Page:History of Delaware County (1856).djvu/49

DELAWARE COUNTY. 25 frontier settlements began rapidly to recede westward. The river towns, which lay along or near the noble Hudson^ were passed by and left to slumber on in comparative obscurity, while the daring and enterprising citizens were lured by the inducements offered them by the forest beyond. At this period, William Tryon was the principal Grovernor of New York ; his name stands last in the catalogue of the provincial rulers, and it is conceded by both friend and foe, that he was endowed with all the attributes necessary to constitute a wise officer and a useful citizen. It is true that it was during his reign in office, that the yoke of foreign dominion was peremp- torily cast aside, and the link which united us to the mother country was severed ; but the causes which opened the door to that eventful struggle in which the goddess of liberty rode tri- umphant over tyranny and oppression, and erected an asylum for the down-trodden subjects of every land, were beyond his or human power to control. It needs but a casual glance at the history of the Revolution and its causes, to convince even the most skeptical that the clouds of political discord had been gathering and accumulating blackness for a long period before the fatal issue came. Wise men of England had descried the star of liberty — the saviour of freedom — rising faintly above the western horizon — dimly at first, but gather- ing renewed brightness from every wafted breeze — the pro- phecy had gone forth, and the proud aristocrats of England, jealous of their power, and benumbed to every noble feeling of compassion or justice, like Pharaoh of old, had sent forth their impious decrees to conquer by compulsion and force, what kindness and mutual feeling could alone beget : instead of recognizing their brethren across the water as Englishmen, with the same ancestral blood thrilling through their veins — moved by the same impulses and characterized by the same traits — bestowed upon them the epithet of servile subjects. To EnglaDd this was a fatal step, but they either saw their 3