Charlottesville

Charlottesville in the American Revolution: The Piedmont Town That Nearly Lost a Nation Its Leaders

Few places in Virginia carry the weight of Revolutionary history quite like Charlottesville. Nestled in the rolling Piedmont at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, this small town was never a major battlefield, never the site of a prolonged siege, and never home to a large garrison. Yet in the spring and summer of 1781, Charlottesville found itself at the very center of the American crisis — a place where the survival of Virginia's civilian government, the fate of its controversial governor, and the dignity of the revolutionary cause all hung in a precarious balance. What happened in and around Charlottesville during those fraught weeks remains one of the most dramatic episodes of the war, a story involving daring cavalry raids, desperate midnight rides, legislative flight, and the near-capture of Thomas Jefferson himself.

Founded on December 23, 1762, by an Act of the Virginia Assembly as the new Albemarle County seat, Charlottesville was named in honour of Queen Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, wife of British King George III — an irony not lost on later generations who would remember the town chiefly for its defiance of that king's armies.

Before Charlottesville became the scene of one of the war's most dramatic near-disasters, it had already played a significant — if less celebrated — role in the Revolution as a prisoner-of-war camp. The Albemarle Barracks was a prisoner-of-war camp located outside of Charlottesville that housed British and Hessian prisoners captured during the Battles of Saratoga (September 19 and October 7, 1777). The captives, approximately 4,000 men, women, and children, were initially held near Boston. In November 1778, this Convention Army, named for the Convention of Saratoga, was marched south to Virginia because of strain on local supply chains and fear that the British would attempt to free the prisoners. The prisoners arrived in January 1779 at the Albemarle Barracks, a camp of crudely constructed log huts about five miles northwest of Charlottesville.

Land for the prison camp was provided by Colonel John Harvie, a lawyer who was a member of the Continental Congress and a childhood friend of Thomas Jefferson. Harvie offered several hundred acres of land on the north bank of Ivy Creek, approximately five miles northwest of Charlottesville, rent-free.

The barracks consisted of about 300 log huts, around twenty-four feet long by fourteen feet wide, each of which reportedly held up to eighteen prisoners.

The prisoners worked to improve their living conditions by establishing gardens, raising livestock, and building stores, taverns, and churches. They worked outside the camp and farmed the surrounding land, while many officers lived in Charlottesville and socialized with local gentry.

Thomas Jefferson saw the prisoners as an economic stimulus to the local economy, and the officers as an intellectual stimulus for him. He played violin with the Hessian commander Baron Frederick von Riedesel at Monticello, while the commander's wife led dances.

Despite the economic impacts to the Albemarle County area, Jefferson ordered that the prisoners be taken to Fort Frederick in Maryland. The British left on November 20, 1780, marching through Rockfish Gap to reach the road north via the Shenandoah Valley. The British prisoners set fire to their huts when leaving. The "main street" gap between the British and Hessian barracks prevented the Hessian huts from catching fire. The 1,500 Hessians were kept in the Charlottesville area until February 1781, when they were sent to Winchester.

To understand Charlottesville's even greater significance in the summer of 1781, one must first appreciate the broader military situation in Virginia during 1780 and 1781. By the final years of the war, the British had shifted their strategic focus southward, hoping to rally Loyalist support and dismember the rebellion from the Carolinas northward. In early 1781, Lord Cornwallis launched an aggressive campaign across Virginia, sending raiding forces under Benedict Arnold and later reinforcing them with additional troops. Virginia, the largest and most populous of the rebellious states, was militarily vulnerable — its Continental regiments were serving far afield, and its militia was stretched thin. George Washington sent the French General Lafayette to lead the defense of Virginia.

Lafayette only had 3,200 troops to face Cornwallis's 7,200. The outnumbered Lafayette avoided direct confrontation and could do little more than annoy Cornwallis with a series of skirmishes. The state government, which had fled Richmond after Arnold's devastating January raid on the capital, reconvened in Charlottesville in late May 1781, believing the small town's distance from the Tidewater would offer safety. It was a fateful miscalculation.

The Virginia General Assembly gathered in Charlottesville beginning on May 28, 1781, meeting in a modest courthouse and nearby taverns. Among its members were some of the most recognizable figures of the Revolution. Thomas Jefferson, whose second term as governor was expiring in early June, remained at Monticello, his hilltop estate just a few miles southeast of town. His second term as governor was scheduled to end on June 2, and he had no intention of accepting a third term. He advised the legislature that, facing a British invasion, they should appoint a governor with military experience. Daniel Boone, the legendary frontiersman who was then serving as a representative from Fayette County in what is now Kentucky, sat among the legislators. Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, and other prominent Virginians were either present or expected. The men who got away included such famous Virginians as former governor Patrick Henry, Speaker of the House of Delegates Benjamin Harrison (a signer of the Declaration of Independence), Speaker of the Senate Archibald Cary, and Richard Henry Lee (also a signer of the Declaration of Independence). The assembly faced urgent business — organizing the state's defense, responding to Cornwallis's advance, and addressing growing criticism of Jefferson's leadership during the military emergency. The concentrated presence of so many leaders of the Revolution in one small, lightly defended town created an irresistible target.

Cornwallis, encamped near Hanover Courthouse, recognized the opportunity. Learning from a dispatch captured on 1 June that Governor Thomas Jefferson and the legislature were meeting at this place, 60 miles west of his camp on the North Anna, Cornwallis sent Banastre Tarleton with a picked raiding force to scatter the legislators and capture the author of the Declaration of Independence.

Cornwallis hoped that the two blows would land simultaneously — for he had simultaneously dispatched John Simcoe to lead a second raid against the supply depot at Point of Fork.

Departing before dawn on 3 June, Tarleton took with him 180 troopers of his Legion and the Seventeenth Light Dragoons plus a reinforcement of 70 mounted infantrymen from the Twenty-third (Royal Welch Fusiliers) under Captain Forbes Champaigne. His raiding party had a greater distance to traverse, so it was entirely mounted on horseback.

What followed was one of the Revolution's most celebrated acts of individual heroism. The local hero in this drama was John "Jack" Jouett, Jr., a 26-year-old resident of the small town of Charlottesville near Governor Jefferson's Monticello.