the 7th of June entered upon its work at
Staunton, steadily continued it there until the 23d of the month, when
it adjourned in orderly fashion, to meet again in the following
October. Governor Jefferson, whose second year of office had expired
two days before the flight of himself and the legislature from
Charlottesville, did not accompany that body to Staunton, but pursued
his own way to Poplar Forest and to Bedford, where, "remote from the
legislature,"[328] he remained during the remainder of its session. On
the 12th of June, Thomas Nelson was elected as his successor in
office.[329]

It was during this period of confusion and terror that, as Jefferson
alleges, the legislature once more had before it the project of a
dictator, in the criminal sense of that word; and, upon Jefferson's
private authority, both Wirt and Girardin long afterward named Patrick
Henry as the man who was intended for this profligate honor.[330] We
need not here repeat what was said, in our narrative of the closing
weeks of 1776, concerning this terrible posthumous imputation upon the
public and private character of Patrick Henry. Nearly everything which
then appeared to the discredit of this charge in connection with the
earlier date, is equally applicable to it in connection with the later
date also. Moreover, as regards this later date, there has recently
been discovered a piece of contemporaneous testimony which shows that,
whatever may have been the scheme for a dictatorship in Virginia in
1781, it was a great military chieftain who was wanted for the
position; and, apparently, that Patrick Henry was not then even
mentioned in the affair. On the 9th of June, 1781, Captain H. Young,
though not a member of the House of Delegates, writes from Staunton to
Colonel William Davies as follows: "Two days ago, Mr. Nicholas gave
notice that he should this day move to have a dictator appointed.
General Washington and General Greene are talked of. I dare say your
knowledge of these worthy gentlemen will be sufficient to convince you
that neither of them will, or ought to, accept of such an
appointment.... We have but a thin House of Delegates; but they are
zealous, I think, in the cause of virtue."[331] Furthermore, the
journal of that House contains no record of any such motion having
been made; and it is probable that it never was made, and that the
subject never came before the legislature in any such form as to call
for its notice.

Finally, w