In the sovereign State of Virginia politics was the staple of
conversation as tobacco was the staple of trade. Party feeling ran high.
The President of the Union was a Virginian and a Republican; the Chief
Justice was a Virginian and a Federalist. Old friends looked askance, or
crossed the road to avoid a meeting, and hot bloods went a-duelling. The
note of the time was Ambition; the noun most in use the name of Napoleon
Buonaparte. It seemed written across the firmament; to some in letters
of light and to others in hell fire. With that sign in the skies, men
might shudder and turn to a private hearth, or they might give loosest
rein to desire for Fame. In the columns of the newspapers, above the
name of every Roman patriot, each party found voice. From a lurid
background of Moreau's conspiracy and d'Enghien's death, of a moribund
English King and Premier, of Hayti aflame, and Tripoli insolent, they
thundered, like Cassandra, of home woes. To the Federalist, reverencing
the dead Washington, still looking for leadership to Hamilton, now so
near that fatal Field of Honour, unconsciously nourishing love for that
mother country from which he had righteously torn himself, the name of
Democrat-Republican and all that it implied was a stench in the
nostrils. On the other hand, the lover of Jefferson, the believer in the
French Revolution and that rider of the whirlwind whom it had bred, the
far-sighted iconoclast, and the poor bawler for simplicity and red
breeches, all found the Federalist a mete burnished fly in the country's
pot of ointment. Nowhere might be found a man so sober or so dull as to
cry, "A plague o' both your houses!"

In the county of Albemarle April was blending with May. The days were
soft and sunshiny, apt to be broken by a hurry of clouds, of slanting
trees, and silver rain. When the sun came out again, it painted a great
bow in the heavens. Beneath that bright token bloomed a thousand