USA > New York > Columbia County > History of Columbia County, New York. With illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 26
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In person Colonel Cowles was about six feet in height, of light hair and complexion, with luminous blue eyes,-in face and form " a model of manly beauty." His tastes were intellectual and fastidious. He was sound and prac- tical in judgment, fair, honorable, and upright in all his dispositions. Where familiar, he would often give rein to a certain merry, incisive, satirical humor. At the same time there was in him a strongly devout and reverent ele- ment, which, however unobtrusive in ordinary conversation, found frequent and intense expression in his private diary. In acknowledging a sword and belt, the gift of his brother Edward, he says, " I am very much pleased that you placed our names on the guard, and also the words on the hilt. The old Norman or French was, 'Dieu et mon droit.' This, which you have inscribed, is the appropriate one,- ' God and the Right,'-not my right. If I can by my conduct give it a value above its intrinsic value, and come home some day and hang it in the old hall, it will be to all the family, I know, a pleasing memorial."
Colonel Cowles lived and died unmarried.
To his mother, then in her eightiethi year, he was most tender and devoted. Iler own youth had been doubtless mueh wrought upon, and her spirit fired, by the Revolu- tionary tales often rehearsed at her father's fireside by him- self and guests, old officers and comrades in arms. The subjoined extract from a letter to her son reveals, while softened by time and the events of life, how brightly burned the flame in the heart of nearly fourscore :
" THE GROVE, Friday, July 25, 1862.
" MY DEAR, DEAR DAVID,-I received your letter yes- terday afternoon, bearing not unexpected tidings. It made all the blood escape from my face for awhile, but it has at last returned, and I am trying to look with reason and com- posure on coming events. Although I cannot know what even a day may bring forth. I hope and I think I am will- ing to leave all my own and your dearest interests in His hands who has so long and so kindly cared for us; and I
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HISTORY OF COLUMBIA COUNTY, NEW YORK.
pray that the same hand may shield you in the days of peril and danger which seem now more than ever inevitably be- fore us. I have had little doubt, since the three hundred thousand troops or recruits were to be raised, that you would have an appointment by the governor ; and knowing that so much of the patriotic blood of my own dear father coursed in your veins, I knew you would not hesitate to go. Those southern young gentlemen little thought, when they introduced you at Charleston as 'Colonel Cowles from the north,' how prophetic their words were. . . .
" May God bless and keep you safely under the shadow of His wing !
" Most affectionately, " YOUR MOTHER."
The last interview of the son with his mother occurred at the home of a relative in Hudson, whither she had gone to bid him adieu. It was September 5, 1862. His last spoken words to her were these: "Good-by, my precious mother. God bless you through eternity for the most kind, most devoted mother you have ever been to me !" Then shielding with his cap his tear-dimmed eyes, he passed from her mortal view forever. Let us reverently trust that, now fifteen years later, she has found him again in the " great hereafter."
His remains, in accordance with a wish expressed by him, were removed for interment from the scene of his death to the city of Hudson. They were accompanied by Sergeant Bell, in whose arms he died. Here all classes with a truly mournful interest united in expressions of profound sorrow for his untimely fate, and in warm and well-deserved enco- miums upon his worth. A funeral pageant such as had never before been witnessed in this county accompanied the body of the dead hero to its final resting-place. He was buried with military honors, as became the occasion and the man. A graceful granite shaft in the cemetery at Hudsou marks the spot where he lies.
