Samuel J. Tilden

Samuel Jones Tilden (February 9, 1814 – August 4, 1886) 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.

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.

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."