Charlottesville, Virginia

“ The one for the deaf and blind is a State institution.
Tarleton entered Charlottesville on the fourth day of June in 1781. Jefferson's term as governor expired four days later. Ex-Governor Patrick Henry had been his guest while the Legislature was meeting there. He now hastened to Staunton where the Legislators had fled from Charlottesville. Mr. Jefferson, according to one historian, concealed himself in a cave in Carter's Mountain and Patrick Henry, in his flight to Staunton, met Colonel Lewis and told him of how the Legislators had fled Charlottesville upon Tarleton's invasion. ”

“ Late in the summer of this year another large convention of clergymen, Presbyterian this time, was held at Charlottesville. No good hotel could be found anywhere in Virginia. The landlord was ruined by the hospitality of the citizens. As soon as a pleasant stranger "put up" at a public house, he was claimed as a guest by the first man who could reach him. ”

“ On the approach of Cornwallis, La Fayette, having removed the most valuable stores from Richmond, abandoned that town and retired towards the north-west, to form a junction with General Wayne, who was now on his march with 1,000 of the Pennsylvanian levies to join the southern army. The assembly of Virginia, on the abandonment of Richmond, adjourned to Charlottesville, and increased powers, suitable to the emergency, were conferred upon Governor Jefferson. ”

“ During the winter of 1779 the Convention Army at Charlottesville lost heavily by desertion. “I should observe that this desertion is among the British troops. For what reason it is impossible to say, the Americans shew more indulgence to the Germans, permitting them to go round the country to labor, and being for the most part expert handicraftsmen, they realize a great deal of money exclusive of their pay.”
The officers made themselves pretty comfortable. They put up a coffee house, a theatre and a cold bath. ”

“ The Revolutionary War was drawing to a close, involving Virginia in its last throes in the devastation of an invading army. The whole eastern portion was overrun by the British forces under Arnold and Tarleton, the capital taken, and much public and private property destroyed everywhere. Charlottesville, to [Pg 294] which the legislature had adjourned, Monticello, and Castle Hill were raided by Tarleton's dragoons, and the legislature, Mr. Jefferson, and Doctor Walker barely escaped capture. ”

“ An evidence of the truth of this surmise, and an abrupt ending to the peaceful life at Saratoga, came to the little settlement in the first week of the year 1781, when a post rider spurred into Charlottesville with a despatch to the County Lieutenant of Albemarle announcing that a British fleet had entered the Capes of the Chesapeake and seized the town of Portsmouth, and summoning the militia to embody, for Virginia was threatened with the fate which had already befallen her sister States to the southward. ”

“ At Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County, fifty miles from Charlottesville, young Jouett was sitting around one night getting the latest news of the rebellion, when Tarleton, who commanded a British force, came into the place. Jouett hid from sight and overheard Tarleton talking with several other English officers. They said they were impatient to be on their way to Monticello to capture Jefferson, Patrick Henry and other Virginia leaders. Jack stayed to hear the route they would take to Charlottesville and then slipped away on his horse. ”

“ While we lay in camp at Harrisonburg it became necessary to decide whether or not I would advance to Brown's Gap, and, after driving the enemy from there, follow him through the Blue Ridge into eastern Virginia. Indeed, this question began to cause me solicitude as soon as I knew Early had escaped me at New Market, for I felt certain that I should be urged to pursue the Confederates toward Charlottesville and Gordonsville, and be expected to operate on that line against Richmond. ”

“ The Army of Virginia shall operate in such manner as, while protecting western Virginia and the national capital from danger or insult, it shall in the speediest manner attack and overcome the rebel forces under Jackson and Ewell, threaten the enemy in the direction of Charlottesville, and render the most effective aid to relieve General McClellan and capture Richmond. ”

“ The existence of the University of Virginia is scarcely recognised by British travellers. I was welcomed there as the first who had ever visited it. Charlottesville lies out of the ordinary route of tourists; but Monticello, the seat of Jefferson, is within sight of his favourite institution, and Mr. Madison's residence is only about thirty-five miles off; and it seems surprising that such a combination of interesting objects should not have drawn more pilgrim feet that way. ”

“ At Charlottesville, at the foot of Monticello, the people of Albemarle County, Virginia, met to adopt resolutions of denunciation, and at Lexington, Kentucky, they added their protest. [1574] Richmond—Knoxville—followed. These resolutions were dignified and forceful protests, sponsored by men of the first ability in the communities acting. But in the House of Representatives at Phila{407}delphia, when Jeffersonians spoke in favor of the repeal of the obnoxious measures, their voices were drowned by loud conversation, coughs, laughter, the scraping of the feet of the Federalists. ”

“ They are very strong for the tide-water families; to hear them talk you’d think the people back in the Virginia hills weren’t really respectable.”
“It’s undeniably the right view of the matter,” laughed Griswold, “but now that I live in Charlottesville I don’t insist on it. It wouldn’t be decent in me. And I have lots of cousins in Lexington and through the Valley. The broad view is that every inch of the Old Dominion is holy ground.”
“It is an interesting commonwealth, Mr. Griswold; but I do not consider it holy ground. South Carolina has a monopoly of that;” ”

“ That same evening he was summoned as juryman to Charlottesville, a village some fifteen miles from Caryston, and as he kissed Virginia good-by his heart rose in his throat. The face she lifted to his was so wan, so patient, so like the face of her young mother just ere she died, twenty-one years ago.
“Leetle gyrl—leetle gyrl,” said the old man, brokenly, “ef you don’ want tuh hurry yo’ father tuh his grave, yo’ll hurry en take them purty leetle foots out o’ yourn. Darter, honey, try ’n’ git some o’ them ole [199] red roses in them white cheeks. ”

