The
Vol. VII.
No. 2.
Green
Bag.
BOSTON.
February, 1895.
SAMUEL J. TILDEN AS A LAWYER. By A. Oakey Hall. "Who to party gave up what was meant for mankind." — GoLDSNfmi's Retaliation. THE name and fame of Samuel Jones Tilden have entered biography and history mainly as of the politician and states man. Even many lawyers of the older gen eration scarcely think of him as having once been a very distinguished member of the New York Bar. This presents an opposite view to that presented by the career of Henry Erskine, who is best remembered as a King's Counsel and Lord Chancellor, but hardly ever referred to as once an M. P., and a vigorous party man in days when partisan asperities and conflicts were notable. Mr. John Bigelow, in his volumes presenting the literary and political career of Mr. Tilden, whose life-friend and exec utor he was, presents in his preface this apology : " It is with extreme regret that I find myself constrained to put these vol umes to press without including in them a memorial of Mr. Tilden's strictly profes sional career." Those paragraphs serve to show that in the opinion of the editor he regarded his friend and testator as the Am erican people came to regard him, more in his aspect as statesman than as lawyer. Be it the province of the Green Bag, then, to commemorate Mr. Tilden in the latter capacity. He was of English and Puritan ancestry. His great-great grandfather emigrated to Massachusetts only three years later than the famous debarkation at Plymouth Rock. On his mother's side his great grandfather was William Jones — a Welshman — who
served as lieutenant-governor of the colony of New Haven. The second generation of Tildens removed from Scituate, Mass., to Lebanon, Conn., and its descendants became revolutionary patriots. Mr. Tilden's grand father finally became a farmer across the boundary line separating Connecticut and New York, in a new settlement that he named, in memory of the old homestead, New Leb anon. There Samuel Jones was born in the closing year of our naval war with Great Britain; and there he spent sixteen years of boyhood. Among his playmates was Prince John Van Buren, his elder by a few years, the Tilden and Van Buren family being neighbors. Like the last named he attended the Kinderhook Academy, and matriculated later at Yale College; but not to become its alumnus in company with such classmates as Messrs. Evarts and Edwards Pierpont, each becoming federal attorney-generals, and the after Chief-Justice Waite. Young Tilden transferred his collegiate allegiance to the New York City University, and attended law lectures therein. From law school he passed into the law office of John W. Edmonds, his father's friend, who during subsequent years was a Supreme Court judge and reporter of cases. That preceptor always bore testi mony to his pupil's deep draughts at the legal Pierian springs. The year 1841 dated Mr. Tilden's admission to the bar, and he opened an office in Pine Street, and also pol itically allied himself with Tammany Hall, in which he made campaign speeches, and ob
