they were enabled to make their remittances in payment of British manufactures, which their necessities compelled them to have, and could not be supplied from any other country. Shortly after the treaty of Paris in 1763, the spirit with which the colonists prosecuted their commercial affairs, alarmed the mercantile and shipping interests in the mother country, upon whose representations the government imposed restrictions that annihilated this trade, to the serious injury of the northern colonies. Although some modification of former restrictions subsequently took place, they were coupled with regulations and the exaction of duties to raise a revenue in America, which the colonists considered dangerous innovations. The people of the colonies were not relieved and their fears were greatly excited in consequence of the novel principles attempted to be engrafted upon the British constitution by the enactment of laws of this description. The British national debt had become enormous for that period, and it was found necessary to provide means for diminishing the burthen, and the idea of raising a substantial revenue in the colonies from taxes imposed by parliament was conceived, and laws to carry it into effect were passed. The causes that produced collision with the mother country and eventuated in the independence of the American colonies, can not be minutely traced in a work of this character. The colonies insisted they were members of the British empire and could not be taxed without their consent; that representation and taxation were inseparable; and that this was a fundamental principle of the British constitution. Lord Camden, in a debate in the house of peers on one of these tax bills, uttered the following emphatic and impressive language: "My position," said he, "is this; I repeat it; I will maintain it to my last hour: Taxation and representation are inseparable. This position is founded on the laws of nature. It is more, it is an eternal law of nature. For, whatever is a man's own, no other man has a right to take from him without his consent, and whoever does it commits a robbery." And Mr. Pitt said in the house of commons: "You have no right to tax America. I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of our fellow subjects so lost to every sense of virtue, as tamely to give up their liberties, would be fit instruments to make slaves of the rest." These sentiments, couched in language so bold and nervous, were not slow in reaching the ears of a deeply interested audience. The distinguished and liberal British statesmen who uttered them, did not, perhaps, imagine they were speeding a ball that was so soon to strike from the British crown one of its brightest jewels. It may not be out of place here to remark, that Sir William Johnson was highly esteemed, and no doubt justly, by his neighbors of the lower Mohawk valley, and exercised over many of them an unbounded influence. On his death that esteem and regard was transferred to his family, who did not fail to exert their influence among their friends and dependants, in all matters relating to the approaching conflict. Quite a number of the people then living at and near Johnstown, Fort Hunter and other parts of Tryon county, left it with Sir John Johnson and Guy Johnson, and went to Canada; the descendants of some of them may now be found settled on the shores of Lake Ontario, between Niagara and Burlington Heights, Hamilton; and others in different parts of Upper Canada. These were followed by others, disaffected, who left during the revolutionary war. The Palatines at the German Flats, were seated at some distance from Sir William, and had comparatively but little intercourse with him. They knew him as an officer of the government, and not as a neighbor and friend. They had but few opportunities of intercourse with his family, and consequently were not influenced by them in regard to the difficulties between the colonies and the mother country. If any efforts were made to detach them from their allegiance to the country, those efforts were not attended with any great success, as only a very few of them are known to have abandoned their homes and followed the fortunes of the Johnson family. They may have had abundant reasons for doubting the disinterestedness of any proffers that were made to them from that quarter, and they chose not to put any further faith in promises which had to their grief and sorrow been so often broken. They had not in seventeen years forgotten the scenes of November, 1757, and April, 1758, when they were left an unprotected and exposed frontier, subject to attack by an enemy whose trophy was the human scalp, and the record of whose warlike achievements was found in the smouldering ruins of destroyed hamlets, slaughtered cattle, and captive women and children; when, if any males were spared, these were preserved to grace the triumph of victory, by running the gauntlet between two lines of infuriated demons, whose privilege and duty it was to inflict torments, and whose greatest solace consisted in viewing the agonies of the tortured victim. But these people had other and loftier motives to guide their actions and control them in the course they should pursue in the contest, where even brother was to strive with deadly weapons against brother, and the son with the father; a most unnatural conflict, provoked by kingly power. Tradition, if they possessed no other means of information, had unfolded to them all the miseries of serfdom, a concomitant of regal power and the absolute rule of one man. They saw and felt the justice of the sentiment, that man ought not to be burdened without his consent; but exposed as they were, and suffer as they well knew they must, from the blows that would be dealt upon them by their old foes, soon to be leagued with former friends, they embraced with zeal, and with a resolution not to be shaken, the cause of the colonies against the mother country, and held out firmly to the end; thereby proving themselves unfit "instruments to make slaves of the rest" of their fellow subjects. This is plain, unembellished historic truth, respecting the inhabitants of the country now embraced within the bounds of the county, and of which the descendants of the Palatines composed, by far, the greatest number. From the close of the French war to the stirring events that shortly preceded the commencement of the revolutionary contest, neither history nor oral tradition has given us any marked or striking incidents worthy of notice. Until 1772, Albany county extended westward without any defined limits, when Tryon county was erected, and the administration of justice must have been characterized by a patriarchal simplicity, often silenced, no doubt, by military rule. The white settlements were mostly confined to the Mohawk valley and its vicinity, although some families were found remote from the principal settlements along the river. -- CHAPTER V. 1772 TO 1783. Events Preceding the Revolution - Tryon County - Territorial Divisions of White Settlements before the War - General Congress in 1774 - Provincial Convention in 1775 - Second General Congress in 1775 - Committees of Safety Meeting of in Tryon County-Conduct of Guy JohnsonIndian Council at German Flats - Gloomy Prospects Sir John JohnsonDeclaration of Independence - Preparations of the Enemy - Generals Schuyler and Herkimer - Vigilance of the Foe - Fort Schuyler Invested by St. Leger- Herkimer's Proclamation - Tryon County Militia assemble at German Flats - Herkimer Marches to the Relief of Fort Schuyler - Col. Gansevoort- St. Leger's Forces - Insubordinate Conduct of Herkimer's Officers Battle of Oriskany-Willett's Sortie - Sir John Johnson's Effort to Detach the Inhabitants from the Patriot Cause - Walter N. Butler captured - Arnold arrives at Fort Dayton-His Proclamation - Honjost Schuyler's Mission and Success - Situation of the Valley in the Winter of 1777, 1778 - Andrus - Town destroyed by Brant - Retaliation on Young's Settlement German Flats destroyed by Brant The Liberty Pole-William Dygert- Fate of the Palatines - Mills burnt at the Little Falls - Alexander Ellice Enemy's Visit to Rhiemensnyder's Bush Mount Family in Jersyfield-Sir John Johnson's Retreat - Destruction of Fort Schuyler-Solomon Woodworth- John Christian Shell - Donald McDonald - Defeat of Ross- Death of W. N. Butler. Losses and Sufferings of the Enemy-Willett's Return from Pursuing the Enemy Resolution of British Commons - Failure of the Expedition against Oswego -Close of the War - Conciliatory Proposals of Peace. Upon the organization of Tryon County, the territory was divided into four large districts of country, although each contained but a comparatively small number of inhabitants. These districts were subdivided into smaller precincts. The Mohawk district was the easternmost, and lay in that |