My acquaintance with Governor Tilden began a few years before the
War of the Rebellion, and my first impressions were not favorable to
him. Completely dominated by the combined and swelling impulse of
patriotism, passion, and aspiration under which the Republican party
was then gathering its mighty hosts, I was in no condition to tolerate
anything in the nature of opposition to the movement, or even to
appreciate the reasons upon which any such opposition might be founded.
It was not until the war was over, when the passions had subsided, when
it became necessary to cultivate the arts of peace and to restore the
waste and ruin which war had wrought, that I was inclined to extend
any hospitality to the qualities for which he was most distinguished,
or to lend any ear to his teachings. Drawn from year to year into a
nearer acquaintance with him, and having occasion, when he came to fill
stations of influence and power, to observe the ready sagacity and easy
skill with which he conceived and carried through important measures
for the redress of errors and frauds in public administration, I became
more and more impressed with his prodigious superiority to other men.
What he would have been able to accomplish had he been permitted to
assume the functions of the great office to which the majority of
his countrymen believed him to have been elected is matter of idle
conjecture only; but the list of his achievements during the few years
in which, upon a narrower theatre, he acted a public part can hardly
be matched. Omitting from view the splendid contributions made by him
from time to time, prior to 1871, by papers and speeches upon the
principles of politics and the methods of governmental administration,
and taking note only of the practical measures in the conception and
execution of which he was the leader during the five short years
in which, either as a private citizen or as public officer, he was
actually engaged in the public service, we can distinctly impute to him
the following results: In 1871 he seized the opportunity, suggested by
the disclosure and publication of the prodigious sums drawn from the
New York city treasury by way of pretended payment of municipal debts,
to endeavor to fasten upon the principal city officials the crime,
universally suspected, but of which there was no proof, of having
corruptly embezzled to an enormous extent the moneys of the city. By a
long and patient tracing of a multitude of accounts in different banks,
he reached a series of results which, when compared, not only disclosed
but conclusively demonstrated, by competent legal evidence, the whole
scheme of fraud, the officials engaged in it, and the amounts received
by each. Although a strict party man and chairman of the Democratic
State Committee, yet, finding that the Democratic organization of the
city of New York could not be wrested from the control of the official
delinquents, he organized and led the popular movement which effected
their overthrow. He accepted, at the same time, a nomination for the
legislature, was elected, and extorted from a reluctant majority the
impeachment of the corrupt judges who had disgraced the judicial
ermine. In 1874, when the craze for fiat money had become prevalent
throughout a great part of the country, and more threatening to the
public prosperity than the free-silver delusion has at any time
been, he drew from the Democratic State Convention of New York the
first condemnation which it had received from either of the national
parties. Elected in that year as Governor of the State, he conceived
an extensive series of reforms in administration, drew the necessary
legislative bills, secured their adoption, and carried them into
effect. These plans contemplated, by the adoption of new methods and
various economies, extensive reductions in the public expenditures, the
institution of suits for the punishment of frauds of public officers,
and the recovery of moneys embezzled by them. They had very large
practical results.
Nor was he less efficient in baffling mischievous schemes. The
Democratic organization of Tammany Hall, reorganized, after the
overthrow of Tweed, under the leadership of John Kelly, an able and
not dishonest partisan chief, demanded from the Democratic majority
in the legislature the passage of laws designed to secure to that
organization a more complete control of the municipal patronage.
Governor Tilden refused to lend his countenance to this policy, and
the imperious leader undertook to force him into acquiescence by
forming a combination in the legislature with the numerous adherents
and stipendiaries of what was known as the Canal Ring. That coterie of
men, powerful in both parties, had already scented the peril to their
practices threatened by the Governor's reformatory plans, and were
only too willing to join in a warfare against him. He suddenly found
himself in danger of being deserted by a majority of his own party.
The Democratic Speaker of the Assembly took the floor, and arraigned
him as unfaithful to the Democracy of the State. He had long before
seen the possibility of this combination against him, and had sought by
the practice of all the conciliatory arts, of which he was a thorough
master, to prevent it. When it came, he was not daunted by it, but
boldly went behind his enemies to the constituencies which they were
betraying. They soon found that they were dealing with an adversary who
possessed resources which they had not taken into account. Most of them
abandoned their opposition. The rest were severely dealt with by their
constituents.
