The whole beiug completed with the exception of placing the cone on the pedestal, on the morning of the twenty-second of November, eighteen hundred and twenty-seven, the corporation proceeded in the steamboat Sandusky, to Peekskill, where they arrived at one o'clock, and were met by the Committee of Arrangements,^ and a large concourse of the inhabitants of Westchester County, who had come to assist in the last honors, to the memory of their fellow citizen. Amon^ them were many aged and venerable men, who passed through the perils of the revolution and shared its dangers with the deceased.

A procession was formed to the church yard, where the monument stands, about two and a half miles from the village of Peekskill, and the column being lowered to its place on the pedestal, William Paulding, mayor of the city of New York, addressed the assembled citizens as follows :

My Friends : -- History bears testimony to the importance of the act we are here assembled to commemorate. The capture of Andre, while it prevented the most fatal disasters, and led to the most signal results, afforded at the same time a memorable example of the fidelity and patriotism of the yeomanry of these United States. As such it has always been viewed, and will appear in the eyes of posterity one of the most honorable achievements of our great revolutionary struggle.

It was in the year seventeen hundred and eighty.

There is not an aged man here present, but must remember that gloomy and disastrous period, when, if ever, the freedom of our country was almost a desperate hope. The money, the credit, the men, the means, and I may almost say, the sentiment necessary for continuing the great contest, were either quite exhausted, or fast melting away.