I relate these
things on my own knowledge, in a great degree, as I was on the ground
soon after he left it. He treated the rest of the neighborhood somewhat
in the same style, but not with that spirit of total extermination
with which he seemed to rage over my possessions. Wherever he went, the
dwelling-houses were plundered of every thing which could be carried
off. Lord Cornwallis's character in England would forbid the belief that
he shared in the plunder; but that his table was served with the
plate thus pillaged from private houses, can be proved by many hundred
eye-witnesses. From an estimate I made at that time, on the best
information I could collect, I supposed the State of Virginia lost under
Lord Cornwallis's hands, that year, about thirty thousand slaves; and
that of these, about twenty-seven thousand died of the small-pox and
camp-fever, and the rest were partly sent to the West Indies, and
exchanged for rum, sugar, coffee, and fruit, and partly sent to New
York, from whence they went, at the peace, either to Nova Scotia or
England. From this last place, I believe they have been lately sent to
Africa.
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