wo slaves, Martin, Mr. Jefferson's body servant, and Caesar, were engaged
in hiding plate and other articles under the floor of the portico, a
single plank having been raised for that purpose. As Martin, above, handed
the last article to Caesar under the floor, the tramp of the approaching
cavalry was heard. Down went the plank, shutting in Caesar, and there he
remained, without making any outcry, for eighteen hours, in darkness, and
of course without food or water. One of the soldiers, to try Martin's
nerve, clapped a pistol to his breast, and threatened to fire unless he
would tell which way his master had fled. "Fire away, then," retorted the
black, fiercely answering glance for glance, and not receding a hair's
breath.

Tarleton and his men scrupulously refrained from injuring Jefferson's
property. Cornwallis, on the other hand, who encamped on Jefferson's
estate of Elk Hill, lying opposite Elk Island in the James River,
destroyed the growing crops, burned all the barns and fences, carried
off--"as was to be expected," said Mr. Jefferson--the cattle and horses, and
committed the barbarity of killing the colts that were too young to be of
service. He carried off, also, about thirty slaves. "Had this been to give
them freedom," wrote Jefferson, "he would have done right; but it was to
consign them to inevitable death from the smallpox and putrid fever, then
raging in his camp."

"Some of the miserable wretches crawled home to die," Mr. Randall relates,
"and giving information where others lay perishing in hovels or in the
open air, by the wayside, these were sent for by their generous master;
and the last moments of all of them were made as comfortable as could be
done by proper nursing and medical attendance."

These dreadful scenes, added to the agitation of having twice been
obliged, at a moment's notice, to flee from the enemy, to say nothing of
the anxieties which she must have endured on her husband's account, were
too much for Mrs. Jefferson's already enfeebled constitution. She died on
September 6, 1782.

Six slave women who were household servants enjoyed for thirty years a
kind of humble distinction at Monticello as "the servants who were in the
room when Mrs. Jefferson died;" and the fact that they were there attests
the affectionate relations which must have existed between them and their
master and mistress. "They have often told my wife," relates Mr. Bacon,
"that when Mrs. Jefferson died they stood ar