Time had been allowed, since the aggressive act of 1806, to the most partial to realize the narrow and contemptuous feeling of the enemy, and new evidence was continually turning up, in the acts of impressment and uncalled-for interference with our marine, that self-preservation was the necessity of the hour. The numbers of foremost citizens of our towns, who are remembered as in later yeai-s referring with pride to their military services in the last war with Great Britain, show that by the best members of the community there was evinced at the time all that zeal, which anxiety for the reputation of the county could desire. In the positions of home defense, as well as of active duty at distant points, and in the invoked labors of placing " the city " in a condition for resistance, the sons of Westchester were behind none of their countrymen.

A careful examination of the condition of the county during the war shows indications rather of prosperity than of embarrassment. The prices were encouriiging to labor, and a number of the citizens of those times laid then the foundations of their future wealth. The crops seem to have been abundant. So, when peace was restored, there was a broad basis laid upon which a substantial prosperity might steadily be realized. As in the colonial period, so for many years after it, the population was made up of thrifty farmers, the colored race (not very valuable as lielp, certainly not as property), of a few tradespeople and mechanics, and of a sprinkling of men of wealth,