Never were the possibilities for good of a great office like that
of Governor of New York so happily developed and displayed. In the
course of an administration of two years, an enormous reduction in
taxation was effected; the administrative system in every department
was improved; the lobby was almost dispersed; and at the same time the
Governor, in his communications with the public through his annual
messages, his veto messages, and speeches upon official and other
public occasions, was furnishing to the people of the State, and indeed
of the whole country, a nearly complete exposition, theoretical and
practical, of the whole work of public administration. I have never
read a state paper which equals his second annual message in the power
and ease with which it treats of the principles upon which government
should be conducted, or in the order and perspicuity with which it
arranges and sets forth the details of public business. In this paper
he considers at much length the then depressed condition of business,
its causes, and the proper remedies. It may be thought--was thought
at the time by some--that this was going beyond the domain of state
affairs in order to make an ambitious display of knowledge upon the
larger concerns of the nation; but it would be well if every man
possessing such knowledge as is here exhibited, and such a capacity
for communicating it, would embrace all opportunities to display it.
Governor Tilden, however, had a special motive in placing his views
before the country at that time. He saw the false policy of indefinite
issues of government legal-tender currency everywhere taking hold of
the public mind, and that, unless speedily corrected, it would acquire
a force to which the timidity of political leaders would submit.
He had already induced a convention of the Democratic party in New
York to take ground against it. He wished to draw forth a similar
declaration from the Democracy of the nation, at its next convention
for the nomination of a President. He succeeded; and to his influence,
probably, more than to that of any other man, we owe the downfall of
the paper-money delusion.
An attempt to analyze the rare combination of talents and faculties
which enabled him to accomplish so much in a period so brief may not
be uninteresting. His original intellectual endowments were of the
highest order. They were not of that character which, while leaving
their possessor satisfied with some hasty and superficial conclusions
that at the moment seem true, enable him to impress them upon others
by fervid and moving language. These are the intellectual traits most
frequently exhibited by the ablest men whom our public life brings into
notice; but they do not make up the _scientific_ mind which Governor
Tilden's pre-eminently was. At the beginning of his intellectual
manhood he clearly perceived that the whole moral world was as rigidly
as the physical world subject to an order, an arrangement, a law; and
that all policies, whether in government, in finance, or in business,
not founded upon a recognition of this truth would result in confusion
and mischief. Naturally attracted to the study of the public economy
of States, his first aim was to discover the laws governing every part
of that extensive domain. Whether the theme was expenditure, taxation,
private or public justice, internal improvements, or any form of
public administration, he would make no utterance until his brooding
mind had reached what he conceived to be the underlying truth; and the
same trait was manifest in him where the purpose was not to refute or
establish a general policy, but to ascertain, in a particular case, the
truth upon a disputed question of fact.
This was well illustrated in his defence, in 1856, of the title of
Azariah C. Flagg to the office of comptroller of the city of New York,
against the claim of John S. Giles. Flagg had been declared elected by
the Board of County Canvassers. He was a man of resolute integrity, had
held the office before this election, and, by his obstinate defence
of the city treasury against unjust and fraudulent claims, had drawn
upon himself the hatred of the municipal plunderers, and earned from
them the title of "Old Skinflint." His enemies had made a combined and
desperate effort to defeat his re-election, and, having failed by a few
votes only, they determined, upon the pretence of an erroneous return,
to make an attempt to oust him from his office by a judicial proceeding
and install Giles in his place. For this purpose they fixed upon the
vote of the first district of the Nineteenth Ward, the majority of
the election officers of which were bitter enemies of Flagg. Their
pretence was that the return of the district election officers giving
316 votes for Flagg and 186 for Giles was a clerical error, by which
Giles' vote was awarded to Flagg and Flagg's vote to Giles. Three of
the election officers who signed and filed this return were sworn
as witnesses for Giles, and positively testified that the vote as
actually counted was just the reverse of the return; that Giles had 316
votes, and Flagg 186. The original tally-list of the regular tickets,
which would have shown the truth, had been conveniently lost, but these
witnesses produced what they swore was the original tally-list of the
split tickets, and upon which was a pretended transfer of the votes on
regular tickets, which they swore was correct, and this fully supported
their statements. Other witnesses on the same side testified that they
were present at the close of the counting on the day of the election,
and heard the result proclaimed, and that it gave 316 to Giles and
only 186 to Flagg. This formidable case could be overthrown only by
showing that these witnesses were perjurers, and this pretended split
tally-list a forgery. Tilden had no doubt that this was the fact, but
he had no direct evidence to prove it. He was a determined enemy of
these base conspirators and a close friend and ardent admirer of Flagg,
and he was resolved that the fraudulent scheme should not succeed.
Acting upon the assumption that a lie has no place in the regular order
of nature, but is something violently thrust into that order and will
not fit the surrounding and attendant facts, he laboriously endeavored
to bring into light, so far as possible, all those surrounding and
attending facts. It so happened that this election was a contest
between numerous factions, and that there were seven regular tickets
voted; that is, tickets having uniformly the same names and for the
same offices; and there were twelve candidates for the various city
offices on each ticket. There were also many split tickets, created
by erasure of one or more names from a regular ticket, or otherwise.
