Topic: Samuel Jones Tilden

Samuel Jones Tilden 1814-86, American political figure, Democratic presidential candidate in 1876, b. New Lebanon, N.Y. Admitted to the bar in 1841, Tilden was an eminently successful lawyer, with many railroad companies as clients. He became a strong partisan of Martin Van Buren and the Barnburners in New York Democratic politics. Unlike other Free-Soil Democrats of the 1850s (see Free-Soil party ), he did not join the new Republican party and later disapproved of the Civil War. As state Democratic chairman after 1866 he sought reform and gathered much of the evidence of corruption... Read more