y dissolve the Union, or produce
coercion; I say, when these things have become so obvious,
ought characters who are best able to rescue their country
from the pending evil, to remain at home? Rather ought they
not to come forward, and by their talents and influence
stand in the breach which such conduct has made on the peace
and happiness of this country, and oppose the widening of
it?...

"I come, now, my good Sir, to the object of my letter, which
is to express a hope and an earnest wish, that you will come
forward at the ensuing elections (if not for Congress, which
you may think would take you too long from home), as a
candidate for representative in the General Assembly of this
Commonwealth.

"There are, I have no doubt, very many sensible men who
oppose themselves to the torrent that carries away others
who had rather swim with, than stem it without an able pilot
to conduct them; but these are neither old in legislation,
nor well known in the community. Your weight of character
and influence in the House of Representatives would be a
bulwark against such dangerous sentiments as are delivered
there at present. It would be a rallying point for the
timid, and an attraction of the wavering. In a word, I
conceive it to be of immense importance at this crisis, that
you should be there; and I would fain hope that all minor
considerations will be made to yield to the measure."[468]

There can be little doubt that it was this solemn invocation on the
part of Washington which induced the old statesman, on whom Death had
already begun to lay his icy hands, to come forth from the solitude in
which he had been so long buried, and offer himself for the suffrages
of his neighbors, as their representative in the next House of
Delegates, there to give check, if possible, to the men who seemed to
be hurrying Virginia upon violent courses, and the republic into civil
war. Accordingly, before the day for the usual March[469] court in
Charlotte, the word went out through all that country that old Patrick
Henry, whose wondrous voice in public no man had heard for those many
years, who had indeed been almost numbered among the dead ones of
their heroic days foregone, was to appear before all the people once
more, and speak to them as in the former time, and give to them his
counsel amid those thickening dang