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. 377 words

On the following day, [April lst.~\ the Assembly appointed " a Standing Committee of Correspondence," composed of the Speaker, [John Oruger^] James De Lancey, James Jauncey, Benjamin Kis3am, and Jacob Walton, all of them from the City of New York, Benjamin Seaman, of Richmond-county, Isaac Wilkins, of the Borough of Westchester, Frederic Philipse, of Westchester-county, Zebulon Seaman, of Queens-county, John Rapalje and Simon Boerum, of Kings-county, Samuel Gale, of Orange-county, and George Clinton, of Ulster-county, or any seven of them, '' whose duty it shall be to obtain the most " early and authentic intelligence of all such Acts " and Resolutions of the British Parliament or Pro- '' ceedings of Administration as do or may relate to " or affect the Liberties and Privileges of His Majesty's Subjects, in the British Colonies in America " and to keep up and maintain a Correspondence and " Communication with our Sister Colonies, respecting " these important considerations ; and the result of "their Proceedings to lay before the House." 2

On the following Monday, the third of April, the Assembly adjourned until the third of May; 3 and that eventful Session of the last General Assembly of the Colony of New York, which was assembed for the discharge of legislative duties, was ended.

That General Assembly and all that it did, from the opening of the Session until the final declaration of its Speaker brought that Session to a close, have been made the themes of unceasing misrepresentation and abuse or of absolute and contemptuous silence, from far the greater number of those who have assumed to write or to speak concerning the history of that notable period. They have been the themes, sometimes, of ignorant and unscrupulous bigots and, sometimes, of intelligent and unscrupulous tricksters ; sometimes a personal and sometimes a local end has been served by either a falsification or a concealment of the truth, concerning them ; and, sometimes, fragments of useless and glittering rhetoric, strung together, as farmers string fragments of useless and glittering tin and display them in order to deceive and to scatter unsuspecting birds from their cornfields, in like manner, have been employed by literary prestidigitators, in order to deceive those who are less intelligent than themselves, concerning that As-