This article has been edited since it first appeared in print.
John “Jack” Jouett, 26 years old and dedicated to the Revolutionary cause, happened to be at the right place at the right time when he became Virginia’s version of Paul Revere.
A son of John Jouett, a former Louisa County resident and the operator of Charlottesville’s Swan Tavern, Jack Jr. came to rest his horse at the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County in June 1781. Further details are ambiguous, and a published account didn’t appear for 35 years.
A silhouette of Jack Jouett (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
The 1816 iteration makes Jouett a captain in the militia, but, according to Virginia Humanities’ Encyclopedia Virginia, no record exists of his enlistment in Louisa, and the Albemarle County roster is lost. Jouett didn’t wear a uniform, but, as writer Alan Pell Crawford notes in his recent “This Fierce People,” “militia men rarely had them.” At least one source describes him as wearing a scarlet coat and a “flamboyant hat.” When he wore them is unclear.
Whatever Jouett’s guise, he went unnoticed by the notorious British cavalry commander Col. Banastre Tarleton. By order of Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, Tarleton rode at the head of 250 horsemen heading toward Charlottesville to seize Virginia legislators and Gov. Thomas Jefferson.
Jefferson, near the end of his second one-year term, and members of the government departed Richmond ahead of the second attack there since Jan. 5-6, when traitor Benedict Arnold set fire to warehouses and soldiers plundered residences.
That spring, Cornwallis based his command in Wilmington, North Carolina. He wanted to end resistance in Virginia to choke off rebel support of North Carolina, where he’d constantly fought them. He’d achieve this through uniting forces with Gen. William Phillips.
Phillips advanced from Portsmouth from April 18 to 24 with 2,300 men, using boats for river travel. He dispersed militia and destroyed supplies. At Petersburg on April 25, Phillips collided with Continental forces under Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and Maj. Gen. Peter Muhlenberg.
“Outnumbered, outgunned and outgeneraled,” as Harry M. Ward and Harold E. Greer Jr. describe in their book, “Richmond During the Revolution, 1775-83,” “Steuben beat a zigzag retreat through Chesterfield County and eventually to Richmond.” Arnold set fire to the vessels of the Virginia navy. Phillips continued into Manchester, where he burned tobacco stores and public buildings, stole furniture, and slaughtered cattle and hogs.
On May 10, the Virginia government evacuated the state capital and headed for Charlottesville.
Jefferson sent his family first to a friend’s plantation, then to his Poplar Forest farm near Lynchburg and then to Monticello.
Eliza Ambler, whose father, Jacquelin, served on Virginia’s Council of State, attested to correspondent Mildred Smith the situation in Richmond: “Such terror and confusion you have no idea of. Governor, Council, everybody scampering. ... How dreadful the idea of an enemy passing through such a country as ours committing enormities that fill the mind with horror and returning exultantly without meeting one impediment to discourage them.”
The path Thomas Jefferson took to escape Monticello (Image courtesy Albemarle Chapter, National Society Daughters of the American Revolution)
Ambler further jibed, “But this is not more laughable than the accounts we have of our illustrious [Gov. Jefferson] who, they say, took neither rest nor food for man or horse till he reached [Carter’s] mountain.”
A courageous and battle-tested ally, the 23-year-old Maj. Gen. Marquis de Lafayette, formed on the north side of the James River with about 3,000 men, though only some 900 were experienced Continental troops.
Lafayette couldn’t take the British in an open fight until additional men arrived from Pennsylvania from “Mad Anthony” Wayne. Delayed by commissary problems, his men wouldn’t get there until June 10. Meanwhile, Lafayette harassed the invader.
Phillips believed Richmond was an easy conquest until he viewed Lafayette’s force bristling on the ridges of the north bank. Before Phillips called a halt, several British boats attempted a landing, but a swift militia charge drove them back across the James River.
An angry Phillips withdrew to Petersburg to await Cornwallis. Lafayette shifted his command to Wilton plantation in eastern Henrico County. At the Bollingbrook house in Petersburg, Phillips died of yellow fever on May 13.
Cornwallis arrived in Petersburg on May 20. He took command, sent Arnold to New York and anticipated the arrival of 2,000 reinforcements, making his force of 7,000 the third-largest army fielded by the British during the entire war.
In a message to Clinton, Cornwallis outlined how he planned to dislodge Lafayette by destroying “any magazines or stores in the neighbourhood.”
He dispatched Col. John Simcoe and his Queen’s Rangers to seize a stockpile center near present-day Columbia and Scottsville, and he sent Tarleton from Hanover Courthouse to Charlottesville with instructions to destroy rebel capacities until joining the main force at Jefferson’s Goochland County plantation, Elkhill.
Jouett heard of Col. Banastre Tarleton’s plans to attack Charlottesville. (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
And at Cuckoo Tavern, the attentive Jack Jouett somehow learned of Tarleton’s plans. He set off on the night of June 3-4 to ride 40 miles through forest and field, carrying the warning to Jefferson and the legislators that the British were coming.
Crawford emphasizes Jouett’s advantages: alone, fresh and knowing his way, even in the dark. Yet branches slapped and bloodied his face, and he bore scars the rest of his life.
At 4:30 a.m., he arrived at Monticello, shouting, “You must flee!” A convivial Jefferson saluted him with a drink of Madeira. Then Jouett and steed galloped down the mountain to roust slumbering legislators, who included Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. They’d make their way to Staunton.
Daniel Boone, however, then a representative from what became Kentucky counties, got swept up by British dragoons and spent some time stowed in a coal house.
Jefferson, though, made preparations to send his family and guests to safety. For two hours he and his servant Caesar prepared important papers and valuables for the run. They started out, but then Jefferson realized he’d left his “walking sword.” Using a telescope, they saw greencoated British dragoons in Charlottesville’s streets, and it was time to scurry.
Within minutes, a British detachment under Capt. Kenneth McLeod arrived at Monticello. He found the place in the care of Jefferson’s butler, Martin Hemings. To McLeod’s credit, he left the house and grounds undisturbed.
Cornwallis, though, laid waste to Elkhill, burning the barns and taking away 30 enslaved people, the livestock and horses, except for the colts too young to ride, whose throats he ordered cut. Many of the enslaved fell fatally ill.
A quorum of the legislature in Staunton voted Thomas Nelson Jr., head of the Virginia militia, as governor. They also voted their appreciation for Jouett and to extend the gift to him of “an elegant sword and pair of pistols.”
Jouett moved to Kentucky, ultimately serving both in the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures, fathering a large family and dying in 1822.
While documents indicate repeated efforts to put a ceremonial sword in Jouett’s hands, there’s no evidence that he ever received one.
