1 The Continental Congress having authorized the employment of Continental troops for such a purpose, a Regiment was sent to Hempstead, for the purpose of seizing those who were disaffected to the Rebellion. The proposed victims having been disarmed, by order of the Provincial Congress, during the Winter of 1775-'6, they had no means for their defense, and, therefore, they fled and hid themselves in swamps, in woods, in barns, in hollow trees, in corn-fields, and in the marshes. Numbers took refuge in the pine barrens of Suffolk-county ; others, in small boats, kept sailing about the Sound, landing in the night and sleeping in the woods, and taking to the water again in the morning. They were pursued like wolves and bears, from swamp to swamp, from one hill to another, from dale to dale, and from one copse of wood to another.
Numbers were taken ; some were wounded ; and a few were killed -- all that, too, on a peaceful, unarmed, passive community ; unable to defend itself, because it had been stripped of its arms ; in advance of any adverse movement ; and only to promote the individual purposes of a handful of ambitious and reckless men : all that, too, in the name of " Liberty " and the " Rights of Man." (Journalof the Provincial Congress, "Sunday afternoon, June 30, 1776 ;" General Washington to the President of Congress, " New York, June 28, 1776 ; " " Jones's History of New York during the Revolutionary War, i., 108, 109.)