“ William and Mary College was founded for the purpose of providing an opportunity for higher education within the colony itself; Washington and Lee University—originally known as Augusta Academy, then Liberty Hall, and, eventually, Washington College before being renamed Washington and Lee University—was founded to educate young men in Virginia in a similar fashion to the academies in England at that time. In 1819, the General Assembly passed a law allotting $15,000 annually from the Literary Fund to be used for a state university, the University of Virginia, to be located in Charlottesville. ”

“ While the Petersburg siege was taking place, Lynchburg became the next objective of the Union forces. When General Jubal Early reached Charlottesville on his mission to block Union General Hunter, he learned that Hunter was heading for Lynchburg, the chief center of supplies of the Army of Northern Virginia and its center of communications. Early's forces in this battle consisted of two extremes in age: very young men cadets from the Virginia Military Institute and older men whose hair locks were so white that they were nicknamed "Silver grays." ”

“ They’re sweet girls, and we’re never young but once. I think it was so fine of Mr. Valiant to offer to give the ball. I hear he’s motored to Charlottesville three or four times for fixings, though I understand he’s poor enough since he gave up his money as he did. ”

“ A Norfolk native, William Couper, molded a bronze statue of Captain John Smith at Jamestown and a bronze statue of Dr. Hunter H. McGuire, a brilliant Winchester doctor, on the north side of Capitol Square in Richmond. He also designed a Norfolk Confederate Soldier Monument.
Many sculptors who were born outside of Virginia have used events and personalities of Virginia as their subjects. Charles Keck executed a bronze group of statues of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the two explorers of the Northwest, which may be seen at Charlottesville. ”

“ At the northeast base of these, distant two and three miles, are Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, forming nuclei connected by a scattered village. From west to northeast no mountain interposes between your position and the base of the Blue Ridge, which sinks below the horizon eighty or one hundred miles distant. Two mountains only are seen northeast—one ten, the other forty miles off. The country, ascending from your position, and presenting to you its fertile slopes, gives the view of one highly cultivated. ”

“ Thomas Jonathan Jackson—Virginian by birth, graduate of West Point, distinguished in the Mexican War—resigned from the regular army, 1851, and became a Presbyterian elder and a professor of natural philosophy and artillery tactics at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington. Ten years later, at the outbreak of the War-between-the-States, he entered the Confederate army and rose to a rank second in authority only to Lee. His military genius was fully recognized abroad, and his campaigns have long been studied in England’s military schools. ”

“ James Monroe was born in 1758 at his father’s home, Monroe’s Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia. He studied at Williamsburg, served with distinction in the Revolutionary War, and practiced law for eighteen months in Fredericksburg. His removal to Albemarle was the fulfillment of a long-cherished plan, as his pleasant letters to Mr. Jefferson show. One reads as follows:
17
Ash Lawn. The “Cabin-Castle”. J. Rawlings Thomson
August 19, 1786. ”

“ Jefferson, and Monroe’s uncle, Joseph Jones, Chief Justice of Virginia, had oversight of planning and building. The exact date of the moving in is given in a letter from Monroe.
“November 22, 1799. I was yesterday at Monticello, where Mr. Jefferson informed me he proposed a visit to you ... I told him it would ... immediately appear throughout the nation. He declined the trip ... in the persuasion an interview might be had, by your making me a visit, in my new home, to which I move tomorrow.” ”

“ Jefferson came down hurriedly from Monticello and lobbied on this green for Monroe, who at that time was undergoing a brief decline in popular favor. The contest was for the State Assembly. The local party had gone so far as to decide to nominate another man; Mr. Jefferson’s intervention, however, nipped this in the bud; the proposed candidate withdrew at Jefferson’s solicitation; Monroe was substituted and elected.
JOHN S. MOSBY.
Coming momentarily down to the War-Between-the-States era, Virginia’s famous cavalry officer, Col. John S. Mosby, is doubly connected with this building. ”

“ As the Revolutionary War drew to its end the little building knew a brief notoriety. Before the threat of Cornwallis, Governor Jefferson and the Legislature refugeed, May 24, 1781, to re-convene in Charlottesville. The Legislature met in the Court House, the overflow occupying the Swan Tavern across the street. ”

“ Upon the forming of the County of Albemarle in 1745, its boundaries included what are now Buckingham, Amherst, Nelson, and Fluvanna Counties, with parts of Appomattox and Campbell—the Blue Ridge being the Western line. The county seat was then placed in Scottsville on the James, but with final boundary adjustments in 1761 it was felt necessary to remove the court house to a more central site. Thus Charlottesville was not a town of natural growth, but a political creation. ”

“ The court house long served as the town’s public building, and the denominations used it in rotation. Writing about this in 1822, Mr. Jefferson says:
“In our Richmond there is much fanaticism, but chiefly among the women. In our village of Charlottesville there is a good degree of religion, with but a small spice of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either a church or a meeting house. The court house is the common temple, one Sunday in the month to each. ”

“ Although I care more for Jefferson and Patrick Henry than all the others together. We’ll hang those two.”
The girl wrung her hands as she listened. 278 Jefferson, the governor of the state, the writer of the Declaration of Independence; and Patrick Henry, he who had been termed the Voice of the Revolution! Oh! it must not be! But how, how could it be prevented? They should be warned.
“If I but knew where Charlottesville is,” cried the girl anguished by her helplessness. “What shall be done? Oh, I’ll ask Fairfax.”
Up to the garret she sped unnoticed by any one. ”

“ The professional forester, usually a college man and a gentleman, has not yet been “placed” exactly by what he would call “the masses.”
That rattling drive through the tangled lanes about Charlottesville soothed me entirely, however. A freakish wind blew from the mountains. The air was a web of thrilling scents. A little covey of white lustrous clouds was now loosed upon the sky. I saw noble copses and wood lands unfolding on either hand. ”