he remaining three, but presume they shared the same fate. When I say
that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about
the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the
situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every part
of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire. I relate these
things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was on the ground
soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the neighborhood somewhat
in the same style, but not with that spirit of total extermination
with which he seemed to rage over my possessions. Wherever he went, the
dwelling-houses were plundered of every thing which could be carried
off. Lord Cornwallis's character in England would forbid the belief that
he shared in the plunder; but that his table was served with the
plate thus pillaged from private houses, can be proved by many hundred
eye-witnesses. From an estimate I made at that time, on the best
information I could collect, I supposed the State of Virginia lost under
Lord Cornwallis's hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and
that of these, about twenty-seven thousand died of the small-pox and
camp-fever, and the rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and
exchanged for rum, sugar, coffee, and fruit, and partly sent to New
York, from whence they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or
England. From this last place, I believe they have been lately sent to
Africa. History will never relate the horrors committed by the British
army, in the southern States of America. They raged in Virginia six
months only, from the middle of April to the middle of October, 1781,
when they were all taken prisoners; and I give you a faithful specimen
of their transactions for ten days of that time, and on one spot only.
_Ex pede Herculem_. I suppose their whole devastations during those six
months, amounted to about three millions sterling. The copiousness of
this subject has only left me space to assure you of the sentiments of
esteem and respect, with which I am, Sir, your most obedient, humble
servant,

Th: Jefferson.

LETTER CXLV.--TO JAMES MADISON, July 19, 1788

TO JAMES MADISON, _of William and Mary College_.

Paris, July 19, 1788.

Dear Sir,

My last letter to you was of the 13th of August last. As you seem
willing to accept of the crumbs of science on which we are subsisting
here, it is with pleasure I continue to hand them on to