as its own prize. Lord Cornwallis settled the dispute, in Indian fashion, by burning the whole stock, amounting to four thousand hogsheads. However, from consideration for his hostess, Mrs. Bowling, he first had it removed from the warehouses. It was a pleasure to us to learn that this tobacco, with what had been destroyed at Richmond and other places, was the property of the French Government and amounted to almost the whole of their annual remittance. We were surprised that with such discouragement the planters continued the manufacture of tobacco; but they must keep their slaves employed, and I suppose they hoped for better times. The Virginians, by the way, unlike the Carolinians, neither took snuff nor chewed tobacco, and few of them smoked—out of consideration for their women-folk, whose nostrils were easily offended.

  The province now raised a deal of cotton, a shrub which flourished better on inferior land, or on land that had already had its first richness taken from it by tobacco; on virgin soil it produced more wood than cotton. This substance was contained in the swollen pistil of the flower, which burst open when ripe. The flocks intermixed with the seeds were then gathered by negroes; and the seeds later removed by means of a gin, a contrivance of two smooth rollers moving in contrary directions. The plant, which was set in regular walks, was kept down by cropping to a height of four feet. Though previously all cotton had been sent for manufacture to England, since the war the provin
cials had of necessity carded, spun and woven their own cotton-cloth, but little inferior to Manchester goods; the labour employed being that of female slaves. Much of this cloth here dyed blue with indigo, also of native growth.

  Reinforcements now arrived from New York. They had been sent by Sir Henry before he knew of Lord Cornwallis’ intention to come into this country, and they brought up the combined armies, of which his Lordship now took command, to above five thousand men. This made us greatly superior to the American forces in Virginia, and he determined to chase the Marquis out of the province. We crossed the James River without opposition at a place called Westover where the river was two miles broad. The Marquis decamped from his position at the tobacco town of Richmond and retreated north up the York River, ourselves in pursuit. However, he went too fast for us and Lord Cornwallis contented himself with ordering the destruction of tobacco and other public stores wherever they were found. General Arnold was not with us: he was recalled by Sir Henry to New York, whence he undertook a very successful raid against New London, in his own State of Connecticut, and did frightful damage. Congress would have done well to treat him with more decency and gratitude when his outstanding powers were exerted in the American cause.

  We were near a place called Hanover in early June when orders came from Lord Cornwallis that greatly interested the Royal Welch Fusiliers. All the seventy horsemen among us were to be mounted upon blood-horses, numbers of which had been seized from the plantations of revolutionary officers, and sent upon a very enterprising jaunt under Colonel Tarleton, in company with one hundred and eighty Greens. The Virginia General Assembly were shortly to assemble at Charlotteville, in the foot-hills of the mountains seventy miles from us, where were the head-waters of the Rivanna, a tributary of the James River. They would meet under guard, for the purpose of voting taxes, drafting the militia and making an addition to the regular forces of the State. Their president was the famous Mr. Thomas Jefferson, a citizen of Charlotteville, and the chief author (or rather compiler) of the Declaration of Independence. To break up this meeting was the object confided to us.

  At dawn on June 4th, we set out, making our way between the North and South Anna Rivers. Our horses went unshod, as is customary in the South during the summer. It was an exceedingly hot day, but to have one’s back unencumbered by the great luggage of a marching soldier, and even to be provided with pistols in place of a heavy musket, was delightful to us. The country was wooded and uncultivated and for several miles we did not pass a single human habitation or meet with a single person. We halted at midday to refresh ourselves, but pressed on again after two hours, and by eleven o’clock at night had reached Louisa after about forty miles’ ride. Whenever we passed over a bridge we first blanketed it to prevent the drumming of our horses’ hooves from giving the signal of our approach. At Louisa we were regaled with hearth-cake, bacon and peach-brandy by a Loyalist planter. At two o’clock we were in the saddle again and before the dawn of June 5th, struck the great road which ran along the skirt of the mountains and communicated between Maryland and the Southern States.

  Here we were in luck. The rumble of wheels was heard in the distance, the crack of whips and the shouting of drivers to sleepy horses: it was twelve heavy wagons under a slight escort coming down the road from Alexandria. These we seized, taking the escort prisoner. They were found to be laden with clothing and French arms for General Greene’s forces. We could not waste time or men in conveying these goods back to our army, and therefore burned them. This was a great disservice for the enemy, for long before this, according to General Greene’s own account, more than two-thirds of his men were entirely naked but for a breech-cloth, and never came out of their tents; and the rest were as ragged as wolves, and shoeless. Soon after daybreak, at Dr. Walker’s plantation and in its neighbourhood, the Greens took from their beds a number of the principal gentlemen of Virginia, who had fled to this mountain border for safety. We had with us two Loyalist gentlemen who knew the records and characters of these persons, one of whom was a member of Congress. Some they recommended for mercy, some for capture, and a third sort for immediate slaughter. However, Colonel Tarleton was careful to do nothing violent: a month before, Lord Cornwallis had read the Greens a lecture on their brutal rapacity and, two of them, being picked out of a parade by country people as the authors of rape and murder, he had executed as an example to the rest. His Lordship had likewise forbidden all acts of terror and revenge. The more active enemies of King George were therefore secured and put under guard, the remainder paroled and allowed to remain with their families. We now halted for half an hour, having come seventy miles in twenty-four hours. We were very saddle-sore, those of us who were but horsemen for the occasion.

