possessing such immense vital power and so many individual peculiarities cannot be fitly described without some mention of the minor flaws of character that were apparent to those who knew him well. Whether he entered the fight for freedom from the highest motives or not, none will gainsay that the war for the defence of the Union was more vigorously prosecuted and the cause of human liberty more completely successful because of his ardent, consistent, eloquent, and effective championship.

IX.

SAMUEL J. TILDEN.

A YOUNG man who at the age of eighteen should compose a political address directed to the people of the great State of New York, and by this means should break or weaken a powerful party coalition, would be regarded as a model of precociousness; and philosophers, shaking their wise heads over such an example of early manifested genius, would be very likely to predict a barren future for the boy who should begin life with so much apparent maturity of mental power. But this is the way that Samuel J. Tilden started out in a career which certainly was not unfruitful of important results-important to him and to the age and time in which he lived.

This is how it happened: In 1832 there was a hot political contest raging in the State of New York. There were three parties in the field. The anti-Masons, who had been very nearly successful in the contests of previous years, had nominated William Wirt for President; the Democrats had nominated Andrew Jackson and had put up Martin Van Buren as their candidate for Vice-President; and the anti-Jackson men, who were really the Whigs of that day (although not so named, but were called the Nation

al Republicans), had nominated Henry Clay. New York was the debatable ground in that national campaign. If either two of these three parties should combine and work together, the coalition would carry that State. Such a combination was proposed by the anti-Jackson and the anti-Mason men. The anti-Mason party nominated Francis Granger for Governor and a full ticket of Presidential electors. The antiJackson men in their convention adopted and endorsed all these nominations. It was understood that both of these parties would support Granger for Governor, and that the Presidential electors, if chosen, would be divided between Wirt and Clay. The situation was alarming to the Jackson men and was eagerly and anxiously discussed in their households. Martin Van Buren was one of the leading citizens of Columbia County, New York, and a frequent visitor at the home of the Tildens, where the perils of the coalition were considered and debated in the hearing of "Sam,” a sharp, bright lad, then scarcely eighteen years old. He was a tall, slender young fellow, with a pale face, mild blue eyes, firm lips, and bright chestnut-colored hair. He lived in an atmosphere of political excitement. Andrew Jackson's fierce and tempestuous public career, his bitter partisan administration, and his unrelenting pursuit of his enemies had filled the land with confusion, and debate ran high. At the country store, around the village forge, by the fireside and on the farm, an intelligent and quick-witted people discussed all sides of the pending politi