Note 473 — Chapter IV
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Even the frightened Virginia women were ashamed. "Such terror and confusion you have no idea of. Governor, Council, everybody scampering.... How dreadful the idea of an enemy passing through such a country as ours committing enormities that fill the mind with horror and returning exultantly without meeting one impediment to discourage them." (Eliza Ambler to Mildred Smith, 1781 MS. Also Atlantic Monthly, lxxxiv, 538-39.) Miss Ambler was amused, too, it seems. She humorously describes a boastful man's precipitate flight and adds: "But this is not more laughable than the accounts we have of our illustrious G-[overno]-r [Jefferson] who, they say, took neither rest nor food for man or horse till he reached C-[arte]-r's mountain." (Ib.) This letter, as it appears in the Atlantic Monthly, differs slightly from the manuscript, which has been followed in this note.
These letters were written while the laughing young Tarleton was riding after the flying Virginia Government, of which Eliza Ambler's father was a part. They throw peculiar light on the opinions of Marshall, who at that time was in love with this lady's sister, whom he married two years later. (See infra, chap. v.)