USA > New York > Westchester County > Biographical history of Westchester County, New York, Volume I > Part 4
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Samuel J., after a suitable preparatory education at Williamstown, Massachusetts, was entered at Yale College in the class of 1833, where, how- ever, 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 politcal economists of that time, but is
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to-day 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 pro- pose 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 col- league.
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 ses- sions 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 pro- visions affecting the finances of the state and the management of its system of canals. In this work he was associated, by personal and political sym- pathy, 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 exer- tions 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 qualifica- tions for political life, he was able to discern at that early period the impor- tance, 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 asa politician. His business
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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 pro- fessional 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 ordi- nance 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 sec- tional 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 is come full circle,' and the bones of the Democratic party that were broken upon the cross of slavery in 1848, now, after an interval of thirty-six
1
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years, are once more knit together, and the traditions and the doctrines inherited from the golden age of the Republic are about to resume, not merely their official, but their moral supremacy in the nation."
The four years, from 1869 to 1873, were mainly devoted by Mr. Tilden to the overthrow of what was known as the "Tweed ring," which had thor- oughly debauched every branch of the New York city government, legislative, executive and judicial, and was threatening the state government also with its foul embrace.
"The total surrender of my professional business during that period, " he has said in one of his published communications, "the nearly absolute with- drawal of attention from my private affairs, and from all enterprises in which I am interested, have cost me a loss of actual income, which, with expend- tures and contributions the contest has required, would be a respectable endowment of a public charity.
"I do not speak of these things," he adds, "to regret them. In my opinion, no instrumentality in human society is so potential in its influence on the well-being of mankind as the governmental machinery which administers justice and makes and executes laws. No benefaction of private benevolence could be so fruitful in benefits as the rescue of this machinery from the per- version which had made it a means of conspiracy, fraud and crime against the rights and the most sacred interests of a great community."
When Mr. Tilden thus wrote he had not experienced nor could he have foreseen the legal consummation of his labors in the arrest, imprisonment or flight of all the parties who, only a few months before, seemed to hold the wealth and power of the Empire state in the hollow of their hands, nor the condemnation of Tweed to the striped jacket and cell of a felon, nor the recovery of verdicts which promised to restore to the city treasury many mil- lions of ill gotten plunder. Nor could he have foreseen, among the most direct and immediate results of his labors for the purification of the New York city and state governments, his election as governor, in the fall of 1874. by a majority of more than fifty thousand over General Dix, the Republican can- didate.
The talents and public virtues which, as a municipal reformer, won the confidence of the people of his native state and made him governor, on this new and wider theater won the confidence and admiration of the nation and made him its choice by a considerable popular majority for the presidency in 1876. It was not, however, in the order of Providence that he or the people were to enjoy the legitimate fruits of this latter victory.
When congress convened in the winter of 1876-77, and proceeded to dis- charge its constitutional duty of counting the electoral votes for president and vice president, it appeared that there were one hundred and eighty-four
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uncontested electoral votes for Samuel J. Tilden for president and for Thomas A. Hendricks for vice president; one hundred and sixty-five uncon- tested votes for Rutherford B. Hayes for president and William A. Wheeler for vice president, and twenty votes in dispute. One hundred and eighty- five votes were necessary for a choice; consequently, one additional vote to Tilden and Hendricks would have elected them, while twenty additional votes were required for the election of the rival candidates. The whole election, therefore, depended upon one electoral vote. This gave to the mode of counting the vote an importance which it had never possessed at any of the twenty-one previous elections in the history of our government.
The provisions of the constitution relating to the mode of counting the vote were sufficiently vague to furnish a pretext for some diversity of opinion upon the subject, wherein the temptation to find one was so great. A major- ity of the senate being Republicans and a majority of the house of representa- tives being Democrats, that the senate would not agree to count any one of these twenty votes for Tilden and Hendricks was assumed; and, to avoid a conflict of jurisdiction, which was thought by some to threaten the peace of the country, a special tribunal, to consist of members of congress and of the supreme court, fifteen in number, was created, upon which the duty of counting the electoral vote was devolved by an act of congress. One of the members of this tribunal was classified as an independent, seven as Repub- licans and seven as Democrats. The Republicans voted to count all the votes of the three contested states for Hayes, and the independent member voted with them, and the candidate elected to the presidency by a consider- able popular majority was compelled to give place to the candidate of a minority.
The circumstances under which Mr. Tilden was deprived of the presi- dency made it inconvenient, indeed impossible, to obey the counsels and warnings of declining health to lay down the leadership of the great party whose unexampled wrong was represented in his person, until he could sur- render it into the hands of its proper national representatives. As soon, however, as the national Democratic convention assembled in 1880, he felt constrained to address to the chairman of the New York delegation the memorable letter in which he proclaimed his well considered intention to retire from public life, for the labors of which he had long felt his health and strength were unequal. In 1884 he was obliged to repeat his resolution, to prevent his nomination by the delegates to the national convention, who were almost unanimously chosen because of their avowed partiality for Mr. Tilden as their candidate, notwithstanding his impaired and failing health. Finding it impossible to obtain his consent to run, the convention accepted a candidate of his choice from the state which he had served so long
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and faithfully, and his choice was ratified by the nation at the general election.
