Morbisania, New Yoke City, August 16, 1886.

PREFATORY NOTE

The history of the County of Westchester, in New York, during the period commencing with the Spring of 1774 and closing with the early Winter of 1783, contains more of general interest than can be found in the history of any other County in the United States, during the same period, that of Suffolk, in Massachusetts, arid that of New York, in New York, not excepted.

No one who has hitherto pretended to speak or to write of the grand old agricultural County of Westchester, as a County, during the revolutionary era, has done more than to mention, with more or less of precision and particularity, the movements of two adverse Armies over her highways and her cultivated fields, one of them from Kingsbridge to the White Plains, the other from the Sound to the same objective point ; the skirmish which has been dignified with the name of a Battle, which ensued ; the ridiculous military spectacle of the two antagonistic Armies retreating from the White Plains, in opposite directions, and in the presence of each other; the half dozen military raids, sometimes from one of the belligerents and sometimes from the other, by whom the unarmed and entirely defenceless and previously plundered farmers were subsequently harassed and plundered, again and again ; the denouement of a very serious defection and plot, the latter discovered within that County; the union of the allied forces of France and the United States, previous to that celebrated movement to the Southward which resulted in the capture of Lord Corn wallis and his command ; and the escort duty which was performed by a Troop of Westchester-county Cavalry, when General Washington and Governor Clinton and their respective suites entered the City of New York, the closing military movement of the War of the American Revolution.