Westchester County, New York, During the American Revolution
General Wooster and his command were encamped on property belonging to Arent Bussing, near Harlem, from the eighteenth of July, preceding, (Journal of Provincial Congress, " Die Martis, 9 ho., A.M., "July 18th, 1775.")
t "General Wooster is at Harlem, with about 400 men, which appear "to ns to be unemployed," (Letter from the Committee of Safety to the Continental Congress, "In Committee of Safety for thf. Colony of New "York, nuRiNG the recess of the Provincial Congress, New-York. "Sept. 19, 1775.")
WESTCHESTEK COUNTY.
It is proper that notice shall be taken, in this connection, of the fact that the Provincial Congress, on the twenty-fourth of October, twenty days after that body had returned to its place and to its work and thirty-eight days after its Committee of Safety had adopted and published the Resolution and Orders, "relating to the impressment of Arms," which have been thus described and denounced, passed a formal Resolution " disapproving " and, therefore, abrogating them ; ' but the mischief which had necessarily proceeded from the adoption and publication and attempts to execute that Resolution and those Orders, could not be undone; the wounds which had been inflicted, were too deep to be healed by such an emollient ; and an increased and constantly . increasing bitterness of feeling, between the conservative and the revolutionary portions of the inhabitants, was every where seen, scattering its baleful and ruinous influence, from one extreme of the County to the other.
The radical changes in the characters and conduct of the previously quiet and orderly and industrious and prosperous inhabitants of Westchester-county, which were produced by the succession of aggressive enactments, made and published by the Provincial Congress and by its Committee of Safety, may be seen in the following letter and in what followed it, while that Provincial Congress was in session :