various claims in Virginia's "southern district" (Pittsylvania, Augusta, Botetourt and Bedford Counties). Thus, in 1776, the Amherst County Volunteers elected this Samuel Cabell captain and state officials assigned the unit to the 6th Virginia Regiment led by Col. Charles Lewis of Albemarle County and who marched with a group of Hanover County volunteers led by Col. Samuel Meredith and Patrick Henry to Gwynn Island to seize the powder previously commandeered by Lord Dunmore. Capt. Cabell participated in the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 and was promoted to the rank of major. He served in George Washington’s army in 1778–1779 and received a promotion to the rank of lieutenant colonel. However, at the Siege of Charleston on May 12, 1780, Col. Cabell was captured and in British custody at Haddock's Point until the war's end, returning home on August 21, 1781. Career After the war, Cabell operated plantations using enslaved labor, as did his father, and also served (sometimes with his father) as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates from 1785 to 1792. In 1788 Amherst county voters elected Cabell and his father to represent them in the Virginia Ratification Convention, where both Cabells (like Patrick Henry) voted against the proposed United States Constitution, although the convention as a whole ratified it. Samuel Cabell then persuaded fellow Anti-Federalist and Continental Army veteran James Monroe to run against James Madison for the position of U.S. Representative for the extensive district that ran from Amherst County in southwest Virginia to Spotsylvania County in the Northeast, thus extending the future President's political experience. Meanwhile, Matthew Clay, a relative of future U.S. Senator Henry Clay succeeded to Cabell's congressional seat in the 1802 election, and his cousin William H. Cabell had succeeded Cabell's younger brother in the Virginia House of Delegates and began a career which would include service as Virginia's governor and presiding judge of what later would be called the Virginia Supreme Court. Death and legacy Samuel Cabell died in 1818 on his estate Soldier's Joy at Wingina in Nelson County. Many of the family papers are held by the University of Virginia Library. References 1756 births 1818 deaths American Revolutionary War prisoners of war held by Great Britain Continental Army officers from Virginia Democratic-Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia Delegates to the Virginia Ratifying Convention 18th-century American politicians Anti-Federalists People from Albemarle County, Virginia