History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 143

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354

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Mr. Cromwell, though well along in life, still re- tains his strength, and his name continnes to be asso- ciated with every progressive and benevolent move- ment in and about the village which is the home of his choice. He is at present one of the oldest liv - ing members of the St. Nicholas Club.

WILLIAM PATTERSON VAN RENSSELAER.

Mr. Van Rensselaer was the second son of the pa- troon, Stephen Van Rensselaer, of Albany, and was born March 6, 1805. His mother was a daughter of Judge William Paterson, of New Jersey. After graduating at Yale College, in 1824, he was commis- sioned aid-de-camp to Governor De Witt Clinton, with the title of colonel, which post he soon relinquished,

and from 1826 spent four years in Europe, traveling extensively and pnrsning legal studies in Edinburgh.

Upon his return he entered the office of Peter A. Jay, then a well-known lawyer in New York. For a number of years afterward he resided in Albany and Rensselaer County, but the last twenty years of his life were spent at his home at Manursing Island, near Rye, Westchester County. He died in New York, November 13, 1872.

He inherited from his distinguished father many noted characteristics. Conspicuous among these was a true simplicity. Frec from all pretension and eminent- ly unselfish, he found his happiness in a life of retirc- ment and in unobtrusive but earnest endeavors to do good. A genuine sympathy with works of Christian benevolence was another inherited trait. He was an attentive observer of the great and philanthropic movements of the day and a most liberal supporter of every worthy cause whose claims were brought to his notice.

A man of noble impulses and clear convictions, he was no less decided in the rebuke of injustice and in- iquity that in the approval of that which was good.

The uprightness and elevation, the kindliness and generosity of his nature, his fine intellectual gifts and

1 For a full account of the Cromwell family, see "Foster's British Statesmen," vi. 2; also, "' Carlyle's Letters and Speeches of Croniwell," i. 32-40.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

high culture, and with all an unaffected humility, the fruit of true religion, made him the marked ex- ample of a Christian gentleman.

SAMUEL JONES TILDEN.

In an old-fashioned frame dwelling-house still standing, though considerably older than our Federal Constitution, Mr. Tilden was born on the 9th of Feb- ruary, 1814. The old homestead, where four genera- tions of the family have been reared, fronts upon the long street which constitutes the back-bone of the village of New Lebanon, in the county of Columbia, in the State of New York.

Mr. Tilden's ancestry may be traced back to the latter part of the sixteenth century and to the county of Kent, in England, where the name is still most honorably associated with the army, the navy and the church. In 1634 Nathaniel Tilden was among the Puritans who left Kent to settle in America. Eleven years previous he had been mayor of Tenter- den. He was succeeded in that office by his cousin John, as he had been preceded by his uncle John in 1585 and 1600. He removed with his family to Scit- uate, in the colony of Massachusetts, in 1634. He was one of the commissioners to locate that town, and the first recorded conveyance of any of its soil was made to him. His brother Joseph was one of the merchant adventurers of London who fitted out the " Mayflower." This Nathaniel Tilden married Hannah Bourne, one of whose sisters married a brother of Governor Winslow and another a son of Governor Bradford. Among the associates of Joseph Tilden in fitting out the " Mayflower " was Timothy Hatherby, who afterward married the widow of Nathaniel Til- den, and was a leading citizen of Scituate until ex- pelled from public life for refusing to prosecute the Quakers.

Governor Tilden's grandfather, John Tilden, set- tled in Columbia County, since then uninterruptedly the residence of this branch of the Tilden family. The Governor's mother was descended from William Jones, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of New Haven, who, in all the histories of Connecticut, is represented to have been the son of Col. John Joncs, one of the regicide judges of Charles the First, who is said to have married a sister of Oliver Cromwell and a cousin of John Hamden. The Governor's father, a farmer and merchant of New Lebanon, was a man of notable judgment and practical sense and the accepted oracle of the county upon all matters of public concern, while his opinion was also eagerly sought and justly valued by all his neighbors, but by none more than by the late President Van Buren, who, till his death, was one of his mnost cherished and intimate personal friends.

Samuel J., after a suitable preparatory education at Williamstown, Massachusetts, was entered at Yale College in the class of 1833, where, however, in con- sequence 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 polit- ical situation, and tradition has preserved many inter- esting stories of his triumphs, both of speech and pen, in the political arena. Young and obscure as he then was, Presidents Jackson and Van Buren had few more effective champions in this State 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, and 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 political economists of that time, but is to-day one of perhaps the half-dozen most profound, comprehen- sive and instructive papers on that complicated sub- ject 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 Demo- crats, 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 Demo- cratic 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 propose to enter into journalism as a career, and had embarked in this enterprise merely for its bearing upon the Presidential campaign of 1844, he retired from it soon after the election, presenting his entire interest in the property to his colleague.

