CHAPTER VIII 



THE REVOLUTION FROM NOVEMBER, 1 776, TO END OF WAR 



THUS far during the Revolution, the contest within the 

 Borough had been sustained by two large armies 

 carrying on a regular and systematic plan of cam- 

 paign. From the fall of Fort Washington in November, 1776, 

 until its reoccupation by the Americans in November, 1783, 

 a period of seven years, the contest was carried on by smaller 

 bodies of troops and bands of marauders engaged in partisan 

 warfare, with all the bitterness and distress that the name 

 implies. Not a week passed without some raid or outrage 

 perpetrated upon the inhabitants, and skirmishes were con- 

 stant between both the regular and the irregular troops of 

 both sides. 



In 1776, after the Battle of Long Island, Oliver De Lancey 

 was authorized to raise three battalions of loyalists from the 

 Tories of Long Island, New Jersey, and New York, and was 

 appointed brigadier-general in command of the district of 

 Long Island. Two of these battalions saw service in the South ; 

 the third, known as the Westchester Light Horse, was re- 

 cruited principally from the inhabitants of the Borough, of 

 other parts of Westchester County and of Connecticut. It was 

 commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel James De Lancey of West 

 Farms, a son of " Peter of the Mills," and nephew of Brigadier 



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