Here was fruitful material for the exercise of Tilden's powers of
investigation. He demonstrated, and with mathematical certainty, by
an analysis and comparison of the actual returns of votes for all the
candidates on these tickets, that the pretence of Giles was a pure
fabrication. At the close of his argument he threw his demonstration
into a dramatic form, which created such an impression that, as Mr.
Charles O'Connor, who was associated with Mr. Tilden, once told me,
the case of the plaintiff Giles was utterly defeated before the
defendant had called a witness. It was, of course, difficult for the
jurors to carry in their minds the numerous figures which made up the
demonstration. Something was needed to impress upon them the result.
For this Tilden pitched upon the lost original tally-sheet of the
regular vote. It was upon the amount of Flagg's _regular_ vote that
the whole controversy turned. If the contents of that lost tally could
be shown, all doubt would be dispelled. Said he, "I propose now,
gentlemen, to submit this case to a process as certain as a geometrical
demonstration. _I propose to evoke from the grave that lost tally_;
to reproduce it here, to confront and confound these witnesses who
have been upon the stand swearing to what is not true. It is an honest
ghost. It will disturb no true man." And he did it triumphantly.
Handing to the jurors sheets containing copies of the regular tickets,
and selecting a name which was found on only one of these tickets,
that of Samuel Allen for street commissioner, he called off from the
actual return to the Board of County Canvassers, and the jurors set
down Allen's vote, which was 215. It necessarily followed that every
other name on that ticket must have received the same number, or the
ticket would not be regular. Proceeding in the same way with all the
names on all the tickets, and then deducting the regular vote from
the whole vote as shown by the actual return, and thus obtaining the
split votes for each candidate, and comparing these results, except
as to Flagg and Giles, with the tally-sheet of the splits which had
been produced by the witnesses for Giles, and which was presumably
correct, except in respect to the vote for Flagg and Giles, he slowly,
step by step, re-created an original tally of the regular ticket,
which, when increased by the split votes shown on the split tally-list,
corresponded in every particular with the actual return to the county
canvassers except as to three unimportant names, and as to these it was
manifest that the actual return was erroneous. Each juror found, at
the close of the calling, that he held in his hands what he could not
but believe was an absolutely accurate count of the votes in the first
district of the Nineteenth Ward for all the candidates voted upon, for
whatever office, at the election under investigation. The hideous
monstrosity of the figures assigned to Flagg and Giles in the split
tally-list became so palpable that none could doubt. It is needless
to add that when the case was finally submitted to the jury they
immediately returned with a verdict for "Old Skinflint."
He employed a similar method in the case of what was called the Six
Million Audit fraud of Tweed and his accomplices. That the payment of
this enormous sum was a gigantic fraud no one could doubt; but there
was no proof showing _how much_ of the payments was in excess of what
was due to the claimants, or among whom the excess was divided, and how
much to one and how much to another. Mr. Tilden unlocked this mystery.
He went to the banks in which the conspirators kept their accounts,
and by a patient decomposition of the credits into the original
items, as shown by the deposit tickets, evolved the plunderers' rule
of division. Applying this rule to any one of the hundreds of paid
city warrants embraced in this series of frauds, and without going
beyond the face of the warrant, it could be determined how much each
of the conspirators received; and the determination would be verified
by finding, upon examining the bank accounts and deposit tickets of
the same parties, that they had received on the day of the payment of
the warrants the same sums which, according to the rule applied, they
ought to have received. It vexed Mr. Tilden very much that the shares
of the conspirators, as thus computed, did not correspond with perfect
exactitude to the amounts deposited to their credit. The difference,
being trifling in amount, hardly affected the conclusiveness of the
demonstration; but it showed that there was some element in the rule of
division which he had not discovered. The missing link was subsequently
found, and then the conformity between the computed and the actual
shares was in every instance exact to a penny. This division and
conformity, appearing upon the face of the accounts themselves, proved
with absolute certainty the conspiracy to defraud, the amounts of the
embezzlements, and the precise shares received by each. Had Mr. Tilden
been present at the meetings of the conspirators and witnessed their
division of the spoils, he could not have given evidence so conclusive
of the fraud as that which he thus drew from written memoranda which
the conspirators had thoughtlessly allowed to be made.
