Descriptions of that Provincial Congress and of its remarkable methods and still more remarkable doings, may be seen in Ramsay's History of the Revolution in South Carolina, i., 23-25; Drayton's Memoirs of the Anutricau Resolution as rotating to South Carolina, i., 166-180 ; etc.

See, also, Journal of the Congress, ro-printed in Force's American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 1109-1118.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

which reference has been made in connection with the call for a Provincial Congress, was greatly strengthened, immediately after the receipt of the intelligence of the military expedition to Concord, and in the midst of the intense excitement which then prevailed throughout the City, by the inroad into the County of Westchester and the City of New York, of a large number of men, from Connecticut, who had come on their own motion, unsolicited by any one in New York or elsewhere ; without the slightest authority from the Government of their own Colony ; and, evidently, bent on nothing else than to be present to share in the distribution of the booty which an evidently expected general overturning of the homes and the business-offices and warehouses of that City would have placed within their reach. They lived, on their way through Westchester-county as well as while they were within the City, entirely on their wits and on the products of their wits, professing to have come only ■' with a view of aiding and assisting " us in preparing for our defense ;" but their reckless arrogance and audacity, in their assumption of authority in local affairs as well as in other matters, in which they were evidently sustained by some of the more desperate of the leaders of the revolutionary faction, in the City of New York, which were made matters of record, had they not been only earlier specimens of the peculiarly " New England ideas " which, subsequently, became so common and so well known, would have been regarded, by those of later periods, as unaccountable, if not impossible. 1 Thoughtful men, therefore, had abundant reason for reflection ; and men of property needed to provide for the security of their possessions; and peaceful men and heads of families did well, when they sought shelter in distant parts of the country, while there were so many and such portentous warnings of the ills which were so evidently and so rapidly approaching.