"Between 1760 and 1775, the inexperienced, stubborn King George III and a succession of second-rate cabinet ministers concocted a series of increasingly harsh measures to keep American colonists more firmly under British control. Instead, these actions set in motion a chain of events that forced Americans to take sides, climaxing in the war of the Revolution.". "In New York, the conflict tore apart a community that was already divided by deep-seated familial, political, religious, and economic rivalries. Now the choice forced upon New Yorkers was one that could mean the loss of everything they possessed - even life itself. At the center of Richard Ketchum's stirring narrative are two families, the Livingstons and the DeLanceys, one patriot, one loyalist, whose hazardous and largely irrevocable decisions reveal how individuals with similar life experiences chose different sides when the war erupted.". "From the outset, the Revolution was a civil war, cruelly dividing families and friends. The dense, compact character of 1760s New York City - a maritime community of about 18,000 souls - brought those divisions into stark relief. As Ketchum shows us, it was, then as now, a city whose lifeblood was commerce and whose consuming interest was money. However, money was to be made - and its interests defended - in different ways. The DeLanceys were Anglican, well-connected, urban merchants, and they threw in their lot with the crown. Their long-time rivals, the Presbyterian Livingstons, were landed Hudson River gentry and patriots. Both felt the pinch of London's new taxes. But beyond pecuniary matters, both had deeply held convictions about good and just government and proper relations with the other country. The irony was that the allegiance of loyalist and patriot alike was not to the king or to England, but to what they saw as their own country - America."--BOOK JACKET.