It was indeed wonderful to observe how a man who could study these dry
details with such patience, and even with pleasure, could pass at once
into the fields of political science and compel a wholly different
class of facts to yield to him the loftiest generalizations. But in
truth the process was the same in both instances. It was the original
investigation of facts for the purpose of framing a just theory. It is
a common practice, even with able men, to disparage the conclusions
founded upon the employment of the reasoning powers as being _mere
theory_; as if their own conclusions, so far as they have any value,
were reached in any other way. These are the criticisms of men who are
too indolent to engage in the work of patient investigation, or not
sufficiently instructed in the methods by which it should be pursued.
Undoubtedly there are many minds that undertake the task of evolving
the laws underlying some subject matter and reach conclusions which
are confidently believed and asserted to be true, but that turn out
when adopted in practice to be erroneous. It is in this way that the
results of investigation and reasoning are brought into discredit. But
the fault in such cases is not that the conclusions are those of mere
theory, but of erroneous theory. The reasoner lacks the patience, or
the skill, to embrace in his investigation all the material facts, and
to exclude all others. These are, indeed, the rarest of qualities.
They are possessed in an eminent degree by a few men only in each
generation, and the value of such men to society is inestimable.
Governor Tilden's pre-eminence was especially manifest here. His
educated intelligence was able to pronounce, as if by instinct, whether
the conclusion he had reached was sufficiently certain to be made the
basis of action, or was so encumbered with doubt as to call for further
scrutiny into the facts. He knew how--to use his own happy phrase--"to
limit theory by practice and enlighten practice by theory."
The mere pursuit of truth, the pleasure which comes from the actual
exercise of superior powers, the sense of satisfaction which arises
from the overcoming of difficulties, would have been a sufficient
reward and stimulus to a mind like his; but this was not his principal
motive. His chief aim was to convince others; and he knew that this
could be done only by the effective use of language. He recognized the
importance of the art of rhetoric, and labored upon the composition of
his papers with the same care which the purely literary man employs;
not for the purpose of making up a piece of what is called fine
writing, but to engage and hold the attention by imparting life and
interest to his treatment, and, by an easy and natural development
of his subject, to carry the mind gratefully along towards his
conclusions. It would be hard to find better examples of the way in
which subjects apt to be regarded as dull may be made lively and
interesting, and yet without departing in the slightest degree from
a rigid and logical development, than are found in his report, while
a member of the legislature of New York, upon the causes of the
anti-rent disorders and the proper remedy for them; or his speech in
the constitutional convention of that State in 1867, unfolding the
true policy to be pursued in relation to the canals; or his second
annual message when Governor in 1876. I find, on the page at which I
open a volume of his speeches and writings, the following sentence,
which well illustrates the ease and power with which he could clothe
weighty truths in their appropriate language: "Generations, like
individuals, do not completely understand inherited wisdom until they
have reproduced it in their own experience."
These high intellectual traits would have made him a man of mark had
he been a philosophical recluse holding himself aloof from the busy
activities of life; but the extraordinary thing was that he was at all
times emphatically a man of action. Whether engaged in the conduct
of some great lawsuit or of some important business enterprise, or
managing a political campaign, he was equally at home. The schemes of
small party chieftains and the power of local bosses gave way before
his masterful leadership. He did not despise the aid of partisan
machinery or of official patronage; but he fully perceived that the
scope and influence of these instrumentalities were narrow, and that,
unless held rigidly secondary and subordinate, they would obstruct,
rather than aid, the march of a political party. Profoundly convinced
of the truth of the political creed which he avowed, he engaged in
political warfare only to secure its permanent establishment. Any
victory won by shifty expedients he knew would be but temporary,
and would not fail to retard a lasting success. At the same time he
recognized the fact that no main purpose of a political party could
ever be carried except by the permanent union of men differing from
each other upon a multitude of minor points, and exhibiting every
grade of culture, character, and conduct. Compromise and concession be
recognized as the daily duties of the statesman. He had little regard
for those impracticable natures which refuse to join any party because
they find something to object to in all parties. He was the last man
to yield to self-conceit and obstinacy the titles of conscience and
wisdom. Such men, he once declared, forget "that without concession
there can be no common action for a common object, and that without the
capability of such action a man is fit, not for society, not even for
a state of nature, but only for absolute solitude." I wonder that the
mugwump-haters have not borrowed his description of some non-partisans
of his day: "I know there is a class of no-party men who vindicate
their claim to that character by doing injustice to all, even without
the excuse of bias."
But _how far_ should you carry the spirit of compromise and
concession--_how far_ tolerate what you believe to be error in order
to obtain an over-balancing good? This is the puzzle of statesmen, and
indeed of every man, so far as he undertakes any part, even though
only as a private citizen, in public concerns. There are two ways of
dealing with it. One is to shirk it by an indolent abandonment of the
important offices of social and public life. The other is to meet it
with the best solution we can find. Tilden had little regard for the
first of these methods. He accepted the second; and with his matchless
ability for drawing a line up to which we must, but beyond which we
must not go, he would have had little excuse for the other choice.
