There might have been fewer transformations of moral and intellectual pigmies into potent political giants -- there might have been a smaller number of fortunes rapidly and largely increased from the plunder of neighboring better - provided-for households and farmyards-- but there would have been, also, fewer outrages against the Laws of both man and of God ; less occasion for bitterness among the descendants of those who were, then, neighbors in locality, if not in fact ; and very much less for the faithful historian to condemn and to denounce, while reciting the annals of the American Revolution, as that Revolution was developed

1 "The thought that we might be driven to the Bad necessity of break- " ing our connection with Great Britain, exclusive of the carnage and "destruction, which it was easy to see must attend the separation, always " gave me a great deal of grief. And even now, I would cheerfully re- "tire from public life, forever, renounce all chance for honors or "profits from the public, nay, I would cheerfully contribute my little " property, to obtain peace and liberty."-- (Jofcra Admit* l» his Wife,''! " October, 1775.")

and seen in the agricultural and prosperous and peaceful County of Westchester, in New York. But the end of such outrages had not yet come.

While the excitement occasioned by the enactments of the Provincial Congress, authorieing local Committees to seize and imprison and disarm and deprive of their estates those who should become obnoxious to those local demagogues and against whom, by fair means or by foul, an accusation of unfriendly thoughts or words against the Rebellion could possibly be trumped up, was at its height, and while some of the inhabitants of the County were already suffering from imprisonment, attended by the most distressing circumstances, under the provisions of those enactments, the Committee of Safety, whom the Provincial Congress had left on duty, with a limited authority, during a brief recess of the latter body, still further aroused the excitement and the indignation of the greater number of the Colonists in New York, of nearly all of those within Westchester-county, by the publication of the following Reso-- lution and Orders :