DANIEL CADY,
for many years one of the most eminent and successful lawyers of the State, and later a judge of the Supreme Court and in the court of appeals, was born in Canaan, Columbia Co., in April, 1773. His professional studies were pursued under John Woodworth, subsequently attorney- general and Supreme Court judge, and he commenced the practice of the law at Florida, in Montgomery county. At the date of his admission to the bar, Hamilton, Burr, Ed- ward and Brockholst Livingston led the profession in New York city. Abraham Van Vechten and Ambrose Spencer were at Albany, and Elisha Williams at Hudson. In the first reported case in which be was counsel (1 Johnson's Cases, 231) his associate was Aaron Burr, and his antagonist Abraham Van Vechten. From that early date down to his elevation to the benchi, in 1847, his name is found in every volume of the reports, the associate or the opponent, and always the peer, of the giants of the bar in all parts of the State. He was elected to the Assembly in 1809, and to Con- gress in 1814, and defeated for Congress in 1832. He was a leading and constantly-employed advocate, and a keen ob-
server of public men and measures, under twenty governors, from George Clinton to Myron H. Clark, and under fourteen Presidents, from George Washington to Franklin Pierce. Among the important trials in which he took part was that of Solomon Southwick, for endeavoring to bribe Alexander Sheldon, speaker of the Assembly, to give his vote in favor of incorporating the Bank of North America. Chief-Justice Kent presided. Thomas Addis Emmett, attorney-general, led for the prosecution, and Aaron Burr, Daniel Cady, and Ebenezer Foote defended. The verdict was for the defend- ant. He was particularly distinguished for his real property learning, and was long the counsel of Judge Smith, the owner of eighty thousand acres in Madison county. He was a close and tireless student, severe in morals, courteous in address, prompt in the discharge of all his duties, secre- tive and taciturn to an extraordinary degree, ever cautious and wary, a dangerous opponent at nisi prius, and a finished counsel before the courts in banc. Judge Cady's career upon the bench of but seven years-he resigned in 1855 -- was marked by all the splendid characteristics of his forensic life. He was pure as snow, and suspicion never breathed his name. He married a daughter of Colonel James Liv- ingston, and was the father of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. No loftier character has adorned the annals of the State, and none has left a more honored name.
A very excellent life-size oil portrait of him has long hung in the court of appeals room at Albany, by the side of that of Nicholas Hill. His death occurred at Johns- town, in Fulton county, Oct. 31, 1859.
JAMES WATSON WEBB,
son of General Samuel Blatchley Webb, a Revolutionary officer of considerable distinction, and Catharine (Hoge- boom) Webb, was born at Claverack, in this county, Feb. 8, 1802. At the age of twelve years he went to reside at Cooperstown, N. Y., with his brother-in-law and guardian, Judge George Morrill. He entered the United States army as second lieutenant in the Fourth Artillery in Au- gust, 1819. He was advanced to the grade of first lieu- tenant in 1823, and in the following year to that of assist- ant commissary of subsistence. In the fall of 1827 he resigned from the army and adopted the profession of jour- nalism, purchasing the Morning Courier, which he published in the interest of General Jackson. In 1829 he purchased the New York Enquirer, which he consolidated with the Courier, under the title of the Courier and Enquirer. With this paper he remained connected for upwards of thirty years. In 1849 he was appointed minister to Austria, but the appointment was not confirmed. In 1851 he was ap- pointed by Governor Hunt engineer-in-chief of the State of New York, with the rank of brigadier-general. He, however, refused to accept this appointment. In 1861 he was appointed minister to Turkey, but he declined the ap- pointment, though it had been confirmed by the Senate. Shortly afterwards he was appointed minister to Brazil, and filled that position for eight years. At Paris, in 1865, he negotiated a secret treaty with the Emperor Napoleon for the removal of the French troops from Mexico. In 1869 he resigned the mission to Brazil, and has since resided in New York.
Samuel I. Jelden
SAMUEL JONES TILDEN.
Samuel Jones Tilden was born at New Lebanon, Columbia Co., N. Y., in 1814. One of his paternal ancestors and the son and grandson of another were mayors of Tenterden, Kent, England, between 1585 and 1623. The son of an- other ancestor was one of the London merchants who fitted out the " Mayflower." Another ancestor was one of the founders of the town of Scituate, Mass., and a leader in the famous Plymouth colony. His mother traced her lincage to William Joncs, lieutenant-governor of New Haven colony, and son of a regieide judge of Charles I., by a wife who was at once cousin of John Hampden and sister of Oliver Cromwell. His father, a farmer and merchant in New Lebanon (whither he had come with his parents in 1790), was a man of notable judgment and practical sense. His influence in the county was a recognized power. New York's great statesmen of the Jacksonian era-Martin Van Buren, Silas Wright, William L. Marcy, Azariah C. Flagg, Edward Livingston, Chancellor Livingston, Albert Gallatin -were among his visitors, correspondents, and friends. Reared amid such a society, under such traditions, in such a school, it is not surprising that from the outset his studies were widest and deepest in the graver sciences of government, public economy, and law ; nor that his first adventure, in the ardor of ripening youth, should have been in a political field.
