9th of February, 1814. The old homestead, where four generations of the family have been reared, fronts upon the long street which constitutes the backbone of the village of New Lebanon, in the county of Columbia, in the state of New York.
Mr. Tilden's ancestry may be traced back to the latter part of the sixteenth century and to the county of Kent, in England, where the name is still most honorably associated with the army, the navy and the church. In 1634 Nathaniel Tilden was among the Puritans who left Kent to settle in America. Eleven years previously he had been mayor of Tenterden. He was succeeded in that office by his cousin John, as he had been preceded by his uncle John, in 1585 and 1600. He removed with his family to Scituate, in the colony of Massachusetts, in 1634. He was one of the commissioners to locate that town, and the first recorded conveyance of any of its soil was made to him. His brother, Joseph, was one of the merchant adventurers of London who fitted out the Mayflower. This Nathaniel Tilden married Hannah Bourne, one of whose sisters, married a brother of Governor Winslow and another a son of Governor Bradford. Among the associates of Joseph Tilden in fitting out the Mayflower was Timothy Hatherby, who afterward married the widow of Nathaniel Tilden, and was a leading citizen of Scituate until expelled from public life for refusing to prosecute the Quakers.
Governor Tilden's grandfather, John Tilden, settled in Columbia county, since then uninterruptedly the residence of this branch of the Tilden family. The Governor's mother was descended from William Jones, lieutenant-governor of the colony of New Haven, who, in all the histories of Connecticut, is represented to have been the son of Colonel John Jones, who was one of the regicide judges of Charles 1, and who is said to have married a sister of Oliver Cromwell and a cousin of John Hamden. The Governor's father, a farmer and merchant of New Lebanon, was a man of notable judgment and practical sense and the accepted oracle of the county upon all matters of public concern, while his opinion was also eagerly sought and justly valued by all his neighbors, but by none more than by the late President Van Buren, who, till his death, was one of his most cherished and intimate personal friends.
Samuel J., after a suitable preparatory education at Williamstown, Massachusetts, was entered at Yale College in the class of 1833, where, however, in consequence of ill health, he was not able to complete the course. He concluded his collegiate studies at the New York University, and then took the course of law in that institution, at the same time entering the law office of the late John W. Edmunds, then a prominent member of the New York bar. While yet in his 'teens he was a watchful student of the political situation, and tradition has preserved many interesting stories of his triumphs, both of speech and pen, in the political area. Young and obscure as he then was. Presidents Van Buren and Jackson had in this state few more effective champions of the great measures of their respective administrations than this stripling from New Lebanon.
He was admitted to the bar in 1841. Four years before, when only twenty-three years of age, he delivered a speech in Columbia county on the subject of "Prices and Wages," which not only attracted the attention and won the admiration of the leading political economists of that time, but is today one of perhaps the half-dozen most profound, comprehensive and instructive papers on that complicated subject now in print in any language. Upon his admission to the bar Mr. Tilden opened an office in Pine street, in the city of New York, which will be remembered by his acquaintances of that period as a favorite resort for the leading Democrats, whether resident or casually on a visit to that city.
In 1844, in anticipation and preparation for the election which resulted in making James K. Polk president, and Silas Wright governor of the state of New York, Mr. Tilden, in connection with John L. O'Sullivan, founded the newspaper called the Daily News, by far the ablest morning journal that had up to that time been enlisted in the service of the Democratic party. Its success was immediate and complete, and to its efficiency was largely due the success of the Democratic ticket that year. As Mr. Tilden did not propose to enter journalism as a career, and embarked in this enterprise merely for its bearing upon the presidential campaign of 1844, he retired from it after the election, presenting his entire interest in the property to his colleague.
In the fall of 1845 he was sent to the assembly from the city of New York, and while a member of that body was elected to the convention for remodeling the constitution of the state, which was to commence its sessions a few weeks after the legislature adjourned. In both of these bodies he was a conspicuous authority, and left a permanent impression upon the legislation of the year, and especially upon all the new constitutional provisions affecting the finances of the state and the management of its system of canals. In this work he was associated, by personal and political sympathy, most intimately with Governor Wright, Michael Hoffman and with Azariah C. Flagg, then the controller of the state, who had all learned to value very highly his counsel and co-operation.
The defeat of Mr. Wright in the fall of 1846, and the coolness which had grown up between the friends of President Polk and the friends of the late President Van Buren, resulted fortunately for Mr. Tilden, if not for the country, in withdrawing his attention from politics and concentrating it upon his profession. He inherited no fortune, but depended upon his own exertions for a livelihood. Thus far his labor for the state or in his profession had not been lucrative, and, despite his strong tastes and pre-eminent qualifications for political life, he was able to discern at that early period the importance, in this country at least, of a pecuniary independence for the successful prosecution of a political career. With an assiduity and a concentration of energy which had characterized all the transactions of his life, he now gave himself up to his profession. It was not many years before he became as well-known at the bar as he had before been known as a politician. His business developed rapidly, and though he continued to take more or less interest in political matters, they were not allowed, after 1857, to interfere with his professional duties.
From that time until 1869, when he again consecrated all his personal and professional energies to the reform of the municipal government of New York city, a period of about twenty years, his was nearly or quite the largest and most lucrative practice conducted by any single barrister in the country. During what may be termed the professional parts of his career he had associated his name imperishably with some of the most remarkable forensic struggles of our time.
It was, however, during this period of Mr. Tilden's life in which he was devoting himself almost exclusively to his profession, that his name figures prominently in one of the most important political transactions in American history. The convention held in 1848, at Baltimore, for the selection of a presidential ticket to be supported by the Democratic party presumed to deny to the regular delegates from New York state, of whom Mr. Tilden was one, admission to their body upon equal terms with the delegates from other states, assigning as a reason that the convention which chose them had declared that the immunity from slavery contained in the Jeffersonian ordinance of 1787 should be applied to all the territories of the northwest so long as they should remain under the government of congress. Mr. Tilden was selected by his colleagues of the delegation to make their report to their constituents, a report which helped to make the Utica convention of June, 1848, one of the most momentous in the history of the country.
"With this intolerant proscription of the New York Democracy began the disastrous schism which was destined to rend in twain both the great parties of the country and practically to annihilate the political organization which had given a wise and beneficent government to the country for half a century. Then and there, too, were laid the foundations of the political conglomerate, which, in 1860, acquired, and for a quarter of a century retained, uninterrupted control of our federal government.
"Just twenty-eight years after the delegate from New York, who had been selected by his colleagues for the purpose, broke to their outraged constituents the story of their state's humiliation, that same delegate received the suffrages, of a large majority of his countrymen for the highest honor in their gift; and to-day, through that delegate's influence, another citizen of New York who was nominated by a Democratic national convention, which imposed no sectional tests, and who was elected without the 'vote of a single slave-holder, becomes the chief magistrate and most honored citizen of the republic. ' The wheel
