command of Major General Phillips. This powerful reinforcement shortly after formed a junction with Arnold, and the combined forces, under Phillips, immediately renewed, on a more extensive scale than heretofore, their favorite system of predatory and incendiary incursions into all parts of the unprotected country. They captured and laid waste Williamsburg, Petersburg, and several minor settlements; and pursued their destroying advances from village to village, until they were arrested in their vandal career, by the gallant defender of universal liberty-the immortal La Fayette. During the ferocious and discursive operations of Phillips and Arnold, the Governor remained constantly in and about Richmond, exerting all his powers for collecting the militia, and providing such means for the defence of the State, as its exhausted resources admitted. Never assuming a guard, and with only the river between him and the enemy, his lodgings were frequently within four or five miles of them, and his personal exposure, consequently, very great.

But the grand and final movement against Virginia, compared to which, the previous invasions were feeble and desultory efforts, remains to be mentioned. On the 20th of May, 1781, Lord Cornwallis entered the State, on the southern frontier, with an army of four thousand men. His entry was almost triumphal; and, proceeding directly to Petersburg, where he formed a junction with the forces under Phillips and Arnold, he established head quarters, and commenced his vaunted plan of subduing the whole State.

This alarming event happened but a few days previous to the close of Mr. Jefferson's administration; and, in view of the awful crisis which impended over his native State, he felt it his duty, before resigning the government into other hands, to make one, last, solemn appeal to the Commander in Chief, for those important succors, so often before solicited, and on which now evidently depended the salvation of the Commonwealth.

"Your Excellency will

judge from this state of things, and from what you know of our country, what it may probably suffer during the present campaign. Should the enemy be able to produce no opportunity of annihila. ting the Marquis's army, a small proportion of their force may yet restrain his movements effectually, while the greater part are employed, in detachment, to waste an unarmed country, and lead the minds of the people to acquiescence under those events, which they see no human power prepared to ward off. We are too far re

moved from the other scenes of war to say, whether the main force of the enemy be within this State. But I suppose they cannot any where spare so great an army for the operations of the field. Were it possible for this circumstance to justify in your Excellency, a determination to lend us your personal aid, it is evident from the universal voice, that the presence of their beloved countryman, whose talents have so long been successfully employed in establishing the freedom of kindred States, to whose person, they have still flattered themselves they retained some right, and have ever looked up, as their dernier resort in distress, would restore full confidence of salvation to our citizens, and would render them equal to whatever is not impossible. I cannot undertake to foresee and obviate the difficulties which lie in the way of such a resolution. The whole subject is before you, of which I see only detached parts and your judgment will be formed on a view of the whole. Should the danger of this State, and its consequence to the Union, be such, as to render it best for the whole that you should repair to its assistance, the difficulty would then be, how to keep men out of the field. I have undertaken to hint this matter to your Excellency, not only on my own sense of its importance to us, but at the solicitations of many members of weight in our Legislature, which has not yet assembled to speak their own desires."

"A few days will bring to ine that relief which the constitution has prepared for those oppressed with the labors of my office, and a long declared resolution of relinquishing it to abler hands, has prepared my way for retirement to a private station: still, as an individual, I should feel the comfortable effects of your presence, and have (what I thought could not have been) an additional motive for that gratitude, esteem, and respect, with which I have the honor to be," &c.

This interesting letter was written but three days previous to the expiration of his second gubernatorial year; at which time, he had long cherished the determination of relinquishing the administration in favor of a successor, whose habits, dispositions and pursuits, would render him better fitted for the supreme direction of affairs, at such a crisis. "From the belief," said he, " that, under the pressure of the invasion, under which we were then laboring, the public would have more confidence in a military chief, and that the military commander being invested with the civil power also, both might be wielded with more energy, promptitude and effect for the defence of the State, I resigned the administration at the end of my second year, and General Nelson was appointed to succeed me." His successor was elected, on the 12th of June, 1781.

The closing events of Mr. Jefferson's administration, having excited much attention, and occasioned some misrepresentation, a few additional observations, founded on authentic documents, may not be unacceptable to the candid reader.

Ever since the invasion of the metropolis, under Arnold, in January, '81, and the sudden dispersion, by that event, of the General Assembly, the legislative functions of the government had been almost totally suspended; the members had re-assembled on the first of March, but after a few days session, were compelled to adjourn; they met again on the 7th of May, but the threatening movements of the enemy, again compelled them, on the 10th, to adjourn to Charlottesville, to met on the 24th. During this long and critical interval, therefore, the main burden of public affairs had devolved on the Governor. The weight of anxiety, of responsibility, of personal labor and suffering, which he was called on to endure, no one, who is a stranger to that disastrous period, can adequately conceive. In the discharge of the arduous and multiplied services, which were required to conduct the administration through a series of formidable invasions, he was cool, sagacious, vigilant, and indefatigable; but, without continental aids, confined to the resources of the State, exhausted of them, in great part, by the draughts he had furnished to other States, and limited in his resort to the remainder, by the destitution of arms, his exertions were nearly paralyzed, and the public mind began seriously to despond.