1
In the fall of 1832, General Jackson was re-elected to the Presidency, Van Buren was elected to the Vice-Presi- dency, and Marcy to the governorship of New York. Their success had depended on defeating a coalition of Na- tional Republicans and Anti-Masons. With an early " in- stinct for the jugular," young Tilden wrote a paper analyz- ing the political situation and showing there could be no honest alliance. His father, his most appreciative, yet least indulgent critic, approved the paper, took him to pay a visit to Mr. Van Buren, then at Lebanon Springs, near by, and to read it to him. Its merit was attested by their decision to publish it through the State, approved by the signatures of several leading Democrats; it was praised by being ascribed to the pen of Mr. Van Buren; but even more by the denial that he was its author, made in the Albany Argus, " by authority." Out of this incident grew a particular friendship between Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Tilden, which became of the most confidential character, and continued till the death of the ex-President.
Young Tilden's academic course was begun at Yale College, in the sophomore class, which enrolled among its members Chief-Justice Waite, William M. Evarts, Profes- sors Lyman and Silliman, and Edwards Pierrepont. His studies were intermitted for a few months to repair the effects of too intense application ; but were shortly resumed at the University of New York ; were continued in the law school of that seat of learning, whose pupils were then enjoying the prelections of Mr. Van Buren, Attorney-General Benjamin F. Butler, and Judge William Kent ; and were prolonged in the law-office of the gifted, if eccentric, John W. Edmonds.
The accession of Van Buren to the Presidency, in 1837, preceded but a little the memorable financial revulsion of that year. He had called an extra session of Congress that summer, and in his message recommended the separa- tion of the government from the banks, and the establish - ment of the independent treasury. Voluminous debates
followed in the press. The late Samuel Beardsley, of Utica, inspired, if he did not write, a series of papers published in the Argus, then the leading Democratic journal of the State, which contested the recommendations of the message, and invited resistance to their adoption. Young Tilden, a student even then of fiscal systems and political economy, sprang to the defense of the President's policy, in a series of papers signed " Crino." His most distinguished biog- rapher has said of them : " They were marked by all the characteristics of his maturity, and advocated the proposed separation from the banks and redeemability of the govern- ment currency in specie. Their author was but twenty- three years of age,-the age at which William Pitt became Chancellor of England. If history has preserved anything from the pen or tongue of that illustrious statesman, prior to that period of his life, which displays a higher order of merit, it has escaped the attention of his biographers." ' Crino' was long supposed to be Esck Cowen, then one of the justices of the Supreme Court.
In the fall of 1838, Nathaniel P. Talmadge, a senator of the United States, from New York, who had separated from the Democratic party and joined the Whigs, in oppo- sition to the financial poliey of the President, went to Columbia county to address his new friends. After his speech the Whig managers invited reply. The Democrats present took up the challenge, and shouted for Tilden as their champion. His speech was a masterly refutation of the veteran senator's argument, and some of its home-thrusts were so effective and thrilling as completely to countervail the political purpose of the meeting.
The great depression in priees and paralysis of business which continued into the fall of 1840, although an in- evitable result of a long period of bank inflation and un- sound government financing, were, of course, imputed to the sub-treasury system, just as the panic of 1873, and the subsequent distress, have been ascribed to all steps taken to remove their chief causes and principal conditions. In October, 1840, Mr. Tilden, who had watched the finan- cial revolution through all its progress, and knew its source, nature, and remedies as thoroughly as any older man of his time, made a speech upon the subject in New Lebanon. No one can read it at this day without marveling that Daniel Webster and Nicholas Biddle, with whose arguments Mr. Tilden grappled, could ever have championed a system under which the revenues of the federal government were made the basis of private commercial discounts. He re- viewed the history of the United States Bank, and exposed its ill-founded claims to have been "a regulator of the currency." In short, the youngster was already a veteran in the service and the councils of his party. But while, on the one hand, the administration sought his advice and co-operation, on the other hand, Conde Raguct, whose " Treatise on Currency and Banking" had placed him among the most eminent political economists of the period, recognized, beyond its political, its scientific value as " the clearest exposition of the subject that has yet appeared," and a " most masterly production."
