History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
j has been noticed, aud need not be repeated ; but, notwithstanding it was subsequently disregarded by the Committee which had previously hastened to receive and accept it, it served to draw the lines of faction with more distinctness and to array neighbor against neighbor, in greater animosity and bitterness than
I had previously been witnessed.
On the sixteenth of March, 1775, in conformity with the Resolution adopted by the Committee, and under its authority, Isaac Low, the permanent Chairman of the Committee of Inspection, prepared the following Circular Letter; and, very soon afterwards, copies of it were sent to the several County Committees, where such Committees could be found, throughout the Colony :
•' Xew-York, 16th March, 1775.
" Gentlemen :
" The late Congress having deemed it expedient, "that, in the present critical State of American " Affairs, another should be held at Philadelphia, the
' The motives of those who, respectively, originated and opposed the call for that Meeting may be best seen and understood in the placard and newspajier literature of that notable event ; and. in that connection, the original Advertisement, requesting the Meeting, which was published in Holt's \eii-York Journal, No. 1C78, New- York, Thursday, March 2, 1775, was the first of the series. The opponents of the Meeting, who assembled at the ^\■idow De La Montagnie's, on the third of March, i!^sue^l a handbill, in which reasons for a postponement of the question were stated ; on the morning of the day on which the Meeting, was held, [Murch I'l] a calm appeal, signed " A Freem.vx," and addressed " Tfi THE IxiniiiTANT.? OF New York,"' vcry forcibly urging a postponement of the questions, was published in Gaine's Seu-York Ga-Me and Weekhj Meratrtf, No. 1221, Monday, March 6, 1775; a more elaborate appeal and argtunent, to the same effect, addressed " To the respectable " Inhabitakts of the City of New Y'ork," signed "A Citizen of New "York,'' and published in the same issue of that newspaper ; an elaborate reply to the last, signed " Another C'itizf,v, ' and published in Holt's Xi-ic-York Journal, No. 1079, New-York, Thursday, March !i, 177.j ; etc.