was often summoned to Washington for consultation with Secretary Stanton, who held a high opinion of Mr. Tilden's legal attainments, as can be testified to by that veteran of still youthful feeling, Charles A. Dana, long an assistant secretary of war, and to whose cool, conservative judgment the impetuous Stanton, his chief, owed much : as some day, a historian of the period, con ning documents on file at the National Capi tal, must strongly testify. Mr. Tilden is on record as early advising, as an amicus curiae as it were, the return to freedom of Messrs. Slidell and Mason, because illegally captured and restrained. He also joined Charles O'Conor and George Shea (counsel for cap tured Jefferson Davis) in opinion that only the civil arm (as in the case of Aaron Burr), and not the military arm, could legally deal a blow for his treason, if such a blow were deemed politic under all circumstances. When Horatio Seymour became governor of New York during the war, he frequently consulted with Mr. Tilden on legal matters, and particularly so during the draft riots of 1863. For the half-dozen years that fol lowed the closing of the civil contest, Mr. Tilden closely pursued his professional avocations, in which he then simply refused more retainers than he accepted. When taxed for his income, although believing that it was an unconstitutional measure both in plan and details, he made a return purely out of patriotic motives. The fiscal authori ties contravening his return, saw fit to initiate legal procedures, and then he declared his intention of now raising the constitutional objection. Upon this becoming known to the Washington Treasury, it did not from politic motives press the suit, because it was not deemed advisable to court his legal skill and assiduity in raising and considering the question of constitutionality that the Ad ministration had always avoided discussing. It is known that he prepared an elaborate brief against the constitutionality of any direct income tax, which doubtless may
again be used by counsel who are preparing to raise the same question regarding the pending income tax. Between the years 1871 and 1874 Mr. Tilden's time was mainly occupied by legal efforts in connection with Charles O'Conor and Wheeler H. Peckham, — who recently failed of confirmation after enjoying the legal honor of selection by the President as suc cessor to Justice Blatchford on the Supreme Court Bench, — against persons charged by the municipal government of New York City with peculations from, and frauds upon, the local treasury. His mathematical abil ity again came successfully in play; and having been afforded access to certain bank accounts of those who were implicated, he was able to trace home to them by ingeni ous manipulation of figures obtained from deposit tickets and cheques, large sums of money. There were many civil suits for the repossession of the misgotten sums, upon one of which he made an appellate argu ment that bristled with apt citations which exhibited his habitual patience of research and his aptness of illustrating the old saying about a cited case : " It stands on all fours." His legal exertions in this behalf were given without fees and purely from regard to pub lic benefit. But his reward came in an elec tion to the office of governor, in which post again from time to time his legal abilities came into play towards exposing abuses of government and defining legal action. His knowledge of jurisprudence permeated all of his executive documents, showing conclu sively, as in the instances of Wirt, Webster, Sumner, and Conkling, that statesmanship need not dim the light of legal science. With Mr. Tilden's race for the Presidency contemporaneous history has made every one more or less familiar; and this article aims to deal only with the legal incidents of that event. The first of these occurred when the strife between him and his antag onist reposed in a balance that required the weight of only that one vote which had
