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the
terrible dangerous things her husband was doing, running risks of losing his
fortune, his name, and his head.
    "But Masta Jefferson was right happy. He racing around
feeling good, smiling, writing, speechifying. Then he got one of them headaches
like he got after his mama died. Headaches and dysentery were his two ailments.
All coming from his nerves and that hot temper. Then he left home with my son
Robert for Philadelphia. He went to the Continental Congress with all them
famous men of those revolutionary times. His little girl died at eighteen
months, and Masta came racing home, but it was too late then. Martha grieved
something terrible and Masta Jefferson begged her to come back with him to
Philadelphia, but she wouldn't go. Masta Jefferson went on back to Philadelphia
and wrote his Declaration of Independency which made him the most famous man in
Virginia, maybe in all the colonies. Martha didn't care. She didn't want no
revolution, but she didn't say nothing to her husband but once.
    "Only that Christmas in '75 she pleaded with him to give up politics. There was the death of little
Jane still grieving her, and she pleaded with him to give up politics, to give
up making war on England. Of course by this time it was too late; I could have
told her that. Masta Jefferson was not going to give up his politicking for no
mortal. She mostly couldn't stand the separations. She said she wasn't like
Abigail Adams, who loved politics and who pushed her husband. Yet she wouldn't
go to Philadelphia with him even when she was well. She fought and pleaded, but
he struggled. It was a hard thing to ask an ambitious man like him to give up
his life's work. Well, England was getting riled up and sending troops and
commanders and generals, and landed them mostly where they liked. It got around
amongst the slaves that the English was taking slaves into their army and
offering them their freedom and giving them uniforms. It seems they had three
hundred in the army in Maryland with 'Liberty to Slaves' on their breasts. I
sure would have liked to have seen that. Black men in uniform with rifles, and
before you known it, we was at war.
    "The second year of the war, Martha finally bore a son
for her husband. He lived only until June fourteenth, and we buried him without
a name. Only Patsy lived now, and I thought Martha was going to lose her mind.
She had lost three children, counting her son by her first marriage. I had seen
women lose five, seven, ten children before they was two years old. There's
nothing in this life harder than burying your own children. I thank God it
never happened to me. Oh, I've buried two now, but they were full-grown men.
    "Martha got with child again as soon as she could, and
the next year she had Polly, who was blessed to live. At least she lived long
enough to marry. But Martha was slow coming back this time. She was scared of
dying, scared of losing Polly, scared of losing another child, and scared of
having another.
    "Masta Jefferson started in rebuilding again
Monticello. Things weren't going too well for him. It seems we were losing this
war he started. He was governor of Virginia now, with his seat of government in
Williamsburg, but he weren't made to be no war general. The generals and
officers that did come to Monticello during those times was mostly German and
English, prisoners of war, at least that's what they was called. But, they was
treated like guests. Many a musical evening and dinner took place for foreign
gentlemen fighting against us. One German lady, wife of a general, followed her
husband clean to our shores and was lodged at Monticello along with him.
Twenty-two slaves run away from Monticello to join the English army, eleven of
them women. Lord, then come the day British dragoons come looking for Governor
Jefferson, saying they wanted to put a pair of silver handcuffs on him.
Searched the house they did from top to bottom and took off poor Isaac to the
army, with his mother there screaming