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 sessions a few weeks after the Legislature adjourned. In both of these bodies he was a conspicuous author- ity, and left a permanent impression upon the legis- lation of the year, and especially upon all the new constitutional provisions affecting the finances of the State and the management of its system of canals. In this work he was associated, by personal and political sympathy, 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

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555

THE BENCH AND BAR.

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 cx- ertions for a livelihood. Thus far his labor for the State, or in his profession, had not been lucrative, and, de- spite his strong tastes and pre-eminent qualifications for political life, he was able to discern at that early period the importance, in this country at least, of a pecuniary independence for the successful prosecu- tion of a political carcer. With an assiduity and a concentration of energy which has characterized all the transactions of his life, he now gave himself up to his profession. It was not many years before he be- came as well known at the bar as he had before been known as a politician. His business 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 professional duties.

From that time until 1869, when he again conse- crated 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 in the country conducted by any single barrister. During what may be termed the professional parts of his career he has 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 liis 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 ordinance 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 helps to make the Utica Convention of June, 1848, one of the most mo- mentous in the history of the country.

received the suffrages of a large majority of his countrymen for the high- est honor in their gift ; and to-day, through that delegate's influence, another citizen of New York who was nominated by a Democratic Na- tional Convention, which imposed no sectional tests, and who was elected without the vote of a single slaveholder, becomes the chief magis- trate 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 years, are once more kuit 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 de- voted by Mr. Tilden to the overthrow of what was known as the Tweed Ring, which had thoroughly de- bauched every branch of the New York City govern- ment, 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 withdrawal 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 expenditures 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 influ- ence 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 fruitrul in benefits as the rescue of this machinery from the perversion which had made it a means of con- spiracy, frand and crime against the rights and the most sacred interests of a great community."

When Mr. Tilden thus wrote he had not exper- ienced nor could he have foreseen the legal consum- mation 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 condemna- tion 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 millions of ill-gotten plun- der.

Nor could he have foreseen, among the most direct and immediate results of his labors for the purifica- tion of the New York City and State governments, his election as Governor in the fall of 1874, by a ma- jority of more than fifty thousand over General Dix, the Republican candidate.

The talents and public virtues which, as a municipal reformer, won the confidence of the people of his na- tive State and made him Governor, on this new and wider theatre 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 discharge its constitutional

" 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 organi- zation which had given a wise and beneficent government to the country for half a century. Then, too, and there 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

1 " Writings and Life of Samuel J. Tilden," edited by John Bigelow. l'ub., Harper & Brothers, 1885.

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HISTORY OF WESTCHESTER COUNTY.

duty of counting the electoral votes for President and Vice-President, it appeared that there were one hun- dred and eighty-four uncontested electoral votes for Samuel J. Tilden for President and for Thomas A. Hendricks for Vice-President, one hundred and six- ty-five uncontested electoral 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 twen- ty 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 govern- ment.

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 majority of the Senate being Republi- cans and a majority of the House of Representatives being Democrats, that the Senate would not agree to 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 Republicans and seven as Democrats. The Republicans voted to count all the votes of the three contested States for Hayes, and the Independent, voted with them, and the candidate elected to the Presidency by a consid- erable popular majority was compelled to give place to the candidate of a minority.

The circumstances under which Mr. Tilden was deprived of the Presidency made it inconvenient, in- deed 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 surrender it into the hands of its proper national representatives. As soon, however, as the National Democratic Convention as- sembled in 1880, he felt constrained to address to the chairman of the New York delegation the mnemorable letter in which he proclaimed his well-considered in- tention 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 resolu- tion, to prevent his nomination by the delegates to the National Convention, who were almost unanimously chosen because of their avowed partiality for Mr. Til- den as their candidate, notwithstanding his impaired and failing health. Finding it impossible to obtain

his consent to run, the convention accepted a candi- date of his choice from the State which he had served so long and faithfully, and his choice was ratified by the nation at the general election.

Mr. Tilden is now enjoying the repose he has so fully earned, and such health as repose only could con- fer, at his princely home of Greystone on the banks of the Hudson, now the pilgrim's shrine of the reinstated party, which Jefferson planted and which Jackson and Van Buren watered.

