The glamour of success may have made all these transactions, before the Congress was convened and while it was in session and after its dissolution, appear to have been possessed of different characters from those which they really possessed ; the diligence of personal descendants, whose best claim to distinction among men rests only on the apocryphal fame of their ancestors, actors in those events, may have transformed the pigmies and the political tricksters and those who were without honor or honesty or manliness, of that period, into great men and patriots and men of virtue, of integrity, and of personal uprightness ; but, notwithstanding all these fictitious interpositions, the Truth remains, unchanged and unchangeable.

Among the conservative farmers of Westchestercounty, generally, it is believed that the result of the Congress was not satisfactory -- as will be seen, hereafter, some of the most influential of them, who had heartily approved the popular movement for the redress of the Colony's grievances, and who had earnestly united with their countrymen in calling the Congress, were forced to the seeming inconsistency of open dissent; and there was significance in that dissent, while such other communities as the Towns of HoUis, in New Hampshire;' Marshfield, in Massa-

Proceeding!! of the T'Jini, in legal Town-JIeeting, November 7, 1774, reprinted in Force's Anm-i'dii Archh-i-s, Fourtli Series, i., 1229.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.

chusetts;' Ridgefield, Newtown,^ Stratfield, (now Bridgeport,)' Greenwich,'' Danbury and its vicinity,*^ Darien," Norwalk." Redding," Stamford,'" New Milford," Morris,'- Plymouth,'^ Salisbury," etc., indeed the entire western portion of the Colony,'Mn Connecticut; Oyster Bay,'" Jamaica," Shawangunk,'* all those in Richmond-county,'^ in New York, and many others,"'