Mr. Tilden thereafter enjoyed the repose he had so fully earned, and such health as only repose could confer, at his princely home of Graystone, on the banks of the Hudson, which became the pilgrim's shrine of the rein- stated party, which Jefferson planted and which Jackson and Van Buren watered.
Of this honored statesman the following words were written prior to his death:
He is one of the few surviving statesmen who had the good fortune to receive early polit- ical training in the golden age of the Democratic party, when public measures were thoroughly tested by the constitution and by public opinion, and when by ample debate the voters of the whole nation were educated, not only to embrace but also to comprehend the principles upon . which their government was conducted,-a training to which his subsequent political career bears continual testimony. Whatever heresies of doctrine have crept into our public policy since those days, the respectability for them will not rest with them. In all the papers and speeches with which from time to time he has endeavored to enlighten his countrymen, it will be difficult to find a line or a thought not in harmony with the teachings of the eminent states- men who, during the first fifty years of our national history, traced the limits and defined the functions of constitutional Democracy in America. From that epoch to this there has been scarcely a question of public concern having its roots in the constitution which Mr. Tilden has not carefully considered and more or less thoroughly treated. He was a champion of the Union and of President Jackson against the Nullifiers and Mr. Calhoun. He denounced the American system of Mr. Clay as unconstitutional, inequitable and sectional. He vindicated the removal of the government deposits from the United States Bank by President Jackson, and exploded the sophistical doctrine of its lawyers that the treasury is not an executive department. He vindicated President Van Buren from the charge made by William Leggett of unbecoming subserviency to the slaveholding states in his inaugural address. He was among the first to insist upon free banking under general laws, thus opening the business equally to all, and abol- ishing the monopoly which was a nearly universal superstition. He exposed the perils of bank- ing upon public funds. He advocated the divorce of bank and state, and the establishment of a subtreasury. He asserted the supervisory control of the legislature over corporations of its own creation. He exposed the enormities of Mr. Webster's scheme to pledge the public lands for the payment of the debts of the states. He drew and vindicated in a profoundly learned and able report the act which put an end to the discontents of the New York " anti-renters." He wrote the protest of the Democracy of New York against making the nationalization of slavery a test of party fealty. He was the first, we believe, to assign statesmanlike reasons for opposing coercive temperance legislation. He pointed out, as no one had done before, the dan- ger of sectionalizing the government. He planned the campaign, he secured the requisite leg- islation, he bore much the largest expense, and, finally, he drove the storming party which drove Tweed and his predatory associates to prison or into exile. He purified the judiciary of the city and state of New York by procuring the adoption of measures which resulted in the removal of one judge by impeachment and of two judges by resignation. He induced the Democratic convention of 1874 to declare, in no uncertain tone, for a sound currency, when not a single state convention of either party had yet ventured to take a stand against the financial delusions begotten of the war, which for years had been sapping the credit of the country. It was at his instance that the Democratic party of New York, in the same convention, pronounced against third-term presidents, and effectively strengthened the exposed intrenchments which the country, for eighty years and more, had been erecting against the insidious encroachments of dynasticism. During his career as governor Mr. Tilden applied the principles of the political
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school in which he had been educated to the new questions which time, civil war and national affluence had made paramount. He overthrew the "canal ring," which had become ascendant in all the departments of the state government. He dispersed the lobby which infested the legislative bodies. He introduced a practical reform in the civil service of this state, and ele- vated the standard of official morality. In his messages he exposed the weakness and inade- quacy of the financial policy of the party in power, the mismanagement of our canal system, the federal assaults upon state sovereignty, and the pressing need of radical reforms both in the state and federal administrations.
It is due to Mr. Tilden, also, to say that he rarely discussed any matter of public concern without planting the structure of his argument upon the solid ground of fundamental principles. Always cautious in the selection of his facts, singularly moderate in his statements and temperate in his lan- guage, he, better than perhaps any other statesman of our time, can afford to be judged by his record. Who that has figured so prominently in public affairs has said or written less that he would prefer not to have said; less that will not commend itself to the deliberate judgment of thoughtful men and to an unprejudiced posterity? His last important contribution to the history of his time was a communication addressed to John G. Carlisle, speaker of the house of representatives, in regard to the urgent necessity of liberal appro- priation for such a system of coast defences as would place the United States in a position of comparative safety against naval attack.
Mr. Tilden passed away at his country house, Graystone, August 4, 1886. He never married, and under the provision of his will the greater portion of his fortune, estimated at five million dollars, was devoted to pub- lic uses; but the will was successfully contested by relatives.
THOMAS L. RUSHMORE.
Few men are more widely known in Westchester county than Thomas L. Rushmore. He is the son of William and Rebecca Rushmore, and is a descendant of one of the first English families who settled in America. He was born in Brooklyn, in 1822. At twelve years of age he entered business life as a clerk, and a few years later accepted a position in the wholesale house of Gould, Germond & Company, in which firm he afterward became a partner. For fifty years he was well known in mercantile circles of New York city, being a member of the dry-goods firms of Hamlin, Rushmore & Company, and Rushmore, Cone & Company.
