Home / Dawson, Henry B. Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution. Morrisania, NY: (privately printed by the author), 1886. / Passage

Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution

Dawson, Henry B. Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution. Morrisania, NY: (privately printed by the author), 1886. 259 words

Like the cruel ostrich, she has forsaken " her young ones ; with the fierceness of a tyger, she ■" lays waste our own fair inheritence, and dashes " her sons against the stones ! -- Shakspeare makes " Hamlet express himself thus ; ' But, I am pigeon " ' livered, and lack gall to make oppression bitter.' " Whether it is the lack of gall, or the lack of sensi- ■" bility, that makes you callous to that bitter oppres- " sion that now surrounds you, I will not determine ; " but for creatures, that are said to wear the image of " the Deity, to be so lost to every noble sentiment " that ornaments the man ; must bespeak the most " amazing apathy.-- Then let me conjure you, to rise " from your lethargy, assume the dignity of freemen ; " smite the serpents that have spread their poisons " round you ; burn your associations ; and with " dauntless intrepity, join the sons of freedom, who " are the only temporal guardians of the human race.

" B. E."

No further attempt to answer this Address nor to

counteract the effects of the Association appears to

have been made until late in the Spring, a long time

-after the farmers throughout the Manor had commenced their work of ploughing and sowing and planting, when the following letter, signed by "An " Inhabitant," was published in Gaine's New- York Gazette: or the Weekly Mercury, No. 1236, New- York, Monday, June 19, 1775.