Home / Scharf, J. Thomas, ed. History of Westchester County, New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I. Philadelphia: L.E. Preston & Co., 1886. / Passage

History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I

Scharf, J. Thomas, ed. History of Westchester County, New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I. Philadelphia: L.E. Preston & Co., 1886. 357 words

That diKippointnient was expressed to the Hume Gorernment. in the General's despatch of the twenty-fifth of September, 177G, in these wonls : " We must also have recruits from Europe, not finding the Anier- " icjins disposed to serve with arms, notwithstanding the hopes held out "to me, upon my arrival at this post." In his Speech before a Committee of the House of Commons, on the ttcentij-ninlh of April, 1779, the General repeated the expression of his disappointment, on that subject, in these emphatic words: "I miutt, here, add, that I found the Americans " not so well-disposed to join us, and to serve, as I had been taught to "expect." The careful student of the history of that period will also bear testimony, in confirnuttion of what General Howe thus wrote and i raid, that the .Vmericans, those who had been persecuted and outraj;ed ' because of "suspicions" that they were " disaflected," notwithstanding the very reasonable reasons which they had for thus transferring their atrength to the Royal Army, generally remaine<l at their homes, with their families, without voluntarily taking up amis, in either Army ; and that the Loyal Dattalions were composed, almost exclusively, of the floating population, largely men of foreign birth or Americans whose immoralitit!S or necessities had induced them to enter the service. They were relatively few in nunilicrs ; and but for the personal respectability of th(.<se who led them, their services would have been only nominal.

We are not unmindful, in what we have thus said, of the great use of (hat loyal element which Joseph Galloway made in his very lawyer-like publicatiims; but we have also borne in mind, that those publications were made for personal and partisan purposes ; and that, like his earlier awociutes in duplicity and treachery, he was capable of resorting to unsavory means for the accomplishment of any given end in which he wad personally interested, justifying the employment of those means by the character of the proposed end, and l>oUlly and unreservedly doing evil in | order that what he was pleased to regard as good might, therefrom, be | iecnreil;