276 
ALBEMARLE IN REVOLUTIONARY DAYS 
It should 1)6 remembered that it was only the closing scenes of 
the war Avhicli took place upon the soil of Virginia. For the 
first five years all the battles were in the northern colonies. In 
1780, however, Charleston, South Carolina, was captured, and 
the southern campaign began. The Virginia line was detached 
from the army of W^ashington, and with that of North Carolina 
went south to oppose the advance of Cornwallis. Other portions 
of the Continental Army followed. Notwithstanding the vic- 
tories of the Americans at Eutaw Springs, Kings Mountain, and 
the Cowpens and the constant check to his progress which Greene 
and his militia auxiliaries interposed, Cornwallis (strongly rein- 
forced by the tory partisans of Georgia and the Carolinas) 
slowly advanced toward Virginia. On INlay 20, 1781, he reached 
Petersburg by way of Wilmington. Another army, under Bene- 
dict Arnold, had five months before invaded the valley of the 
James, which they ascended to Petersburg and Richmond. 
Virginia was at this time in a most helpless condition. All 
the able-bodied men were in the Continental Army. Tlie militia 
were without arms, and Congress seemed unable to respond to 
their a[)peals for help. In those days i)utty had not been in- 
vented, and the glass in the windows of houses was held together 
by lead. So great was the need for bullets that the windows 
were destroyed to obtain them. Major John Pryor, commissary, 
stationed at Charlottesville, in June, 1778, wrote to Colonel 
Davies at Staunton that he had sent “by Expresses to every 
ju’obable House within forty miles extent along the Southwest 
Mountains to collect what lead can be found in the windows and 
elsewhere.” 
All southern Virginia was ravaged by a motley horde armed 
with torch and sword, who traversed it under the leadership of 
Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a dashing officer of dragoons, who 
was followed by hundreds of tory partisans from the Carolinas. 
So shameless were their depredations that an officer in Corn- 
wallis’ army denounced them as a disgrace to civilization. Henry 
Clay, at that time a boy four years of age, living near Hanover 
courtdiouse, remembered how the troo])ers desecrated the newly 
made grave of his father, who had died only a few days l>efore, 
piercing it on eveiy side with their sabers in search of hidden 
treasure. 
The British having found little in the way of booty or re.sist- 
ance at Richmond slowly proceeded up tiie James. At the Point 
of Fork, already mentioned as being in old Albemarle and 25 
