History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
" In Provincial Congress, " New-York, 12th Deer., 1775.
" Sir :
"It gives us concern that we are under the necessity of addressing
been a regular military operation : that the fact was, then, unknown, that it was only an inroad of banditti, winked at, it is true, but without any autiiority, legal or revolutionary : that the Committee did not even suspect that the raiders were only an organized band of robbers, composed only of the floating population of another Colony.
THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, 1774-1783.
The Governor of Connecticut, regarding with reasonable contempt tiie feeble, if not the hypocritical, outpourings of such a bashful, if not such a doublefaced,' body as the Provincial Congress of New York then was -- at the very moment when it was considering the proposition to send a letter to him, on the subject of the raid which is now under notice, it was also balancing on the tight-rope of loyalty to the King and reconciliation with the Home Government,
"you on a subject that haa given great discontent to the inhabitants of " the City and County of New-York.
" We are informed by a Petition from tlie Gene'al Committee, that a *'body of troops from your Colony lately made a public entry into this " City, at noon-day, and seized and carried oft the types belonging to one "of the public priutei's, without any authority from the Continental or "tliis Congress or their Committee.
" While we consider this conduct tvs an insult offered to this Colony, we "are disposed to attribute it to an imprudent though well-intended zeal " for the public cause ; and cannot entertain the most distant thought "that your Colony will approve of the measure. It is unnecessary to " use arguments to show the impropriety of a proceeding that has a " manifest tendency to interrupt that harmony and union which, at "present, liappily subsists throughout, and is so essential to the interest "of the whole Continent.