There were several occasions when he felt obliged to draw this line
and rigidly observe it, although the result might be immediately
disastrous to the party to which he was attached and to his own
personal ambitions. His opposition, in 1871, to Tammany Hall, already
noticed, is an instance. Occupying, as he then did, the important
post of chairman of the Democratic State Central Committee, he could
not step out of the local organization in the metropolis and make war
upon its leaders without seeming disloyalty to his party, nor without
endangering its success in the next State election. But he determined,
against combined solicitations and threats, to take this course, and
the result showed the wisdom of his choice, even as a measure of party
policy. And again, when the irredeemable paper-money delusion had to a
far greater degree than the free silver coinage craze gained possession
of the popular mind throughout the West and South, and in the view of
many ardent politicians promised a victory to the Democratic party
if that party would extend some favor to it, he compelled from the
national convention of the party a repudiation of the heresy. No
temporary advantage which his party might gain would in his view be
worth acceptance, if purchased at the price of such a sacrifice of
fundamental principle.
It is not to be wondered at that with his profound knowledge of the
causes by which human affairs were controlled, combined with such
capacities for skilful action, he should have accumulated a large
fortune. Aside from what he received for professional services,
his large gains were, I imagine, rather easily acquired. Among the
mischiefs of an unstable currency is the facility with which men who
have the power of dealing skilfully with exceptional conditions may
amass large fortunes. Few men understood such things better than Mr.
Tilden. He had striven to prevent, as well as a man in opposition
could, the issue, during the war, of an irredeemable government
currency; but I remember his saying to me after the policy was adopted,
in substance: "Now is the time to make yourself rich. Buy all that
you can pay for, or run in debt for. Every day it will be easier and
easier for you to pay, and your property will correspondingly rise in
value, or rather in price." And at the close of the war he advised
the opposite course. I do not know, but I have little doubt that he
acted extensively on this policy. If there were a question as to the
propriety of such action, he certainly was excusable. Had his counsels
been regarded, no such measure would have been adopted.
The malice of political opponents was wont to ascribe his success in
money-getting to schemes for obtaining interests in the property of
insolvent railway companies at less than their value. They stigmatized
him as a "railroad-wrecker." Never was there less foundation for a
charge. He was a railroad-preserver. His skill in the management of
difficult and complicated affairs, combined with his profound knowledge
of the fundamental principles of equity, made his services invaluable
to parties interested in the property and securities of railroad
companies which by bad management, or in consequence of over-sanguine
expectations, had fallen into difficulties. His capacious mind was just
fitted for the survey of such situations. He was among the first, if
not the first, to perceive that a ruthless attempt to foreclose a first
mortgage and thus to crush out all subordinate liens and interests
was ill-suited to such cases; that the just and true method was to
ascertain the real capacities of the business, and to reorganize the
enterprise upon a scheme which would indulge the hope of saving to the
junior securities a large part of their supposed original value. More
than one of the great railroads of the country have, at his skilful
touch, risen from absolute bankruptcy into prosperity, and repaid all
or the larger part of the original investment.
With all his capacity for making sober estimates, and escaping
the illusions by which many minds are carried away, he was yet an
enthusiast, especially in respect to the plans and enterprises which
were the offspring of his own fruitful brain. This came partly from
personal vanity, of which he had a plentiful supply, and partly from
the exhilaration which attends the exercise of high intellectual powers
and rewards the conquest of difficulties. I remember a display of this
tendency which greatly impressed me.
In the performance of a professional service for him while he was
Governor, in connection with a lawsuit to which he was a party, it
became necessary that I should tarry several days at his house in
Albany in order to secure his attention during the intervals between
his official duties. It was while the St. Louis Convention was in
session at which he was nominated for the Presidency. One would suppose
that under such circumstances he could have given his mind to little
else than the business in which his personal fortunes were so deeply
concerned. But he could not have devoted himself more ardently to
recalling and arranging the facts of the complicated transactions out
of which this lawsuit grew than he did on the very day when he was
nominated. Late in the afternoon of that day, after protracted work, he
took me upon a long drive with him. In the course of it he did not even
allude to the convention, or its doings, although a flight of telegrams
had been coming to him. His conversation, animated and incessant,
was upon false policies in government, the mischiefs and burdens of
over-expenditure, the true principles of taxation, the errors of
protective tariffs, etc. One could see that the mere matter of holding
the Presidential office was little to him; but that the chance of
laying his reforming hand upon the multitude of abuses with which, as
he supposed, the whole administration of the general government was
infested aroused his enthusiasm, as the prospect of a season of sport
would that of a boy. Becoming animated with his theme, eloquent and
intense in his language, he failed in attention to the high-spirited
horse he was driving, and I was in constant fear of a catastrophe.
