In June, 1781, Cornwallis invaded Virginia, and no one suffered more than Jefferson from his depredations. Tarleton was dispatched to seize the governor at Monticello; but the latter was forewarned by a citizen of Charlottesville, who, being in a tavern at Louisa when Tarleton and his troop swept by on the main road, immediately guessed their destination, and mounting his horse, a fleet Virginia thoroughbred, rode by a short cut through the woods straight to Monticello, arriving there about three hours ahead of Tarleton. Jefferson took the matter coolly. He first dispatched his family to a place of safety, sent his best horse to be shod at a neighboring smithy, and then proceeded to sort and separate his papers. He left the house only about five minutes before the soldiers entered it. Two slaves, Martin, Mr. Jefferson’s body servant, and Cæsar, 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 Cæsar under the floor, the tramp of the approaching cavalry was heard. Down went the plank, shutting in Cæsar, 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.