Samuel J. Tilden: The Story of a Lost Opportunity

Abstract

SINCE his death in i886, Samuel J. Tilden has been increasingly considered the wise and venerable elder statesman of the Democratic party of his day, an architect of its political philosophy and a sturdy champion of reform. Yet, in 1902, Don M. Dickinson, describing to President Theodore Roosevelt the fervor of the men who enlisted under the reform banner and their tendency to idealize Tilden, added that they learned later that Tilden was but a marvelously skilled politician, while [Abram S.] Hewitt was the true embodiment of the spirit of reform.1 Dickinson confessed that he was one of those young men, and his criticism, based on matured insight and experience, suggests the advisability of exploring further into the career of the Sage of Gramercy Park. Tilden's early political activities seemed to foreshadow the course of his later life:2 identification with good causes, and yet a baffling indecision at times of crisis; a thirst for political power, but the inability to rise entirely above partisan cunning and personal opportunism. As it was, the wizened, nervous, very intelligent youth apparently held more firmly to laudable principles before the Civil War than he was to do afterwards as a leader of his party. His attitude toward the Tweed Ring and his behavior in the shortlived Apollo Hall Democracy are two cases in point.