Indeed, on a similar drive the succeeding day we met with one from the
same cause. The injury was inflicted instead of received, and cost
the Governor several thousand dollars by way of damages. When, on our
return, on the day first mentioned, we were near home, I observed to
him that he would perhaps find at the house a telegram announcing his
nomination. "No," said he, unconcernedly, "not until about half-past
nine." It came not many moments from that time. Impressed upon this
occasion with his profound and extensive knowledge of everything
relating to the science of government, and thinking his views not
substantially at variance with those held by leading Republicans--for
at that time the Republican party had not become committed to its
present dogmas on the subject of protective tariffs--I ventured to
express to him the surprise I felt that he had not allied himself with
that party; saying that it seemed to me that, considering the greatly
superior number of men of education and public spirit to be found in
its ranks, he could much more easily procure a general acceptance of
his opinions by acting in alliance with them. He answered that he
thought that I was mistaken; that, while it was true that a large
majority of the men of culture, wealth, and force were to be found in
the Republican party, the trouble was that, to use his language, "it
was a party of self-seekers." He explained that he did not mean this in
any offensive sense; that what he meant was that the controlling men
of that party were men of large pecuniary interests, seeking to build
up fortunes and families; that these personal interests were so large
as necessarily to engross their thoughts and control their opinions,
leading them to use their powerful influence so as to shape the
legislation of the country in a form which would favor those interests;
that it was difficult to lead such men along the pathway of those
fundamental principles of democratic government by which alone equal
justice could be done to the masses of men; that the Democratic party
held within its ranks a far less number of men of this description--not
enough to control its action--and consequently the opinions of its
great masses could be more easily shaped and molded by the mere force
of ideas; that this was the distinction between the former Democratic
and Whig parties, and that the Republican party would, as the patriotic
inspirations caught from the opposition to slavery and the defence of
the Union died away, become the mere successor to the spirit and policy
of the Whig party.
"These observations, as applied to the two present parties of the
country, would not, probably, be accepted without dissent; but they
intimate a most important truth. This is that when a man comes to be
the possessor of large property interests, these will, whatever may
be his character, control his opinions in relation to any question
affecting them. The great railroad interests of the country are
conducted by men, I suppose, of as honorable character as can be found
in any walk of life; but they will not, in the face of threatened
disaster, keep the agreements they make with each other. They do not
hesitate, when these interests are threatened by adverse legislation,
to defend them by secret arts and practices--kept secret because they
could not be avowed without a blush. Mr. Jay Gould, in some testimony
drawn from him by a legislative committee, expressed the truth by
saying that he was "sometimes a Democrat and sometimes a Republican,
but always an Erie man." It must be admitted that the occasions are
often fearfully trying. They sometimes impose a test which human nature
is ill-fitted to bear. The individual who is subjected to them is
called upon to defend, not only his own property, but that of others. A
man may surrender his own interests, but what account is he to give of
himself when he surrenders interests which have been intrusted to him
for defence?
I cannot help thinking that Governor Tilden possessed, on the whole,
greater capabilities for usefulness in public life than any other
man of his generation. I cannot find elsewhere such a union of the
ability to discover true governmental policies with the firm and
undeviating purpose to pursue them. This is not the universal estimate
of him. A certain measure of distrust seems to have accompanied the
general admiration of his talents. For this there never was any
just foundation. I do not think any public man of his time was more
faithful to his conceptions of truth. No impartial man could now well
doubt this after going over the record of his services and reading
his speeches and public papers. Indeed, it is hardly possible that
so ardent a searcher after scientific truth could be otherwise than
faithful to it. We can scarcely imagine Socrates and Newton to have
been dishonest men. That Lord Bacon fell excites our wonder. And yet
there must always be some ground for any widely extended impression.
I think that in this instance the cause is manifest. His pre-eminence
was in the intellectual rather than in the emotional powers. In order
to achieve his purposes he preferred to appeal to the intellect rather
than to the heart. Plain, blunt honesty is universally perceived and
understood, and is admired and confided in, even when it blunders.
But common men have so often been deceived by the sharp practices of
those who are a little brighter than themselves, that they are apt to
distrust intellectual superiority, and half suspect it to be a species
of cunning. The malice of personal and party hostility, working upon
this natural tendency, has found an easy acceptance of its calumnies.
