It appears that it had become the practise of several of the local Committees -- those in Westchestercounty, in some instances, having been of the number -- of sending those who were offensive to them, without the slightest authority, revolutionary or conservative, to the Forts in the Highlands, which were then garrisoned with Continental troops, "with orders "to the commanding Officers to keep them at hard "labor, until further orders,' 1 no matter what the disability of the victims to sustain such hardships may have been -- a process concerning the propriety of which even General Putnam, who was then the Officer in command of the Army, in the absence of General Washington, entertained some very reasonable and very clearly expressed doubts ; 3 and the Provincial Congress, in consequence of those doubts and of other considerations was constrained to countermand those portions of the commitments to those Forts, which had imposed hard labor on the prisoners. 4

Another instance of that spirit of persecution was seen in the movement of Egbert Benson, one of those who were controlled more by their haughty and illcontrolled wills than by any enactment of Committee or Congress or by any requirement of personal or political integrity, for the employment of a local force, in the service and pay of the Colony, for the purpose of " keeping the peace and order and to suppress the 'disaffected in Duchess-county." 5 The "requisi- " tion," for by that expressive word the call of Benson was then known, was duly referred to the Deputations from Duchess, Westchester, and Ulster-counties, for consideration and report -- Gouverneur Morris, Samuel Haviland, Jonathan G. Tompkins, and Lewis Graham, representing Westch ester-county ; 6 and, on the following day, that Committee recommended the employment of one hundred men in Duchess-county and fifty men in Westchester-county, " the said men " to be raised in the said Counties respectively, and " confined to the service of those Counties, and to " continue in pay until the first day of November "next, unless sooner discharged by this or a future "Congress."'