The Whig County organ was the _Lancaster Examiner and Herald_, published and edited by Edward C. Darlington, who was a conspicuous leader of what was then known as the “Silver Gray” faction of his party--being opposed by the more aggressive anti-slavery men, of whom Thaddeus Stevens was the leader, and whose followers were derisively styled “Woolly Heads.” The candidates of the Whig party on the State ticket were: for Governor, William F. Johnston, Armstrong County (a candidate for re-election); for Canal Commissioner, John Strohm, of Lancaster County, and for Judges of the Supreme Court, Richard Coulter, Westmoreland; Joshua W. Comly, Montour; George Chambers, Franklin; William M. Meredith, Philadelphia, and William Jessup, Susquehanna. The fact that the entire Supreme Court membership, then numbering five, was to be elected, greatly increased popular interest in the result. Pennsylvania was an October State. The Darlington faction of the Whig party was in the ascendancy and Darlington himself was on the ticket for Senator. Moses Pownall, of Sadsbury Township, was one of the Whig candidates for the Assembly. The regular Democratic County ticket had not yet been nominated, but the opponents of Mr. Buchanan, who were stigmatized as disorganizers and “Frazer Ponies,” had named a County ticket. The first local publications of the tragic occurrences in the Chester Valley appeared respectively in the _Intelligencer_ of September 16 and the _Examiner_ of September 17, and their local reports of the affair are illustrative not only of the laggard journalistic enterprise of that day, but of the intense partisanship which characterized newspaper management, colored the reports of news occurrences and generally pervaded all journalistic work. The _Intelligencer’s_ account of the affair was printed under a Columbia correspondent’s “Particulars of the Horrible Negro Riot and Murder,” and the editorial additions to this report commented on the disgraceful conduct of the “Abolition Whig Governor, absenting himself from the seat of government” on an electioneering tour, while riots and bloodshed prevailed throughout the Commonwealth, and citizens of an adjoining State were “murdered in our midst.” All these outrages, it charged, could be traced to the Executive of the Commonwealth--Governor Johnston was then serving his first regular term--“roaming about in quest of votes, instead of being at his post to enforce the utmost rigor of the law against the white and black murderers.” [Illustration: “AFTER THE WAR.” “MAMMY KELLY” WITH THE YOUNGEST GREAT GRANDCHILD OF EDWARD GORSUCH.]