Mr. Tilden opened his law-office in Pine street, New York city, in 1844, the year of the election of James K. Polk as President, and of Silas Wright as governor of New
BIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL JONES TILDEN.
York. To advance that choice he united with John L. O'Sullivan in founding the Daily News, by far the ablest morning journal till then enlisted in the service of the Democratic party. Its snecess was complete, but, as he did not propose to enter into journalism as a career, after the elec- tion he made a gift of his share in the paper to his colleague.
In the fall of 1845, Mr. Tilden was elected to the State Assembly, and, while a member of that body, was elected to the Constitutional Convention of 1846. His impress is visible in the legislation of that year, but it was most notable upon the new constitutional provisions affecting the finances of the State and the management of its canals.
The defeat of Mr. Wright in the fall of 1846, and the coolness which had grown up between the friends of Presi- dent Polk and the late President Van Buren, led Mr. Til- den to withdraw his attention from politics and concentrate it upon his profession. Dependent upon his own exertions, hitherto not lucrative, for a livelihood, he discerned thus early the importance of a pecuniary independence to the best political career. Concentrating all his energies upon his profession, it was not long ere he became as well known at the bar as he had before been known as a politician; and in twenty years of assiduous, untiring industry he made his way steadily to the foremost rank of his profession, and to nearly or quite the largest and most lucrative practice in the country conducted by auy single barrister. During these two decades he linked his name imperishably with some of the most remarkable forensic struggles of the time. The limits of this sketch forbid, however, any adequate reference even to those in which his talents and fertility of resource were most conspicuous.
The great O'Conor, his associate counsel in the Flagg case, has spoken of Mr. Tilden's opening speech as one of the most striking displays of pure intellectual force he ever witnessed. Mr. Azariah C. Flagg, like Mr. Tilden, a friend of Van Buren and Wright, and renowned in the State and city for his fidelity to public trusts, had been elected as comp- troller of the city of New York. His title to the office was contested by his opponent by legal process. So close had been the vote that a change in the return of a single election dis- trict would reverse the result. Upon a fraud inserted here his opponent proceeded. From the very data of the contest- ant, Mr. Tilden, by a mathematical and logical analysis, based upon the principle that truth always matches all around, reconstructed a lost tally-sheet, exposed the attempted fraud, demonstrated Flagg's election, and won his case.
As counsel for the heirs of Dr. Burdell (an American Tichborne case), Mr. Tilden tore to tatters the amazing tissue of falsehood woven by the claimant, Mrs. Cunning- ham, the pretended wife and probable murderer of Burdell, by an examination of one hundred and fifty-two willing witnesses called by the claimant. Believing still that the truth must match all around, and that falsehood cannot be made to harmonize with even a limited number of facts, he conducted this defense by a species of moral triangulation. His metaphysical power, his keen acumen, his penetration of character, and his creative logic were never more won- derfully displayed. He not only won the case, but the conviction at once seized the public mind that had he con- ›ducted the previous prosecution of Mrs. Cunningham for mur- der, it must have resulted in the woman's just conviction.
Mr. Tilden's defense of the Pennsylvania Coal Company probably established, as much as any single case, his high repute among his professional brethren. It was a striking exhibition of the power of his analytical method. The Delaware and Hudson Coal Company had sued for extra toll, extending over a long period, on a contract, in which the Pennsylvania Coal Company agreed to pay it as an in- demnity for the cost of enlarging their canal. The ques- tion was, had the enlarged canal given transportation at less expense than the old canal. A chaos of facts beclouded and complicated the issue. Mr. Tilden reduced this chaos to order by costly, laborious analysis involving the guided research of a regiment of computers, amounting to the ten years' toil of one man. He took the time of a single trip of a boat as an integer, and from the plaintiffs' books evolved a luminous series of proofs that defeated their claim and won his cause. The amount claimed was twenty cents a ton on six hundred thousand tons a year for ten years, be- sides a large royalty for an indefinite future.