"He is one of the few surviving statesmen who had the good fortune to receive early political training in the golden age of the Democratic party, when public measures were thoroughly tested hy the Constitution and hy public opinion, and when hy ample dehate the voters of the whole nation were educated, not only to embrace, hut also to com- prehend, the principles upon which their government was conducted, -- a training to which his subsequent political career bears continual testi- mony. Whatever heresies of doctrine have crept into our public policy since those days, the responsibility for them will not rest with him. In all the papers aud speeches with which from time to time he has endeav- ored to enlighten his countrymen, it will he difficult to find a line or a thought not in harmony with the teachings of the eminent statesmen who, during the first fifty years of our national bistory, 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 baving 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. Cal- houn. He denounced the American system of Mr. Clay as unconstitu- tional, inequitable and sectional. He vindicated tbe removal of tbe government deposits from the United States Bank hy President Jackson, aud exploded the sophistical doctrine of its lawyers that the Treasury is not an executive department. He vindicated President Vau 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 busi- ness equally to all, and abolishing the monopoly wbich was a nearly universal superstition. Hc exposed tbe perils of hanking upon public funds. He advocated the divorce of bank aud State, and the establish- ment of a sub treasury. He asserted the supervisory control of tbe Legislature over corporations of its own creation. He exposed the enor- mities of Mr. Webster's scheme to pledge tbe public lands for the pay- ment of the debts of the States. He drew and vindicated in a profoundly learned and able report the Act wbicb pnt 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 rea- sons for opposing coercive temperance legislation. He pointed out, as no one had done before; the danger of sectionalizing the government. He planned the campaign, he secured the requisite legislation, he bore much the largest share of the expense, and, finally, he led the storming- party which drove Tweed and his predatory associates to prison or into exile. He purified the judiciary of the city aud State of New York hy procuring the adoption of measures which resulted in the removal of one judge by impeachment and of two judges hy resignation. He in- duced the Democratic Couveution 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 be- gotten 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 tbird-term Presidents, and effectively strengthened tbe exposed intrenchments which the country, tor cighty years and more, had heen erecting against the insidious en- croachments of dynasticisni. During his career as Governor Mr. Tilden applied the principles of the political school in which he had been edu- cated to the new questions which time, civil war aud national affluence had made paramount. He overthrew the Canal Ring, which had become ascendant iu all the departments of the State government. Ile dispersed the lobby which infested tho legislative bodies. He introduced a practi- cal reform in the civil service of this State, and elevated the standard of official morality. In his messages lie exposed tbe 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

Chauncey. M. Defew.

THE BENCH AND BAR.

the pressing need of radical reformis both in the State and Federal ad- ministrations." 1

It is due to Mr. Tilden, also, to say that he has rare- ly discussed any matter of publie 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 language, 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 his maturer judgment eannot approve ; Icss that will not commend itself to the deliberate judgment of thoughtful men and to an unprejudiced posterity ?

HON. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.

Mr. Depew, distinguished as a lawyer and states- man, was born at Peekskill, April 23, 1834. His ancestry was of the Huguenot raee, from which have sprung so many noble men to make immortal names in history. His family were early settled at Peeks- kill, where his father, Isaac Depew, resided on the farm which had been the home of his aneestors for two hundred years. His early years were spent on the old homestead, and his education was finished at Yale College, where he graduated in 1856. Resolved to enter the legal profe-sion, he studied law with Hon. William Nelson, was admitted to the bar in 1858, and commenced practice in his native town. His natural ability, sound knowledge of the law and great oratorical talent caused his rapid advancement. In his youth he took part in politics, was a delegate to the Republican State Convention in 1858, and a distinguished and effective speaker in the campaign of 1860. In every Presidential contest from that time to the present, his speeches have been listened to by thousands of his fellow-eitizens, and his opinions have never failed to attract attention and command respect. At the beginning of the war he was adjutant of the Eighteenth Regiment N. Y. V., and served three months. In 1861 he was elected member of Assembly, and re-elected in 1862. His legislative earecr, which was marked with great ability, prepared the way for a still higher position, and in 1863 he was elected Secretary of State. He received, but de- clined, the appointment of commissioner of emigra- tion, but served for one year as tax commissioner for the eity of New York. In 1866 he received from President Johnson the appointment of minister to Japan,-a position which he resigned after holding the commission for one month. He was appointed one of the commissioners of the new capitol at Albany in 1871. The Liberal Republican party gave Mr. Depew the nomination for Governor in 1872; but he,

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History of Westchester county : New York, including Morrisania, Kings Bridge, and West Farms, which have been annexed to New York City, Vol. I, Part 143

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co. Number of Pages: 1354

Author: Scharf, J. Thomas (John Thomas), 1843-1898, ed
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : L.E. Preston & Co.
Number of Pages: 1354