In addition to the multiplied irruptions from the East and the South, Virginia had had a powerful army to oppose on her Western frontier. The English and Indians were incessantly harassing her in that quarter, by their savage incursions. At length, the powerful army under Cornwallis, poured into the State, and filled up the measure of public danger and distress. The Legislature, which had hastily adjourned from Richmond to Charlottesville, had scarcely assembled at the latter place, when they were driven thence by the enemy, over the mountains to Staunton. This was on the last days of May. Pursued and hunted, in this manner, from county to county, with the armies of the enemy in the heart of the State, destitute of internal resources, and aided only by the inconsiderable regular force under La Fayette, many members of that heroic Assembly became dissatisfied, discouraged,

desperate; and in the phrenzy of the moment, began to resuscitate the deceased and damning project of Dictator. Some, indeed, were so infatuated as to deem the measure not only salutary and advisable, but as presenting the only hope of deliverance at this alarming juncture. An individual,* who had borne a distinguished and exemplary part in the anterior transactions of the Revolution, was already designated for the contemplated office. But it was foreseen with dismay by the dictator men, that no headway could be made with such a proposition, against the transcendant popularity and influence of the present Executive; it was necessary, as a first measure, that he should be put completely hors de combat. For this purpose, his official character was attacked; the misfortunes of the period, were imputed to the imbecility of his administration; he was impeached in a loose, informal way, and a day for some species of hearing, at the succeeding session of the Assembly, was appointed. But no evidence was ever offered to sustain the impeachment; no question was ever taken upon it, disclosing in any manner, the approbation of the legislature; and the hearing was appointed by general consent, for the purpose, as many members expressed themselves, of giving Mr. Jefferson an opportunity of demonstrating the absurdity of the censure. Indeed, the whole effort at impeachment was a mere feint, designed to remove Mr. Jefferson out of the question, for the present, and to make manifest, if possible, the necessity of a Dictator. It failed, however, in both objects; the effect on Mr. Jefferson was entirely the reverse of what had been intended; and as to the proposed dictatorship, the pulse of the Assembly was incidentally felt in the debates on the state of the Commonwealth, and in out-door conversations, the general tone of which, foretold such a violent opposition to the measure, as induced the original movers to abandon it with precipitation. This was the second instance of a similar attempt in that State, and of a similar result, caused chiefly by the virtuous and insuperable ascendancy of the same individuals.

While these things were going on at Staunton, Mr. Jefferson was distant from the scene of action, at Bedford, neither interfering himself, nor applied to by the Legislature for any information touching the charges preferred against him; but so soon as the project

* Mr. Henry.

for a dictator was dropped, his resignation of the Government appeared. This produced a new scene; the dictator men insisted upon re-electing him; but his friends strenuously opposed it, on the grounds, that as he had divested himself of the government to heal the divisions of the Legislature, at that critical season, for the public good; and to meet the accusation upon equal terms, for his own honor, his motives were too strong to be relinquished, and too fair to be withstood. Still, on the nomination of General Nelson, the most popular man in the State, and without an enemy in the Legislature, a considerable portion of the Assembly voted for Mr. Jefferson.

On the day appointed for the hearing before mentioned, Mr. Jefferson appeared in the House of Delegates, having been intermediately elected a member. No one offered himself as his accuser. Mr. George Nicholas, who had been seduced to institute the proceeding, and who afterwards paid him an homage equally honorable to both, having satisfied himself, in the interim, of the utter groundlessness of the charges, declined the further prosecution of the affair. Mr. Jefferson, nevertheless, rose in his seat, addressed the House in general terms upon the subject, and expressed his readiness to answer any accusations which might be preferred against him. Silence ensued. Not a word of censure was whispered. After a short pause, the following resolution was proposed, and adopted unanimously by both Houses.†

"Resolved, That the sincere thanks of the General Assembly be given to our former Governor, THOMAS JEFFERSON, Esq. for his impartial, upright and attentive administration, whilst in office. The Assembly wish in the strongest manner to declare the high opinion which they entertain of Mr. Jefferson's ability, rectitude, and integrity, as Chief Magistrate of this Commonwealth, and mean, by thus publicly avowing their opinion, to obviate and to remove all unmerited censure.”

A few days after the expiration of Mr. Jefferson's constitutional term of office, and before the appointment of his successor, an incident occurred which has been so strangely misrepresented, in later times, as to justify a relation of the details.

* G. Nicholas' letter to his constituents-Kentucky.

Most of this relation is copied with verbal precision from the statement of an eye witness of the whole transaction, inserted in the Appendix to the Continuation of Burk's History of Virginia.