Samuel J. Tilden
Samuel Jones Tilden was an American politician who served as the 25th governor of New York and was the Democratic nominee in the disputed 1876 United States presidential election.
Tilden was born in 1814 into a wealthy family in New Lebanon, New York. Attracted to politics at a young age, he became a protégé of Martin Van Buren. After studying at Yale University and New York University School of Law, Tilden began a legal career in New York City, becoming a noted corporate lawyer. He served in the New York State Assembly and helped launch Van Buren's candidacy in the 1848 United States presidential election. A War Democrat who opposed slavery, Tilden opposed Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election, but later supported him and the Union during the Civil War. Afterward, he became the chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and managed Horatio Seymour's campaign in the 1868 presidential election.
Tilden initially cooperated with the state party's Tammany Hall faction, but he broke with them in 1871 due to boss William M. Tweed's rampant corruption. Tilden won election as governor of New York in 1874, and in that office, he helped break up the Canal Ring. His battle against public corruption, along with his personal fortune and electoral success in New York, made him the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1876. Tilden was selected as the party's nominee on the second ballot. In the general election, Tilden faced Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden focused his campaign on civil service reform, support for the gold standard, and opposition to high taxes, but many of his supporters were more concerned with ending Reconstruction in the Southern United States.
Tilden won the popular vote by 250,000 votes but 20 electoral votes were in dispute, leaving Tilden and Hayes without a majority of the electoral vote. As Tilden had won 184 electoral votes, one vote shy of a majority, a Hayes victory required that he sweep all of the disputed electoral votes. Against Tilden's wishes, Congress appointed the bipartisan Electoral Commission to settle the controversy. Republicans had a one-seat advantage on the Commission, and decided in a series of party-line rulings that Hayes had won all of the disputed electoral votes. In the Compromise of 1877, Democratic leaders agreed to accept Hayes as the victor in return for the end of Reconstruction. Tilden is the only presidential candidate to win an absolute majority of the popular vote while losing the election. He subsequently left politics and died in 1886.
Early life
Tilden was born in New Lebanon, New York, the youngest son of Elam Tilden and Polly Jones Tilden. He was descended from Nathaniel Tilden, an early English settler who came to North America in 1634. His father and other family members were the makers of patent medicines including Tilden's Extract, a popular concoction of the 1800s and early 1900s that was derived from cannabis. Tilden's father maintained relationships with many influential New York politicians, including President Martin Van Buren, who became Tilden's political idol. Tilden was frequently in poor health during his youth, and he spent much of his time studying politics and reading works such as The Wealth of Nations. Tilden's health troubles prevented him from regularly attending school, and he dropped out of Williams Academy after three months and Yale College after a single term in 1834–1835.Likely motivated by a family friendship with Benjamin Franklin Butler, then serving as a professor at New York University School of Law, Tilden enrolled there to resume his studies and continued to attend intermittently from 1838 to 1841. While studying at NYU, Tilden also read law in the office of attorney John W. Edmonds. He was admitted to the bar in 1841 and became a skilled corporate lawyer. Tilden affiliated with the Democratic Party and frequently campaigned on behalf of Van Buren and other Democratic candidates.
Early political career
In 1843, Tilden was appointed as New York City's corporation counsel, a reward for his campaign work for Governor William C. Bouck. Tilden handled hundreds of cases on behalf of the city, but was forced out of office in 1844 after New York City elected a Whig mayor. He served as a delegate to the 1844 Democratic National Convention, which rejected Van Buren and nominated James K. Polk for president. At the urging of Governor Silas Wright, Tilden won election to the New York State Assembly. He became a key ally to Wright and helped end the Anti-Rent War by passing a compromise land bill that defused tensions between tenant farmers and their landlords. After serving as a delegate to the 1846 New York State Constitutional Convention, Tilden left public office to focus on his legal practice, where he gained a national reputation as a "financial physician" for struggling railroads. Tilden's successful legal practice, combined with shrewd investments, made him rich. His success at money management and investing caused many of his friends, relatives, and political allies, including Van Buren, to allow Tilden to manage their finances.Tilden was a leader of the "Barnburners", an anti-slavery faction of the New York Democratic Party that arose during the debate over the Wilmot Proviso. Like other Barnburners, Tilden sought to prevent the spread of slavery into the land acquired from Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. He helped organize the 1848 Free Soil Convention, which nominated Van Buren for president. Van Buren's candidacy in the 1848 presidential election drew votes from Democratic nominee Lewis Cass in New York, which played a role in the victory of Whig nominee Zachary Taylor. Unlike many other anti-slavery Democrats, Tilden did not join the Republican Party in the 1850s, but he did not have close relations with Democratic presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. In 1855, Tilden was the unsuccessful state attorney general candidate of the "Soft" faction of Barnburners, which favored compromise and reconciliation with the Democratic Party. In 1859, after he lost an election to serve as New York City's corporation counsel, Tilden announced that he was "out of politics."