But, beside this, Governor Tilden was a practical leader in affairs,
both of business and politics; and although he was all openness and
candor in his public discussions, yet in his methods of action he could
not, any more than other men, dispense with secrecy and reserve; and as
he was apt to excel others in whatever methods he adopted, he perhaps
excelled them in secretiveness as well. A good share of another quality
which does not tend to secure admiration for the possessor fell to Mr.
Tilden. It was not unnatural that a man so conscious of superior powers
should be somewhat vain. Men do not like to have "I told you so" flung
into their ears at every turn in the course of events, and Mr. Tilden
had a habit of doing this.
But he was by no means wanting in the sense of moral earnestness, and
he had a just perception of the occasions demanding the exercise of
that faculty. He was well aware that fraud and corruption could not
be successfully combated with the weapons of reason, and that they
did not deserve to be reasoned with. When he found himself confronted
by the powerful Canal Ring, which had fattened for a generation upon
fraudulent contracts for repairs and pretended improvements to the
canals, a ring which had founded wealthy and influential families, and
had its stipendiaries among the able lawyers of the State, he perceived
that it was a warfare in which no quarter could be given, and which
could not be carried on by the weapons of facts and figures alone.
He courageously determined to invade, single-handed, the strongholds
of his enemies, and to arouse against them the moral indignation of
the people. Using a vacation from pressing official duties, he made a
series of speeches in a tour along the line of the canals from Buffalo
to Albany. Flinging aside his customary temperance and moderation,
he denounced his adversaries--men of wealth and the highest social
standing--as criminals, and summoned the people to stand by his side
in an effort to enforce against them the criminal law. Speaking at
Syracuse, in the midst of the men he was condemning, he said: "Here,
under your own eyes and your own observation, these transactions have
been carried on in open day, by a combination that has sought to rule
the State.... I was called upon this morning to speak some words of
encouragement and hope to four hundred little boys in the Western House
of Refuge. During all my journey I have been frequently followed by
persons asking for their friends and those in whom they were interested
a pardon from the penitentiaries and State-prisons. I have been
compelled to look into such cases to see who are the inmates of these
institutions, and of what they have been accused, and to ascertain what
it is that constitutes the wrong to society of which they have been
convicted. When I compare their offences, in their nature, temptations,
and circumstances, with the crimes of great public delinquents who
claim to stand among your best society, and are confessedly prominent
among their fellow-citizens--crimes repeated and continued year after
year--I am appalled at the inequality of human justice." He made by
this series of addresses a profound impression upon the public mind.
He was cautious not to be imposed upon by those who wished his
official aid or influence, and commonly subjected them to a searching
cross-examination, but a case of real distress quickly moved him.
I remember an instance which occurred during my sojourn, already
mentioned, at the Governor's mansion in Albany. We were at work
together rather late one evening, when he was told that a little girl
wished to see him. She was wretchedly clad, and seemed to be in
great misery. Moments were then quite precious to him, but he dropped
everything and spent half an hour with her. When he returned to the
library where we were at work he told me her tale. It was that she was
the oldest of several children; that her father was a drunkard and
cruel to her mother, who also sometimes got intoxicated--though, as
the girl said, only when her father abused her--and who had, the day
before, although having a nursing infant only a few weeks old, been
sent to prison for ten days for drunkenness; that the little girl had
been vainly endeavoring to take care of the infant and the rest of
the family, but had given up in despair. The Governor seemed a good
deal moved at this separation of mother and infant, and spoke with
indignation of the manner in which the criminal law was administered in
the lower courts by incompetent magistrates. He immediately despatched
a secretary to the executive chamber for a sealed pardon in blank,
filled it up and signed it, and sent the same secretary with the girl
to the prison, with instructions to see that the woman was released
and taken to her home that very night. I asked him whether this was
not rather hasty and inconsiderate action, adding that possibly the
magistrate, if consulted, might give a different statement of the case.
He answered: "No, and I wouldn't believe him if he did. Don't I know
that the little girl told me the truth?"
In assigning to Governor Tilden capacities for public usefulness
superior to those of other men of his generation, one qualification
should perhaps be made. He could not have led, or rather guided,
as Lincoln did, the storm of patriotic passion which the Southern
insurrection aroused. There are resistless currents in human affairs
which disdain the feeble control of mere reason, and insist upon
working their way by force alone. War is a conflict of the passions,
and, when it becomes necessary or preferable to peace, those passions
should be inflamed rather than checked.
But the superior _wisdom_ of Governor Tilden was equally manifest in
this great crisis, although, perhaps, incapable of dealing with it.
