* This is a frame building, and stands on the northwest corner of Main and Nineteenth streets. A portion of the lower part is yet inhabited (1852). The glass and some of the sashes in the upper story are gone, and the roof is partly decayed and fallen in on the west end. Here Cornwallis and other British officers were quartered at a later period, and beneath its roof the good Washington was once sheltered.
** British frigates ascended the rivers of Virginia, and levied contributions upon all the tide-water counties. On one of these occasions the Mount Vernon estate was menaced with destruction by Captain Graves, of the Acteon. The manager, Mr. Lund Washington, to save the buildings, complied with the terms, and consented to furnish a supply of provisions. Washington highly disapproved of this proceeding, and, in a letter to his nephew, declared that he would rather have had the buildings destroyed, than saved by such "a pernicious example."
Departure of Arnold from Richmond.—French Fleet in Hampton Roads.— Houdon's Statue of Washington.
a Jan. 7.Quite a number of public and private buildings, together with a great quantity of tobacco, were burned. The public records had been saved through the vigilance of Jefferson; and Arnold, finding no more plunder or objects on which to pour out his wrath—the ire of a most vindictive heart toward those whom he had foully wronged—withdrew to Westover, and re-embarked to proceed to commit other depredations upon the river shores and the coasts of the Virginia bays. On the same day Jefferson returned to Richmond, and quiet was restored.
A large body of militia rapidly rallied around Steuben; and General Nelson also collected another large force lower down on the James River. Arnold was pursued, but succeeded in reaching Portsmouth, opposite Norfolk, where he established his head-quarters.
Soon afterward a French sixty-four gun ship (the Eveille), and two large frigates, from Newport, entered the Chesapeake. * Thus menaced by land and water, Arnold resolved to remain at Portsmouth, whither the large French vessels could not follow. ** The little fleet, after making a few captures, and efforts to ascend the Elizabeth River, returned tob Feb. 24, 1781 Newport, (b) having been absent only fifteen days. We shall meet Arnold again presently.
I passed the day after my arrival at Richmond in visiting and sketching some localities and objects of note within the city. I first went up to the Capitol, where, after loitering an hour in the state library, I copied the fine statue of Washington, by Houdon, a celebrated French sculptor, which stands within an iron railing in the center of the rotunda. It was made in. Paris, five years after the close of the Revolution, by order of the Virginia Assembly, under the direction of Mr. Jefferson, who was then minister at the court of Versailles. The statue is of fine white marble, of life size; the costume, the military dress of the Revolution. The right hand of the patriot rests upon a staff, the left is upon the folds of a military cloak covering one end of the fasces, with which is connected the plowshare, the emblem of agriculture, the chief pursuit of the Virginians. The inscription upon the pedestal was written by James Madison, afterward President of the United States. *** In a small niche near is a marble bust of La Fayette, and in the gallery of the rotunda is a fine full length portrait of Chief-justice Marshall.