Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution
fare of those farmers or for that of the Colony, dissevered from all other considerations, in the Committee of Inspection, alias the Committee of Observation, for the City and County of New York-- a merely local organization, vested with no more than the barest local authority, and that confined, exclusively, to an entirely different service -- when it thrust itself, unasked and undesired, into the midst of that peaceful and peacefully inclined community, only in order to disturb that prevailing peace by marshalling those who composed that rural community into rival parties, embittered against each other, without any aim or purpose in which they were, or in which they were likely to become, in the slightest degree interested, and for nothing else than for the promotion of individual aims and for the advancement to political place and authority, of aspiring politicians who were not always entitled, by their individual integrity, to any such advancement, anywhere.
As we have said, there was -no Town or County Committee, within Westchester-county, unto whom the Chairman of New York's Committee of Inspection could send the Committee's Circular Letter, to which reference has been made ; and other than usual means, therefore, were necessarily resorted to, to secure for it even a nominal circulation, within that County. It is not, now, known, beyond a peradventure, just what means were thus employed ; but the copies of that insidious Circular Letter which were intended for residents of Westchester-county were evidently sent to a leading Westchester-county politician ; and, by him, whomsoever he may have been, they were so manipulated that they reached only those residents of the County who would most surely promote the political purposes of that particular Westchesterian who had been thus entrusted with the delivery of them. 1