The committee decided that the delegates should be chosen this time not by the individual counties in an independent capacity, but by a provincial convention; and such a convention was called for the 20th of April, the counties being severally requested to send representatives to it. Circular letters to this end were dispatched under date of March 16. There was at that time no committee existing in Westchester County to take cognizance of the notification and summon the necessary county convention or meeting. It hence became needful for some private person or persons interested in the cause to take the lead in the matter. The man for the occasion proved to be Colonel Lewis Morris, who, since the death of his father, in 1702, had been at the head of the Morris family of Morrisania. Colonel Morris was born in 1726, and was graduated at Yale in 1746. While inheriting the political temperament and abilities of his race, he had as yet taken little part in public affairs, preferring the quiet and unostentatious life of a country gentleman. Even in the first movement of protest against the policy of Great Britain organized in this county, resulting in the White Plains convention of August, 1774, he had not been specially conspicuous. But after the refusal of the assembly to identify itself in any manner with the prevailing sentiment, he became profoundly impressed with the importance of immediate and emphatic action by t he people in their original capacity. The occasion now presented was one demanding energy and management. It was not to be doubted that the powerful conservative party would exert its influence to the utmost to prevent any radical expression by Westchester County. There was more than a suspicion that this had been done deliberately, though insidiously, in 1774, when Frederick Philipse, the head and front of the conservatives, had been chosen chairman of the county convention, and that representative body, the first of its kind to meet in the county, had adjourned without adopting any aggressive resolutions or appointing a committee of correspondence to co-operate with the one in the city, or making any provision for the calling and assembling of future conventions of the county.