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y in the present State of Virginia, and of these militiamen it was estimated that, east of the Blue Ridge, only about one in five was armed with a gun. The treasury was practically bankrupt, and there was a dearth of every kind of warlike material. Such was the situation which confronted, as Mr. Parton puts it, "a lawyer of thirty-six, with a talent for music, a taste for art, a love of science, literature, and gardening." The task was one calling rather for a soldier than a statesman; but Mr. Jefferson faced it with courage, and on the whole with success. In retaliating the cruel measures of the British, he showed a firmness which must have been especially difficult for a man of his temperament. He put in irons and confined in a dungeon Colonel Henry Hamilton and two subordinate officers who had committed atrocities upon American prisoners. He caused a prison-ship, like the ships of infamous memory which were employed as prisons by the British at New York, to be prepared; and the exchange of captives between Virginia and the British was stopped. "Humane conduct on our part," wrote Jefferson, "was found to produce no effect. The contrary, therefore, is to be tried. Iron will be retaliated by iron, prison-ships for prison-ships, and like for like in general." But in November, 1779, notice was received that the English, under their new leader, Sir Henry Clinton, had adopted a less barbarous system of warfare; and fortunately Jefferson's measures of reprisal became unnecessary. Hampered as he was by want of men and money, Jefferson did all that he could to supply the needs of the Virginia soldiers with Washington, of the army in North Carolina, led by Gates, and of George Rogers Clarke, the heroic commander who put down the Indian uprising on the western frontier, and captured the English officer who instigated it,--that same Colonel Hamilton of whom mention has already been made. The story of Clarke's adventures in the wilderness,--he was a neighbor of Jefferson, only twenty-six years old,--of his forced marches, of his masterful dealing with the Indians, and finally of his capture of the British force, forms a thrilling chapter in the history of the American Revolution. Many indeed of Jefferson's constituents censured him as being over-zealous in his support of the army of Gates. He stripped Virginia, they said, of troops and resources which, as it proved afterward, were needed at home. But if Cornwallis were not de
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