In the 1860 presidential election, Tilden strongly opposed the candidacy of Republican presidential nominee Abraham Lincoln. He warned that the election of Lincoln could lead to the secession of the South and a subsequent civil war. Tilden initially opposed using force to prevent secession, but he supported the Union after the outbreak of the American Civil War. Tilden served as the manager of Horatio Seymour's successful 1862 campaign for governor, and played a key role in securing the presidential nomination for George B. McClellan at the 1864 Democratic National Convention.
In 1867, Tilden received the honorary degree of LL.D. from New York University. He was also chosen as a delegate to that year's state constitutional convention.
State party leader
Following the end of the Civil War, Tilden won the election for chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. He served as Seymour's campaign chairman in the 1868 presidential election, but Seymour lost the election to Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant. After the election, Tilden broke with William M. Tweed, the leader of the Tammany Hall political machine. Through bribery, patronage, and control of Irish-American voters, Tweed and his allies had become the dominant power in both New York City and the state of New York. In 1871, former Tammany associate James O'Brien leaked Tweed's account books to the New York Times. The Times subsequently began a public crusade against Tammany Hall, and Tilden launched an investigation into Tweed's bank records. Tilden ran for the New York State Assembly as part of a slate of anti-Tammany Democrats; at the state party convention, he declared that it was "time to proclaim that whoever plunders the people, though he steal the livery of heaven to serve the devil in, is no Democrat." The anti-Tammany Democrats, including Tilden, won a major victory in the 1871 state elections, and Tweed was indicted on 120 counts of fraud and other violations. After the election, Tweed fled the state, but he was eventually extradited back to New York, where he died in prison in 1878.Tilden's role in taking down Tweed bolstered his popularity, and he was elected governor of New York in 1874. As governor, he continued to focus on rooting out corruption. He helped to break up the "Canal Ring", a bipartisan group of state and local officials who had enriched themselves by overcharging for the maintenance of the New York State Canal System. Tilden gained a national reputation as a reform governor, a valuable asset given the number of scandals that had come into public view during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1875, Tilden received an honorary LL.D. from Yale University. At the same time, Yale also enrolled him as a graduate of the Class of 1837 and he received his Bachelor of Arts degree.
Presidential election of 1876
Democratic nomination
By the time of the June 1876 Democratic National Convention, Tilden had emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in the 1876 presidential election. Tilden's appeal to the national party was based on his reputation for reform and his electoral success in the country's most populous state. He was also a skilled organizer whose canvassing system and field knowledge were so thorough that, months before the 1874 election, he had predicted his own winning margin accurately to within 300 votes. Tilden further bolstered his presidential candidacy through a nationwide newspaper advertising campaign. As many Democrats expected that their party would win the presidency after four consecutive defeats, Tilden faced competition from some of the party's most prominent leaders, including Thomas F. Bayard, Allen G. Thurman, Thomas A. Hendricks, and General Winfield Scott Hancock.During the difficult economic times of the Panic of 1873, the major ideological divide in the Democratic Party concerned the issue of currency. Many "soft money" Democrats wanted Congress to repeal the Specie Payment Resumption Act and authorize the printing of more greenbacks, banknotes that had first been printed during the Civil War. The printing of more greenbacks would result in inflation and potentially benefit farmers by raising prices and helping them pay down their debts. Like most Republicans and "hard money" members of the conservative business establishment, Tilden believed that the termination of greenback circulation was the best way to solve the ongoing economic crisis. Tilden's lieutenants at the Democratic National Convention emphasized Tilden's reform credentials above all else, but they also ensured that the party platform endorsed Tilden's hard money views.
Tilden won a majority of the votes cast on the first presidential ballot of the convention, but fell short of the two-thirds majority required to win the Democratic presidential nomination. His closest rival was Hendricks, who had the support of New York party boss John Kelly and the soft money faction of Democrats. Tilden won the necessary two-thirds on the second presidential ballot, and the convention then voted to make his nomination unanimous. Delegates unanimously chose Hendricks as Tilden's running mate, providing a balance between the hard money and soft money factions. Though the Republicans had nominated a ticket led by Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, another governor who had established a reputation for honest governance, Tilden was widely regarded as the favorite in the general election.