  Precautions were taken to secure every person going in the direction of Charlotteville, which lay seven miles ahead of us, so that our arrival there might come as a surprise. Among those we seized was a great plump negro, driving a gaudy yellow cart, who acted as the Charlotteville post-rider. In his mail bags several important letters were discovered. Negroes in Virginia were forbidden by law to bear the consequential dignity of post-rider, but this one was, by a fiction, deputy to a four-year old white boy who rode in the cart with him. It was the child who wore the laced hat of office and had taken the oath before a magistrate, ‘by the Almighty God’, to carry the mail safely through. His childish lips were not, however, equal to a blast upon the post-horn, nor his fingers to the management of a pistol; and even the shrill cries of alarm raised by his black deputy failed to disturb his slumbers when we surrounded the cart and impounded the bags.

  Various were the accounts given by this negro and other persons on the road as to the force assembled in Charlotteville: some trying to dissuade us from our adventure by magnifying the State Guard, others encouraging us by denying that any soldiers whatever were there. But we must strike at once or not at all. We were therefore ordered to urge our horses forward with all possible expedition. Captain Champagné begged as a favour from Colonel Tarleton that, should a charge be made into the town, our people might be given the honour of leading it. This was granted.

  It was about breakfast time when, despite the warning of our scouts that the ford of the Rivanna was guarded by a company of Americans, we swept down the banks and across the water in a headlong gallop, losing but three men wounded, and pistolled the flying guards. The town was erected on the opposite bank: it was but a small place, consisting of about a dozen gentlemen’s houses, with their negro-cabins and tobacco-houses, one ‘ordinary’ (or tavern), a Court House, and some barracks. We were immediately directed to charge up the street, which we did. So animated was my spirit that to the surprise of my comrades and the terror of my horse, who swerved, plunged and nearly threw me, I uttered a loud war-whoop in the Mohawk style. Some American officers now came running out from the houses, pistol in hand, to oppose us. They were shot down, and while one troop continued to the Court House, where the Assembly met, and another to the magazine, Captain Champagné led forty of us for some distance up a mountain in an attempt to catch Mr. Jefferson.

  A good carriage road of about three miles brought us to a large mansion in the Italian style, with columned porticoes, which was Mr. Jefferson’s residence, named Monticello. We were told by his servants, as soon as we arrived, that their master had heard the distant noise of shots and seen our red-coats coming up the hill. He had then provided for his personal liberty by a precipitate retreat: his horse was fresh and good and he was not to be overtaken by our exhausted ones. Captain Champagné entered the mansion, taking me with him, to make a close search; but Mr. Jefferson was indeed gone.

  Monticello, which occupied about an acre and a half on the extreme summit of the mountain, was a place which greatly differed from the other plantations of Virginia. Mr. Jefferson was not a sportsman and no trophies of the chase adorned the house, of which he was himself the architect and to which he had given this Italian name. Instead, we found evidences of his philosophic studies, vi
z. terrestrial and celestial globes, a large telescope through which he had observed our approach, meteorological instruments and observations, and a sort of alchemist’s den with phials, retorts and alembics. The centre of the mansion consisted of a large octagonal saloon, with glass folding doors opening upon a portico at either side. From one window there was an extensive prospect of the Blue Mountains rising for about three thousand feet, from the other, across a well-tended vineyard, we could see the wooded valley of the Rivanna. There was also a library upstairs with decorations in the antique Roman style, but not yet completed. The Captain apologized to the lady of the house (whom I suppose to have been Mrs. Jefferson), for our intrusion and after a short examination of the premises, from which he removed some papers of an official kind found in a chest, led us down the hill again.

  Meanwhile at Charlotteville seven members of the Assembly had been captured, with a few officers and men; one thousand new firelocks from the Fredericksburg manufactory had been broken; four hundred barrels of gunpowder, several hogsheads of tobacco and a store of Continental uniform clothing destroyed. We abstained from the plundering or destruction of private property, but spent all day in searching the district for what could be considered of public ownership or capable of hostile use against us.

  We remained in the town for the night. Early the next day a party of twenty ragged men came into our piquets on the hill, huzzaing and singing. I was on duty not far away and strolled up with Smutchy Steel to see who they might be. The man who led them cried out at sight of me and came running to me with hand outstretched. I confess that I did not give a very cordial greeting to this savage, who had a great black beard, red moustachios and long matted hair, and was clad only in a pair of cotton trousers, with half one leg missing. But Smutchy had a sharper eye. ‘Why, Terry Reeves,’ he cried, ‘is it not yourself?’