On this night in 1781, one man on a horse saved the American Revolution from losing Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and half of Virginia's government in a single morning. You were never taught his name. June 3, 1781. The British had chased Virginia's entire government out of Richmond. Jefferson, in his final days as governor, and the legislature had fled to Charlottesville, thinking they were safe in the foothills. They were wrong. That evening, 26 year old militia captain Jack Jouett was at a tavern in Louisa County when roughly 250 of the most feared cavalry in the British army came pounding down the road. Their commander: Banastre Tarleton, nicknamed "The Butcher," the man whose dragoons had cut down surrendering Americans at Waxhaws. There was only one place they could be going. Charlottesville. 40 miles away. And the capture of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, would be the prize of the war. Jouett couldn't outrun them on the main road. So he didn't use it. He swung onto overgrown backwoods trails and the abandoned Old Mountain Road, riding 40 miles through the dark with only the full moon for light. Legend says low hanging branches whipped and scarred his face for life. Tarleton stopped his men for a 3 hour rest. Jouett never stopped. Before sunrise on June 4, he came up the mountain to Monticello and woke Jefferson. Then he rode down into Charlottesville and warned the legislature. Jefferson got out with minutes to spare. British dragoons were coming up his mountain as he left. The legislature escaped over the Blue Ridge to Staunton. Tarleton caught only seven stragglers, one of them a frontiersman serving in the legislature named Daniel Boone. Paul Revere rode about 12 miles in 1775 and got captured before reaching Concord. Longfellow wrote him a poem and made him immortal. Jack Jouett rode 40 miles, lost nothing, saved everything, and got a thank you gift of two pistols and a sword from the Virginia Assembly. No poem. No fame. Almost no memory.