Letters and Literary Memorials of Samuel J. Tilden, v. 1

by Samuel J. Tilden

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.