Notwithstanding all the inducementis which the Provincial Congress and its various office-seeking recruiting agents could offer, however, the staid and conservative farmers of Westehester-county were slow to enlist into the Continental service -- there had been much diseonti'ntment among those who were in the service, under Colonel llolme.s, in the preceding year;^ and on the return of tho.se malcontents, they had uudoidtledly told the story of their respective grievances to their suri>rised and sympathetic neighbors; besides which hindrance, the conservatism of the County had been too barbarously treated by those who were in rebellion, to j)ermit it to extend to that "common cause" the slightest favor, while the wound.s. which it had thus received were yet bleeiling. It was, indeed, true that Warrants had been .sent with the Circular Letter, in February; and it is undoubtedly true, also, that the favored ones, throughout the County, Warrants in hand and OtHces in prospective, had employed all their powers of conciliation and pereuiision to ensure

1 JuHmnl of Ihe Pntincial Cungrest, "Die Solia, P.M., Feb. 18, "ITTli." 'ViJo p«ges27r), 277, ante.

I a successful enlistment of the quota and the consequent reward to themselves ; but Westchester-county would not be conciliated far enough to send her wellto-do sons into the Army ; and the Warrants were returned to the Congress and the proffered Offices were not secured by those who had hankered for them. The i)rospect for the four Battalions, as far as Westchester-county was concerned in it, was not promising; and the Committee of Safety wa.s already entertaining the proposal to call back the Warrants which had been sent into the County, more than two months previously, when a letter was received by that body, from nill)ert Drake, the Chairnum of the Committee of the County, stating that one, Ezekiel Hyatt, or Ilaiglit, with his associates, had enlisted .seventy men in Westchester-county, for a Connecticut Regiment ; but w:us inclined to take them, as a portion oftheqiu>ta of that County, into a New York Regiment, if Commissions could be assured to those who were dcsignati'd as their Olliccrs.'*