The country was at that time a wilderness, and the adventures of young Stone during his early pioneer life formed material that he afterward wrought into border tales.

While at Hartford, Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright (afterward bishop), Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), Isaac Toucey, and himself alternated in editing a literary magazine called The Knights of the Round Table.

In 1821 he succeeded Zachariah Lewis as editor of the New York Commercial Advertiser, becoming at the same time one of its proprietors, which place he held for the rest of his life.

[4] He was one of the leading public critics of the American Anti-Slavery Society and others in favor of "immediate emancipation" and has been called one of the principal fomenters of the Anti-abolitionist riots (1834).

Although the influence of Colonel Stone (as he was familiarly called as he held that rank on Governor De Witt Clinton's staff) extended throughout the country, it was felt most particularly in New York City.

This was the origin of the collection known as the New York Colonial Documents made by John Romeyn Brodhead, who was sent abroad for that purpose by Governor William H. Seward in the spring of 1841.

He also, as one biographer put it, "cleared away the mists of slander that had gathered around the name of De Witt Clinton, and by preserving strict impartiality he secured that credence which no ex parte argument could obtain, however ingenious."