Samuel J. Tilden

The Tilden money came out of a country store in New Lebanon, New York, where his father Elam compounded a cannabis-based patent medicine and kept up friendships with half the Democratic politicians in the state. The son grew up certain he was dying. The complaints were constant and largely undiagnosable, and they kept him out of school — three months at a Massachusetts academy, a single term at Yale — so he read Adam Smith at home instead and took his law training at New York University in pieces between 1838 and 1841. Caution became a trade. He reorganised broken railroads for their creditors, earned the nickname financial physician, and made himself genuinely rich. The fortune bought the thing politics rarely sells, which was independence.

He had worked alongside Tammany Hall for years before he turned on it. As chairman of the state Democratic committee he went through William M. Tweed's bank records himself, tracing the padded municipal contracts into the ring's own accounts, and the anti-Tammany slate he ran with swept the 1871 elections. Elected governor and sworn in on January 1, 1875, he went after the Canal Ring next — a bipartisan syndicate overcharging New York for canal repairs, which meant prosecuting Democrats who had helped put him in office. That record, and little else, made him the presidential nominee in 1876.

He won the popular vote by roughly 250,000 and finished with 184 electoral votes to Hayes's 165, one short of a majority, with 20 votes disputed across Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Oregon. Both parties had cheated. Southern Democrats carried states by violence and by driving Black Republicans away from the polls. Republicans controlled the returning boards that judged the results, and those boards threw out ballots wholesale — Louisiana's discarded 15,623 and turned a Tilden lead of more than 6,000 into a Hayes win. Congress built a commission of 15 to settle it, five senators, five representatives and five justices. Every disputed vote went to Hayes, eight to seven, on party lines. The Compromise of 1877 closed the account: Hayes was inaugurated, federal troops came out of the South, and Reconstruction ended.

Democrats urged him to take the oath anyway. Some were ready to fight for it. He refused, calmed his followers privately, and turned down a plan for mass demonstrations. Admirers called it the act that kept the country out of a second war. Others called it the caution that had kept him out of school. He said he could retire with the consciousness of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office. He died a bachelor at Greystone, his Yonkers estate, on August 4, 1886. Relatives broke part of the will, but about 3 million dollars survived to become the New York Public Library.

Samuel J. Tilden's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Railroad reorganisations for bondholders other
  The work that made the money — creditors called him a financial physician 1860
• The case against the Tweed Ring case
  He traced the bank accounts himself 1871
• The prosecution of the Canal Ring case
  A bipartisan graft operation — many of its members were Democrats 1875
• Study of electoral procedure in 22 presidential elections other
  Compiled by Tilden and sent to every member of Congress. It changed no votes. 1877
• The Writings and Speeches of Samuel J. Tilden other
  Two volumes, edited by John Bigelow 1885
• The Tilden Trust other
  Merged with the Astor and Lenox libraries in 1895 to create the New York Public Library 1886

• February 9, 1814 aged 0 Born in New Lebanon, New York Youngest son of Elam Tilden, storekeeper and patent-medicine maker.
• 1841 aged ~27 Admitted to the New York bar after studying in fits and starts Ill health had already ended his time at Yale after one term.
• 1848 aged ~34 Helps organise the Free Soil convention that nominates Martin Van Buren Tilden led the Barnburners, the anti-slavery wing of the New York Democracy.
• 1871 aged ~57 Breaks with Tammany and investigates Tweed's bank records Tweed was indicted on 120 counts and died in jail in 1878.
• January 1, 1875 aged 60 Sworn in as the 25th governor of New York He moved next against the Canal Ring, which included men of his own party.
• June 1876 aged 62 Nominated for president on the second ballot at St. Louis Thomas A. Hendricks of Indiana balanced the ticket for the soft-money wing.
• November 7, 1876 aged 62 Wins the popular vote and falls one electoral vote short Most papers called the race for him the next morning.
• March 2, 1877 aged 63 Congress declares Hayes the winner The electoral commission had awarded all 20 disputed votes to Hayes, eight to seven.
• August 4, 1886 aged 72 Dies at Greystone in Yonkers, aged 72 He never married. The bulk of the estate went to a free public library for New York.

• Boss Tweed 1823–1878
  Boss of Tammany Hall, whose ring looted New York City while it fed and naturalized the city's immigrants. prosecuted
• Rutherford B. Hayes 1822–1893
  Nineteenth president whose disputed election settlement ended federal Reconstruction in the South. defeated by
• Thomas Nast 1840–1902
  Political cartoonist who broke the Tweed Ring and drew the modern Santa Claus shared a target
• Thurlow Weed 1797–1882
  Political boss of New York and editor of the Albany Evening Journal rival
• Grover Cleveland 1837–1908
  Only president elected to nonconsecutive terms who championed limited government and the gold standard. endorsed
• Ulysses S. Grant 1822–1885
  18th President and Union Army general whose leadership was decisive in winning the Civil War. opposed