sentences:  Abel Thayer, had been a patriot during the American Revolutionary War who had raised the alarm at Lexington and fought to defend Boston.Latham crossed the Appalachian Mountains as a young man, was admitted to the Virginia bar in 1859, and began his legal practice in Grafton, Taylor County, Virginia (now West Virginia), a booming railroad town where the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad connected with the Northwestern Virginia Railroad.By 1860, he was publishing a weekly newspaper, the "Western Virginian" with a motto "the Constitution, the Union and the Enforcement of the Laws" and which endorsed the Constitutional Union Party slate consisting of John Bell of Tennessee and Edward Everett of Massachusetts.