The "determination" of the Continental Congress of 1774, to appoint Committees "in every County, " City, and Town," " whose business it should be at- " tentively to observe the conduct of all persons, " touching the Association " which that Congress also enacted, and with extraordinary powers for persecuting and bringing ruin on whomsoever those local Committees should determine to put under a ban, had not yet become as well-seated, in the Colony of New York, as in some of the other Colonies;* but the

1 The followiug description of the methods adopted liy tliose local

City of New York was thus controlled ; and, possibly, some of the rural coninumities who were more than ordinarily revolutionary in their inclinations, may, also, have already appointed such Committees. In Westchester-county, however, although the handful of ofliceseekers who hovered around the Morrises, and who did what those haughty leaders told them to do in return for official favors received or looked for, had recently apj)ointed such a County Committee, at the time of which we write, it had not yet commenced its subsequently well-known work of inquisitorial proscription and plunder and outrage. There were individuals, among the farmers or in the little villages or at the several landings, who remembered and continued to condemn the usurpations of i)olitical authority which had signalized the first Continental Congress and had divided and lessened the power of the Opposition ; and these and others who had attended the recently-held meeting at the White Plains may have been and undoubtedly were discontented and outspoken, within their respective families and among their neighbors, producing, in some instances, undoubtedly, ill-feelings and personal animosities and less harmonious neighborhoods. But, notwithstanding all these, the great body of the inhabitants of the County was entirely undisturbed ; the labors <;f the day had been done, as they had previou.sly been done, on the hundreds of homesteads, throughout the County ; political questions in which they felt no interest had not slackened the domestic or the out-door industries nor lessened the holiday or evening pleasures of by far the greater number ; and, with here and there a clearly perceptible change, the staid old agricultural County was undisturbed, in all its various relations.