His public spirit was shown when, at the outbreak of the civil war, the firm of Rushmore, Cone & Company equipped sixteen of their clerks for ninety days' service, and guaranteed their salaries. In response to a call from Abraham Lincoln for sixty-day volunteers, Mr. Rushmore enlisted in
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the Thirty-seventh Regiment, and was made a member of Colonel Roome's staff.
In 1856 he located at Crienta Point (Mamaroneck), where for forty years he identified himself with church, municipal and educational affairs. For two years Mr. Rushmore served the town of Mamaroneck as supervisor, and was for many years a trustee of the public schools. Upon the incorpor- ation of the village he served as president for two years, and, having reached the age limit for active service, declined a renomination. Few men have had the Sunday-school record of Mr. Rushmore. Upon his resignation, after a service of thirty-five years as superintendent, he received a handsome testimonial of respect and love. For thirty years Mr. Rushmore was presi- dent of the board of trustees of the Methodist Episcopal church. He was very active in the lay-delegation movement in that church, and one of the founders of a paper called The Methodist, of which he remained a trustee until the movement was successful. A testimonial received from the children of the Roman Catholic church in Mamaroneck is an evidence of his kindly interest in other churches.
Mr. Rushmore was married in 1845 to Miss Eliza Vail Moser, and they have had eight children: Samuel Moser, Everett, Thomas Hoyt, Bertha, Mrs. W. T. Cornels, Mrs. W. H. Carpenter, Mrs. F. H. Bell and Mrs. H. G. Tobey.
WASHINGTON IRVING.
Of all the writers who have in any way been associated with the history of Westchester county, Washington Irving is perhaps the most illustrious. Born in New York city, his whole life, with brief intervals, was spent within the borders of the county, and some of his very best work bears the impress of local influences. On the "Lordly Hudson" Irving "chose and built the home where he lived for many years, and in which he did much of his life's best work, and here he died."
"Westchester," said another eulogist of Irving, "has a claim peculiarly her own, for while we are joint heirs with others of his fame, Irving was here honored during his life for other qualities besides those of the gifted author, as he was here also known as the good citizen, the genial neighbor, and the Christian gentleman."
Irving first came to know Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow when a lad of fourteen or fifteen. He spent some of his holidays here, and formed an attachment for the spot which never left him. Irving was born on the 3d of April, 1783, in a house which stood on William street, New York city, next to the corner of Fulton. He was the youngest son of William Irving, a merchant and a native of Scotland, who had married an English lady. He
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had an ordinary school education, but early developed a taste for literature. At the age of sixteen he began the study of law. His brother, Dr. Peter Irving, edited the Morning Chronicle, and for this paper Washington Irving wrote a series of essays of the theatres, manners of the town, and kindred topics, with the signature of "Jonathan Oldstyle." In 1804, for the benefit of his health, he visited the south of Europe, returning by way of Switzerland to France, and proceeding thence, after a sojourn of a few months in Paris, to England via Flanders and Holland. While at Rome he formed the acquaintance of Washington Allston, the artist, with whom he studied paint- ing for a time with the idea of himself becoming a painter. After an absence of two years, however, he returned to New York, in March, 1806, and again took up the study of law. He was admitted to the bar, but never practiced. About this time he wrote and published his portion of the " Salmagundi" papers, which appeared as a serial. Paulding wrote a portion of the work, William Irving the poetry, and Washington Irving the remainder. In December, 1809, he published "Knickerbocker's History of New York," an extravagant burlesque, which excited general laughter, although it was gravely held up to reprehension in an address before the Historical Society of New York. Its grotesque descriptions of Dutch manners and customs in the colony of New Netherlands are full of humor. After the publication of this work, Irving engaged as silent partner with two of his brothers in mer- cantile business. The second war with Great Britain breaking out, he joined the military staff of Governor Tompkins, with the rank of colonel. After the war he paid a visit to the British islands, and intended to make a tour of the continent, but business reverses, involving the ruin of his firm, compelled him to abandon his purpose. Irving now turned to literature for support, and through the friendly aid of Sir Walter Scott secured the publication of the "Sketch Book" by Murray, the great English publisher, who bought the copyright for two hundred pounds, which he subsequently increased to four hundred pounds.
In 1820 Irving took up his residence in Paris, where he formed the acquaintance of Tom Moore. While in Paris he wrote " Bracebridge Hall." The winter of 1822 was spent in Dresden. Returning to Paris in 1823, he published, in December of the following year, his "Tales of a Traveler." In 1826, after spending a winter in the south of France, he went to Madrid, where he wrote his "Life of Columbus," the English edition of which brought him three thousand guineas. His "Conquest of Granada " and "Alhambra " followed. In July, 1829, having been appointed secretary of legation, at London, he left Spain for England. In 1831 he received from the University of Oxford the degree of Doctor of Laws. After an absence of seventeen years he returned to America, in May, 1832. His arrival was
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