Samuel J Tilden Friday [SJTF]

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[From 10/21/11]

Here is today's inaugural SJTF fact:
Samuel J. Tilden won a majority of both the popular vote and the electoral vote but, he lost the presidency to Rutherford B. Hayes through an informal deal known as the Compromise of 1877. However, unlike certain other popular vote winners in American electoral history, SJT accepted the results of the Compromise and retired from politics shortly afterword. SJT's gracious acceptance of the result is forever memorialized on his gravestone, which bears the words, “I Still Trust in the People”

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[From 10/28/11]

SJT and the Compromise of 1877:

SJT won both the popular vote and, at least initially, the electoral college. However, 20 electoral votes were in dispute (Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and 1 vote from Oregon). The election of 1876 was one of the most fraudulent and heated elections in American history; black voters were kept from voting in the South and electoral voters were replaced under shady circumstances in the North. The election dragged into 1877 undecided, with both Hayes and Tilden having legitimate claims to the Presidency.
To avoid a constitutional crisis, congress passed a law on January 29th, 1877, to form a 15 member electoral commission. Out of this commission came this Compromise:
1. The removal of all federal troops from the former Confederate States. (Troops remained in only Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina but the Compromise finalized the process.)
2. The appointment of at least one Southern Democrat to Hayes's cabinet.
3. The construction of a Southern Transcontinental railroad using the Texas and Pacific in the South (this had been part of the "Scott Plan," which initiated the process that led to the final compromise).
4. Legislation to help industrialize the South.
In exchange, Democrats would:
1. Accept Hayes's presidency.
2. Respect blacks' rights.
The abrupt end of Reconstruction and removal of Northern troops left the South with all of the Southern Democrat racism and hatred but, gave them back power which, in part resulted in the rise of post Reconstruction Black Codes and Jim Crow laws.

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[From 11/4/11]

Famous 19th Century poet, John Greenleaf Whittier memorialized SJT with the following poem:

Samuel J. Tilden

Once more, O all-adjusting Death!
The nation's Pantheon opens wide;
Once more a common sorrow saith
A strong, wise man has died.

Faults doubtless had he. Had we not
Our own, to question and asperse
The worth we doubted or forgot
Until beside his hearse?

Ambitious, cautious, yet the man
To strike down fraud with resolute hand;
A patriot, if a partisan,
He loved his native land.

So let the mourning bells be rung,
The banner droop its folds half way,
And while the public pen and tongue
Their fitting tribute pay,

Shall we not vow above his bier
To set our feet on party lies,
And wound no more a living ear
With words that Death denies?

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[From 11/11/11]

Last week's SJTF Fact was on the death and funeral of SJT- today's fact is on Tilden's birth and family history.

SJT was born in New Lebanon New York in 1814 but, the American roots of the Tilden family go back to the early settlement days of Massachusetts Bay Colony and the British roots of the Tilden (or Tylden) family go all the way back to the 12th Century during the reign of Henry II.
The first American Tilden, Nathaniel Tilden (along with his wife, kids, and servants), arrived at the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 and quickly became an important figure in the community.

The Tildens had connections to the Plymouth Pilgrims as well. Nathaniel's brother, Joseph, was an outfitter for the Mayflower and his son, Stephen married the daughter of Richard Warren, who was a passenger on the mayflower

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[From 11/18/11]

Scandal and mudslinging are not new to American politics, and SJT had his share during the 1876 campaign. Tilden did have a record of reform while governor of New York but possibly showed some reluctance to join the reform movement to clean up corruption in New York politics, which had been under the control of 19century mobster, Boss Tweed, . This caused many Republican supporters to claim that his reform efforts were little more than lip service.
The followin cartoons from Harper's Weekly illustrate why Rutherford Hayes called Harper's illustrator, Thomas Nast, "the most powerful single-handed aid we had."

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Tilden as a snake

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Tilden, as weak, grudgingly keeping Tamany Hall Boss Tweed in a box

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[From 11/25/11]

THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION

Written by: New York Governor Samuel Tilden
November 6, 1876

The unfailing mercies of God, of which another year has given witness, call us to renew our acknowledgement of Him in thanksgiving and prayer.

We are specially reminded of His protection, in the absence of any great disaster or calamity throughout the Commonwealth; and of HIs bounty, the large and generous returns of nature.

Let us rejoice in the spirit of order and of charity and of hopefulness which has pervaded all classes under the depression in the industries and trade, and in the growth of 'public sentiment toward wise and humane methods of dealing with want and suffering. Let us give thanks for the maintenance of our social and religious institutions in their integrity, and improve the Divine blessing upon all efforts in behalf of good government and a true morality.

In common with the people of the other States of the Union, we recall, at this time, the blessings which we hold by inheritance It becomes us, with them, to gratefully and humbly acknowledge the God of our fathers, whose mercies have been from generation to generation, beseeching Him for the continuance of His favor to the nation of His planting that he may not "deliver our glory to another."