Naturally anti-slavery, he had encouraged the first tendencies towards
the assertion of the Free-soil sentiment of the North by joining in
the revolt of the Northern Democrats against the nominees of the
Democratic convention in 1848, and supporting the candidates nominated
at the Barnburners' convention at Utica. But when he saw this movement
developing into the formation of a permanent political organization
under the name of the Republican party, with the avowed object of
preventing by _national legislation_ any further extension of slavery,
he paused and receded.
The argument of the supporters of the new movement was that Congress
had the power, not, indeed, to interfere with slavery in the States,
but to prevent its establishment in the Territories; and that they were
but exercising their constitutional rights in forming a party for the
purpose of securing such legislation. Tilden could not deny the mere
claim of constitutional right; but this, with him, was but a small
part of the question. What would be the consequence of a successful
assertion of that right? Could it be reasonably supposed that the
Southern States would view it otherwise than as an attack upon what
they deemed to be a vital interest? Would not its necessary effect be
to force unanimity among them in opposition to the policy? Was the
supposition that there was any considerable Free-soil sentiment in the
South which would array itself on the side of the government anything
but a dream? Should we not have two strictly sectional parties arrayed
upon the question of preserving or destroying an institution which one
of them, not unnaturally, regarded as essential to self-existence?
These, in his view, were questions which must be first solved before
such a movement could be encouraged. His solution led him to the
conclusion that war would be the necessary result of such action; and
this involved the further inquiry whether the object in view would be
gained by a civil war, or, if gained, would be worth the terrible cost.
Appalled by the uncertainties and terrors of such a conflict, he took
refuge, as Mr. Webster had before him, in the belief that the natural
forces in operation would of themselves accomplish all that could be
gained by the policy of restriction. In a letter to William Kent in
1860, before the election of Lincoln, he stated his conclusions and the
reasoning which led to them with his characteristic moderation, but
with masterly force. His main conclusion was that if the Republican
party should be successful, the national government in the Southern
States would cease to be self-government, and become a government
by one people over another distinct people--a thing impossible with
our race, except as a consequence of successful war, and even then
incompatible with our democratic institutions. He said:
"I assert that a controversy between powerful communities, organized
into governments, of a nature like that which now divides the North
and South, can be settled only by convention or by war. I affirm this
upon the universal principles of human nature, and the collective
experience of all mankind." And again: "A condition of parties in which
the federative government shall be carried on by a party having no
affiliations in the Southern States is impossible to continue. Such
a government would be out of all relation to those States. It would
have neither the nerves of sensation which convey intelligence to the
intellect of the body politic, nor the ligaments and muscles which hold
its parts together and move them in harmony. It would be in substance
the government of one people by another people. That system will not do
with our race."
This reasoning was founded upon the facts of human nature, the
philosophy of government, and the teachings of experience. Its truth is
more manifest now than when it was uttered. Who of the great Free-soil
leaders would have had the hardihood to persist in their course if they
could have foreseen the consequences so clearly? Greeley, terrified
by the horrible spectacle of war, was driven to say: "Let the wayward
sisters depart in peace." Seward's short vision predicted that it would
be all over "in sixty days"! But in great crises the foresight of the
wisest is but blindness. Were it always given men to see what they are
to go through with, the greatest steps in moral advancement would never
be taken. Tilden did not foresee, through the storms of war, any more
than others, the freedom of the slave with the acquiescence of the
master, and the consequent unification of the republic.
But the trials of our popular system of government were not terminated
by the simultaneous overthrow of the Rebellion and slavery. It may be,
rather, that they have just begun. We were confident before the war
that slavery was the source of the only peril which really threatened
us. That out of the way, we find ourselves confronted with new dangers,
growing out of differences of opinion respecting the extent to which
the black race shall be allowed to participate in government. That
participation is now practically denied by the Southern States, and
the mandate of the Constitution is unhesitatingly set at naught by
the employment either of force or fraud. The remedy suggested is an
enforcement of that mandate by Federal legislation, which means simply
the enforcement of its will by one section against that of the other.
This is not democratic government, but the rule of the conquered by
the conqueror. The evil is bad enough; and the remedy will probably
be worse. We begin to see that the real danger which has at all times
menaced us is the presence on our soil of a different race, unequal,
for the present, at least, to the great office of self-government.
Slavery was not itself the evil, but only one of the methods of dealing
with it. Is our substitute, the bestowal upon the race of universal
suffrage, a successful device? And, if this must be abandoned, what
shall next be tried? These grave problems, already threatening, will
assume a graver aspect if the results of the census just taken, when
studied and compared, shall be found to show a more rapid rate of
increase in the black population at the South than in the white. To
meet such perils we need nothing so much as a class of statesmen of
which Samuel J. Tilden was the most distinguished example.