In the case of the Cumberland Coal Company against its directors, heard in Maryland in 1858, Mr. Tilden applied for the first time to the directors of corporations the familiar doctrine that a trustee cannot be a purchaser of property confided to him for sale, and he successfully illustrated and settled the equitable principle on which such sales to directors are set aside, and also the conditions to give them validity.
Mr. Tilden's success was no less remarkable in a field which he made especially his own,-in rescuing corporations from unprofitable and embarrassing litigation, in reorgan- izing their administration, re-establishing their credit, and rendering their resources available. More than half the great railway enterprises north of the Ohio and between the Hudson and Missouri rivers have, at some time, been his clients. It was here, on this pre-eminently useful, if less conspicuous stage, that his legal attainments, his unsur- passed skill as a financier, his unlimited capacity for con- centrated, energetic labor, his constantly increasing weight of character and personal influence, enabled him, especially be- tween the years 1855 and 1861, to contribute more powerfully than any man in the United States to their great prosperity.
He had now earned in the conduct of these large inter- ests, and in the decisive victories he had won, a considerable fortune, a ripe experience, and a distinguished fame. The time was near when all these were consecrated, with as great and devoted energy, solely to the public service. For no one in the United States now needs to be told that to Mr. Tilden more than to any other single man is due the overthrow of Tweed and his confederates in both political parties, who for years had used the power of the whole State to compel the city of New York to pay them the free- booters' tribute, and whose plunderings caused the major part of the enhancement of its debt from $19,000,000 in 1857 to $116,000,000 in 1876. The ring had its origin in the legislation of 1857, constituting a board of super- visors,-six Republicans and six Democrats,-to change a majority of which needed the control of the primary meet- ings of both the great national and State parties for four years in succession,-a series of coincidences rare in a gen- eration. This ring of supervisors soon grew to be a ring between the Republicans, who, for thirteen years prior to 1869 and 1870, controlled the legislative power of the
BIOGRAPHY OF SAMUEL JONES TILDEN.
State, the half-and-half supervisors and a few Democratic officials in the city, and embraced just enough influential men in the organizations of each party to control both. Year by year its power and its audacity increased. Its seat of operations was transferred to Albany. The lucra- tive city offices; subordinate appointments, which each head of department could create at pleasure, with salaries at dis- cretion, distributed among legislators ; contracts; money contributed by city officials, assessed on their subordinates, raised by jobs under the departments, or filched from the city treasury, were the corrupting agencies which shaped and controlled all legislation.
Thus for four millions of people were all institutions of government, all taxation, all appropriations of money, mas- tered and made. The Ring power was consolidated, and touched its farthest limit in the Tweed charter of 1870. En- acted by a Republican Legislature, approved by a Democratic governor, this charter was simply a grant of all offices, all local government, all power, to members of the Ring for long periods, without accountability for their acts. New York was delivered over, bound hand and foot, to Tweed and his confederates for plunder. Mr. Tilden, who had accepted the chairmanship of the Democratic committee and the titular leadership of his party in the State at the death of Dean Richmond, now held it against the ambition and as- saults of the Ring. Without patronage or office to confer in city or State, he planted himself on the traditions of the elders, on the moral sense and forces of Democracy, and upon the invincibility of truth and right. He denounced the Tweed charter and assailed at every point the Ring domination. The fight was long and desperate; many ac- cused him of making shipwreck of his party, but he would concede nothing, compromise nothing. Perceiving the vital centre of power, the city representation in the legislative bodies of the State, he insisted with his party and before the people, that the clutch of Ring rule should release that. Fortune favored the brave. A clerk in the comptroller's office copied and published the " secret accounts." Mr. Tilden went into the bank where all the checks of the Ring had passed, analyzed the gigantic mass of these and other vestiges of their frauds, traeed out the actual division of their plunder, and thus accumulated and framed the decisive and legal proof of their guilt. Fortune again favored the brave. He was able to put an honest person into the comp- troller's office, as deputy, with the keys of the city treasury. From that hour the Ring was doomed.
A side-contest, essential to success in the overthrow of the Ring, and arduous as any part of that devoted toil, was his effort for the impeachment and overthrow of the corrupt judiciary of New York. This too was triumphantly achieved, with the result, besides the imprisonment or flight of the members of the Ring, and the recovery of some of their spoil, also the purification of the administration of justice in the great metropolis.
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