In the election which followed the Whig candidate General Zachary Taylor, who was elected, received in this county a majority over the entire opposing vote. General Cass fell behind Mr. Van Buren six thousand votes in the State but largely exceeded him in Westchester County. Some of the most ardent leaders of the Democracy of earlier days had by this time become the stanchest friends of the policies advocated by the Whigs. The old Senator and Sheriff, John Townsend, is mentioned in this connection.

The history of the next four years is of the weakening of the hold thus obtained by the Whigs. The death of General Taylor, the accession of Mr. Fillmore, whose views were materially different from Gen. Taylor's, and the exactions of the " Southern Oligarchy," as Mr. Sumner used to style the Southern leaders of both sides, brought in serious dissensions among the friends of the party in power. The Compromise measures of Mr. Clay, however, served both the great parties as a cement for the divisions in their ranks and within the old lines was carried on the Presidential contest of 1862. The county of Westchester gave Franklin Pierce, who was elected, twelve hundred clear majority. The number of votes cast had increased, it would seem, over sixteen hundred. Little is remembered of an exciting or important nature during this national administration, so far as this neighborhood is concerned, save the hardly-suppressed indignation (first) at the quite unnecessary strain which the abettors of the Fugitive Slave Law were putting upon the feeling of loyalty and obedience among the people and (second) at the intervention for conscience or for effect, of the small body of Abolitionists, who really had no following in tliis county.