280 
ALBEMARLE IN REVOLUTIONARY DAYS 
lin, afterward Tennessee, the first commonwealth beyond the 
Alleghanies, and also the spot where Abram Linkhorn, grand- 
father of the President, married, lived, and was captain of a 
company of militia organized in 1776 for the defence of the 
western frontier. Still nearer, almost at the base of Monticello, 
the birthplace of General George Rogers Clarke, who by his vic- 
tory over the British and Indians at Fort Vincennes in 1781 
saved the northwest to the United States, a man the value of 
whose services to the nation at this time were second only to 
those of Washington, and away to the southward the spot where 
General Thomas Sumter was born. Our eyes, still turned to the 
west, would traverse the great frontier county of Augusta, whose 
western boundary extended, in accordance with the charter of 
1609, to the Pacific, and whose actual limits, at that time undis- 
puted, were upon the shores of the ]\Iississip})i. 
After the surrender of Cornwallis, in this region were centered 
in large degree the future destinies of America. “ The American 
states,” writes Cooke, “ were now either to set up as separate 
nations or to enter into a durable union; and the latter policy 
was strongl}^ urged by Virginia. It is necessary to state this 
fact; the “ states-right ” record of the commonwealth has pro- 
duced the impression that the sentiment of union was not strong 
in the people. The contrary is the fact. From the first the 
Virginians were the foremost advocates of union and made every 
sacrifice to effect it. 
“ To bring it about, Virginia began by surrendering a princi- 
])ality. The entii’e region beyond the Ohio, now the States of 
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, was a part of her domain under her 
charter. Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right 
of any other commonwealth to her own domain, and if there 
was any question of the Virginia title by charter she could assert 
her right b}’- conquest. The region had been wrested from the 
British by a Virginian commanding Virginian troops ; the people 
had taken ‘the oath of allegiance to the commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia,’ and her title to the entire territory was thus indisputable. 
The country north of the Ohio river was a part of Virginia under 
her original charter, remained a portion other domain when in 
ISIay, 1776, she declared herself an independent commonwealth 
before there was any union, and she herself succeeded to all the 
rights of the crown. 
“ I'hese rights she now abandoned, and her action Avas the re- 
sult of an enlarged patriotism and devotion to the cause of 
