An attempt has been made, in this work, to do a small portion of what has been, thus, hitherto, neglected ; and if we shall have succeeded in the little which we have earnestly and laboriously attempted to do, the reader will find, therein, a brief, but honestly told, record of those influences, obtruded from beyond the County itself, without invitation from and in known opposition to the inclinations of those who were within the County, which, during the earlier revolutionary era, transformed a well-cultivated and highly productive agricultural region into one over which, without the baleful assistance of a foreign enemy, were spread, by fellow-colonists and fellow-subjects, the sickening evidences of obtruded and unwelcome partisan bitterness and relentlessness, presented in the devastation and waste and desolation which, everywhere throughout the County, then prevailed -- of those influences, wielded by those who are unduly claimed to have been patriotic and virtuous, which carried with them, into the quiet and peaceful homesteads of agricultural Westchestercounty, persecution and outrage and barbarism, such as the world has seldom seen, since the restraining power of Christianity has prevailed over those who, if left to themselves, as in the instances of those of whom we write, would have been only ruthless barbarians, notwithstanding the habiliments of civilization in which they sometimes appeared. We have endeavored to trace those evil influences, back, to their origin, and forward, as far as we have been able to go, to their final sad results; and, in more than one instance, we have seen those who controlled and wielded those influences, climb over the shattered remains of what, before, had been intelligent and industrious and contented families, and peaceful and plentifully-supplied homes, and productive farms, from the scenes of plunder and devastation and general ruin, of misery and hopelessness and woe, in which they had been the principal actors, to those high places of honor and emolument and power to which they had aspired and for the attainment of which they had not hesitated to bring all that wretchedness and ruin on others, to which we have alluded.