[Frederic Shonnard & W.W. Spooner (1900)] through White Plains to the Sawpits, or Rye," a distance of fourteen miles. Colonel Burr made his headquarters at White Plains. FROM JANUARY, 1779, TO SEPTEMBER, 1780 447 On the very morning of his assuming command, his predecessor left White Plains with a large party on a characteristic "scouting" ex-pedition to New Rochelle. This was an enterprise of promiscuous plunder, pure and simple. The men returned at night loaded down with spoils. Colonel Burr, astonished and indignant, at once took steps to return the stolen articles to their owners. " Sir," he wrote to General McDougall, the commander at Peekskill, " till now I never wished for arbitrary power; I could gibbet half a dozen good Whigs with all the venom of an inveterate Tory." lie announced in the most emphatic manner that he purposed to protect all the peaceable inhabitants without reference to their politics; that all marauders would be punished with the utmost severity of military law; and that " any officer who so much as connived at robbery he would send up to the general's quarters with a tile of soldiers the hour the crime was discovered." Shortly afterward a family named Gedney, living below his lines, was plundered at night. The Gedneys were Tories, but of the pacific description. Within twenty-four hours Burr had secured all the culprits and much of their loot. He marched them to Gedney's house, where he made them restore the recovered prop-