History of Westchester County, New York, Vol. I
come ; but its adversaries steadily jjredicted its occurrence, or confined themselves to the expression of a hope, against probability, that "the evil might be spared the nation." Westchester County, from its position, close to the metropolis of American commerce, might be expected to take a commercial view of the question, and did so. The distribution of parties within its limits was similar to that in the city of New York, and the issue between the supporters of opposite views of the government was strongly marked. As in New York, the three factions into which the one party was divided, sunk their issue in a common electoral ticket, whose expressed bond of union was hatred to the " Black Republicans" and "Abolitionists" as a class. The leading papers of the county were the Eastern State Journal of White Plains, the Ifighland DemocratofPeekskiW, and the Yonkers Herald. All three were well established, marked by vigorous writing, well able to support their editors, and all exist to-day, under the same names, except the Herald, which was changed to the Gazette in May, 1864.
The attitude of parties in the county is best exhibited by the way in which these papers treated the question on the eve of election and immediately thereafter. The headlines of the Eastern State Journal, which we have taken as a fair specimen of the whole, and wherein the tickets were printed on the 2d of November -- the Friday before election-day -- read thus :
" Union Electoral Ticket, Anti-Lincoln, Anti- Black Republican."