I do, therefore, set apart and appoint Thursday, the 30th day of November, recommending to the people that on that day they put aside their usual employments, and in their homes and in their respective places of worship, render thanks to Almighty God for His mercies to us as individuals and as a State

Done at the Capitol, in the City of Albany, this sixth day of November, in the year of our [L.S.] Lord on thousand eight-hundred and seventy-six.
By the Governor,
SAMUEL J. TILDEN


CHARLES STEBBINS, Private Secretary.

Printed: New York Times November 9, 1876

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[From 12/2/2011]

Today's SJTF fact demonstrates that SJT had an excellent understanding of our coastal defense (and the history of it). Note that this statement came nearly a decade after SJT's presidential run and less than a year before his death. SJT left politics after the 1876 race but remained an important political figure even in private life. The following is an excerpt from SJT's letter to the Speaker of the House in 1885....

LETTER TO SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, HONORABLE JOHN G. CARLISLE  
DECEMBER 1, 1885

SEACOAST DEFENCES


The best guarantee against aggression, the best assurance that our diplomacy will be successful and pacific, and that our rights and honor will be respected by other nations, is in their knowledge that we are in a situation to vindicate our reputation and interests. While we may afford to be deficient in the means of offence, we can not afford to be defenceless. The notoriety if the fact that we have neglected the ordinary precautions of defence invites want to consideration in our diplomacy, injustice, arrogance, and insult at the hand of nations. It is now more than sixty years since we announced to the world that we should resist any attempts, from whatever quarter they might come, to make any new colonizations on any part of the American continent; that while we should respect the status quo we should protect the people of different nations inhabiting this continent from every attempt to subject them to the dominion of any European power, or to interfere with their undisturbed exercise if the rights of self-government. This announcement was formally made by President Monroe, after consultation with Mr. Madison and Mr. Jefferson

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[From 12/09/11]

SJT & Slavery

Many people label SJT as an anti-slavery Democrat simply because he ran for Attorney General of New york under the “soft shell” (anti-slavery) faction of the Democrat party. In reality, his position is a bit more complex. Prior to the war, Tilden may have been against slavery but he was more concerned about protecting the Union than freeing slaves- to the point of advocating complete “non-action” on slavery in the South.
The following excerpt is from www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=92#FN16 :


It was not just southern Democrats who viewed the election of Lincoln and the Republicans as the death knell for slavery; many northern Democrats held the same view....Other northern Democrats also assailed the anti-slavery positions of the Republicans – including Samuel Tilden (a New York state assemblyman and later the chair of the state Democrat Party, state governor, and then presidential candidate). Tilden affirmed that southern secession be could halted only if Republicans publicly abandoned their anti-slavery positions:
[T]he southern states will not by any possibility accept the avowed creed of the Republican Party as the permanent policy of the federative government as to slavery. . . . Nothing short of the recession [drawing back] of the Republican Party to the point of total and absolute non-action on the subject of slavery in the states and territories could enable it to reconcile to itself the people of the South.

While any argument in favor of continuing slavery is obviously inexcusable, it is important to note that, though his writings and political actions, it appears Tilden's primary concern over the broken Union was protecting the nation from creating a powerful centralized government in the aftermath of the War.

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[From 12/16/11]

“Tilden Town”

Yes, Virginia, there is a Tilden... Tilden, WI. The town of Tilden formed in 1882, not long after SJT's unsuccessful presidential run. As we have seen in previous facts, SJT did not become very fat and pontificate randomly about pseudo science (like some other popular vote winners-but-still-losers of the office). Instead, he quietly retired from politics while maintaining enough dignity and supporters to be forever memorialized through the naming of a small Wisconsin town...Tilden.

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[From 12/23/11]

This is a check written out to SJT.

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SJT

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[From 12/29]

Tilden vs Tyranny from Writings& Speeches vol 1 pg 398-402

The following excerpt is from a speech SJT gave to the Democratic State Convention of New York in March of 1868. in the beginning, Tilden explains the political state of America in the years following passage of the Constitution:

But, on the whole, the master-wisdom of governing little and leaving as much as possible to localities and to individuals, prevailed; and we progressively limited the sphere of governmental action, and enlarged the domain of individual conscience and judgment. These sixty years were a period of transcendent national growth and prosperity, and of universal happiness among the peopled

Tilden believed that the Republican party threatened to upset the balance of power by “governing the people of those [Southern] States by the sword.” and that Republicans cared not for the plight of the freed slaves in the South but were instead using Reconstruction as a means “to strengthen its hold on the Federal Government against the people of the North”


Our American system of government was not invented-it grew. It is wiser and better than anything which was ever invented. It grew up among a people whose government was everywhere carried on by the consent of the governed, and voluntary aid and general co-operation were assumed in all its growth, and became necessary conditions to its action. It is not a convenient instrument for tyranny.