Preface
Few persons, probably, of the present generation
are aware that in the time of the American Revolution
there was carried on a border warfare between Long
Island and the Connecticut coast, which for romantic
incident was scarcely surpassed by anything related
by Walter Scott in his tales of the Scottish Border.
The parties in this warfare were mostly the whigs and
tories of that day, between whom there was a bitterness
of hostility far greater than existed between the
colonies and the British themselves. The details of
the strife, tragic and comic, the plots and counterplots,
the deeds of wild adventure, of heroism and endurance,
which then occurred, would, if fully narrated,
fill volumes.
The tale we here present to our readers relates to
one of the noteworthy incidents of those times. In
all essential respects it is strictly true. Every important
event mentioned is well authenticated. Many details
as to times, places, persons, etc., have been ascertained
from the public records of the county and state,
and may be relied on as accurate, though differing
somewhat from the statements which have been
printed, or have been handed down by tradition. The
outline of the story has many times been told to the
writer by a near relative, a sister of the "stolen boy,"
who had herself a personal knowledge of the facts,
and who died a few years ago at the extreme age of
ninety-nine. He has also received much information
from other aged persons who were well acquainted
with the actors in the events, among whom he desires
particularly to name his venerable friend, the Rev.
Smith Dayton,
of New Haven, still surviving, with
vigorous step and unimpaired faculties, at the age of
ninety, who has loaned him manuscripts left him by
his father, Captain Ebenezer Dayton, in relation to
the transaction.
Though the history of the Revolutionary period has
been so often and so ably written, it is yet comparatively
little known to many of the present day. A
general acquaintance with its public events, the Declaration
of Independence, and the principal incidents
of the war which established it, may be possessed, but
beyond this there is a great vagueness of apprehension.
The people of the colonies were thinly scattered
over a vast territory, so that much that occurred
among them was never known outside of the immediate
locality, and much that was known was never
recorded. The ubiquitous news-gatherer of modern
times had not then been born. The causes which led
to the separation from the mother country, the struggles,
privations and sufferings incident to the war, all
indeed that may be called the domestic history of that
period, is not only little known to most of this generation,
but cannot easily be conceived of by them.
In carefully gathering up, then, what has been
transmitted to us by tradition or otherwise, before it
shall be irrecoverably lost, and while it may still be
verified and illustrated by family manuscripts, and in
some instances by the personal testimony of the very
few surviving who lived near those times, we may not
only furnish matter of interest to our contemporaries,
but add something to the stock of materials which
shall serve the uses of the historians, the artists, and
the statesmen of the future.
Nor can we forbear to add that the examples of
that age are full of instruction. The poverty and the
hardships then endured were a severe school, in
which, nevertheless, were trained many noble characters.
It was a school of heroism which may well be
studied by us, who live in these more favored times of
ease and plenty. We cannot pretend to have delineated
it fully in a single sketch like the present, but we
may still hope that, as a glance at the time, and its
lessons of both patriotism and religion, the story we
relate may find a welcome in the Sunday schools and
the homes of our land.
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