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Samuel J

Samuel Jones Tilden (9 February 1814-4 August 1886) was the Democratic Governor of New York from 1 January 1875 to 31 December 1876 (succeeding John Adams Dix and preceding Lucius Robinson).

Biography[]

Samuel Jones Tilden was born into wealth in New Lebanon, Columbia County, New York in 1814, and he became a protege of Democratic politician Martin Van Buren before becoming a corporate lawyer in New York City. He served as Corporation Counsel of New York City from 1843 to 1844 and in the State Assembly from 1846 to 1847, and he helped to launch Van Buren's anti-slavery Free Soil Party in 1848. He rejoined the Democrats on Van Buren's defeat, and he chaired the New York Democratic Party from 1866 to 1874, having become known as a War Democrat during the American Civil War. He managed Horatio Seymour's 1868 presidential bid before serving as Governor of New York from 1875 to 1876, breaking up Tammany Hall's "Canal Ring" and famously battling against public corruption, making him a leader of the conservative Bourbon Democrats. Tilden went on to run for President in 1876, supporting civil service reform and the gold standard while opposing high taxes. While he won the popular vote by 250,000 votes, 20 electoral votes were in dispute, and his party negotiated the Compromise of 1877, which granted the presidency to the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for ending Reconstruction in the American South. Tilden left politics and refused to run for the presidency in 1880 and 1884, and he died in 1886.

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