) He remained in this position ten days, his own head-quarters
being in my house, at that place. I had time to remove most of the
effects out of the house. He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and
tobacco; he burned all my barns, containing the same articles of the
last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be
expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance
of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service; of those
too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences
on the plantation so as to leave it an absolute waste. He carried off
also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them freedom, he would
have done right: but it was to consign them to inevitable death from
the small-pox and putrid fever, then raging in his camp. This I knew
afterwards to be the fate of twenty-seven of them. I never had news of
the remaining three, but presume they shared the same fate. When I say
that Lord Cornwallis did all this, I do not mean that he carried about
the torch in his own hands, but that it was all done under his eye; the
situation of the house in which he was, commanding a view of every part
of the plantation, so that he must have seen every fire.
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