In 1754, on this day the British Colonel Banastre Tarleton (pictured) better known variously as "Bloody Ban", "The Butcher", "The Green Dragoon" was born in the City of Liverpool. He was the fourth of seven children born to the merchant, ship owner and slave trader, John Tarleton of Liverpool, who served as Mayor of Liverpool and had extensive trading links with Britain's American colonies. An article from the American Heroes thread

Jefferson killed in the Tragedy at CharlottesvilleIn December 1775, he sailed from Cork as a volunteer to North America where rebellion had recently broken out triggering the American Revolutionary War. Six years later he marched with Cornwallis into Virginia.

Tarleton undertook a series of small expeditions while in Virginia. Among them was the notorious raid on Charlottesville, where he captured Governor Thomas Jefferson who had been attending a meeting of the Virginia legislature. Out of a sense of British fair play, the Assembly building was burnt down and Jefferson shot by Redcoats. But of course hate begats hate and the British derived no absolutely no advantage from the brutal field execution of the enlightened genius who drafted the Declaration of Independence. And Tarleton himself was killed by American soldiers after the surrender at Yorktown.

At the suggestion of President Aaron Burr, in 1801 a monument to Jefferson was built next to a reconstruction of the Assembly building. In 1830, upon her ascension to the throne, Queen Charlotte paid a State visit to pray for the victims of the American revolution. But in a sense it was unnecessary to commemorate his sacrifice. Because in her diary that evening, Her Majesty noted that it was as if Jefferson was in the next room the whole time.