James Duane was not among those who were suddenly converted, in order to ensure their success at the Polls; but, nevertheless, on the day after the disgraceful political somersault of Philip Livingston, Isaac Low, John Alsop, and John Jay had been declared satisfactory by their plebeian and revolutionary auditory, that eminent adherent to the original policy of the Committee of Correspondence, as well as those who had so ignominiously abandoned it, was elected, at the Polls, by the unanimous vote of "thelnhabitants," x affording an example, in political engineering, which has been too often followed, at the expense of individual integrity and of the good of the country, from that time until the present.

Perhaps the preceding detail belongs more properly to the political history of the commercial City of New York than to that of the purely agricultural County of Westchester ; yet it would be impossible to present any narrative of the events of the Revolution which occurred within that portion of the Colony, which should pretend to completeness, or precision, or accuracy, without having previously explained the precise nature of those influences which were brought, from beyond the limits of the County, to undermine the fundamental and rigid conservatism of those staid, well-to-do, and contented farmers who occupied that County, and to draw any portion of them from the quiet of their rural homes into the seething vortex of partisan excitement, concerning measures of the Home Government which did not Mffect them nor their interests, in the slightest degree --a departure from the ways of their fathers, which, before many months had elapsed, transformed that quiet, and neighborly, and law-abiding community into one of entire unrest and disorder, of the most intense partisan bitterness, and of the most complete disregard of all law, human and divine; converting what had been a quiet, and well-cultivated, and productive agricultural region into one over which were spread the evidences of partisan lawlessness, of vigilant suspicion and distrust, of sullen neglect, and, too often, of hopeless and lamentable ruin.