OCR Text |
Show Old Masters SAMUEL J. TILDEN Bi) C. C. G. 1 JR. TILDEN had, perhaps, the most acute AVI legal mind in the United States. He early acquired great fame as a subtile lawyer. In politics, Martin Van Buren was his example, ex-ample, and he became a past grand master in the science. He had a most masterful mind. No man of his day could draw a stronger statement of a case than he. In the courts he had such men to contend with as Seward, Sibley, O'Connor, Black, Field and a host of like men, and held his own against them all. Not only that, ibut he made a fortune of millions mil-lions practicing law, where fees did not compare com-pare with mod.ern fees. From the first he took to politics and was for years the head of Tammany Hall. We have always, al-ways, when thinking of the order of mind of Mr. Tilden, thought of Lady Macbeth's description of Macbeth: "Thou would'st be great; Art not without ambition; but without The illness should attend it; what thou would'st highly That would'st holily; would'st not play false, And yet would'st wrongly win? When he was chief of Tammany and an election elec-tion was held in New York City, and Mr. Greely next morning in the Tribune in a direct way told Mr. Tilden that more votes were counted for his party in a certain ward than there were men, women, children, horses and mules in the ward, and reminded him that the receiver was equally guilty with the thief; Mr. Tilden made no reply. But when at last "Boss" Tweed was run to cover, arrested and arraigned, Mr. Tilden appeared appear-ed as his pror tor for the very crimes he himself him-self had winked at in former days. He was elected Governor of New York and permitted the wide circulation of the economics he had instituted, when he knew the real truth to be that all he had saved was in refusing to pay a great roll of obligations which had accrued during dur-ing his administration, and which his successor had to pay. When nominated for president, he chose for his shibboleth, the cry of "reform" and pressed it through the campaign, knowing all the time that it was a bogus war cry which would fall flat if he was elected. His friends have always claimed that he was elected; that there were transparent frauds In the returns made from certain "carpet bag" states, and that two other stales were carried by means which would under a legal construction be given to him. But there were frauds on his own party's side and some of them were traced close up to a resident in his own household. Some of his friends threatened if the decision was not given in his favor they would raise an army, march to Washington and seat him. But the man of Appomattox was president at the time and on second thought that course looked more and more dangerous, so his friends H finally proposed to liavo a commission settle the H matter, and the commission as first formed was H eight to seven in Mr. Tllden's favor. But by a H little management it was changed from 8 to 7 H to 7 to 8 and the Republican candidate was H seated. Those were turbulent days, no one who H did not live through them can realize just how H matters were. H That was practically the end of Mr. Tilden. H His party friends at first raved and promised that H in four years more they would elect him and see H that he was seated. H But the truth was their pride was much more H hurt than their sense of right Mr. Tilden had H drawn little love to himself and when the next H national convention of his party met, he was too H much stricken physically if not mentally, to be H thought of as a candidate. H Mr. Tilden was born in Now Lebanon, N. Y., H February 9, 1914, and died at Gramercy Park, his New York City home, August 7th, 1886. |