The colony, it must be remembered, was then of immense extent; for beside the present Virginia and West Virginia, Kentucky and the greater part of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were embraced in it. It stretched, in short, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. Upon the seaboard Virginia was especially vulnerable, the tide-water region being penetrated by numerous bays and rivers, which the enemy’s ships could easily ascend, for they were undefended by forts or men. The total navy of the colony was four vessels, mounting sixty-two guns, and a few armed boats. The flower of the Virginia soldiery, to the number of ten thousand, were in Washington’s army, and supplies of men, of arms, of ammunition and food were urgently called for by General Gates, who was battling against Cornwallis in North Carolina. The militia were supposed to number fifty thousand, which included every man between sixteen and fifty years of age; but this was only one man for every square mile of territory 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.