The case which first revealed to the bar something of the compass of Tilden's professional resources was one more or less complicated by the politics of the period. The ingenuity and novelty of the processes by which he won it deserve to be remembered.

In the year 1855 the wide-spread jealousy of the influence of the foreign population, and especially of that portion of it which belonged to the Roman Catholic communion in the United States, led, as I have already had occasion to state, to a secret organization of native Americans. who came to be known as the "Know-Nothing party," - a name of reproach which they acquired by replying to all questions in regard to what took place in their lodges or secret councils, "I don't know."

In the fall of that year this party elected the Secretary of State by twelve thousand majority, five judges of the Supreme Court, and a formidable minority of the Legislature. They had nominated at the same election an obscure mechanic by the name of Giles for the office of comptroller of the city of New York. The Democratic candidate was Azariah C. Flagg, who, soon after the defeat of Silas Wright for governor, had come to New York to accept the presidency of the Hudson River Railroad, then in process of construction, and who, at the time of which we are speaking, was the actual incumbent of the office of comptroller of that city.

When the election returns were made it appeared that Mr. Flagg, who was a popular officer, had a small majority. The Know-Nothings were surprised and disappointed, the more so as some of their leaders had large bills against the city which Mr. Flagg had not thought proper to pay, and they naturally desired a new and less critical comptroller. What they could not compass by fair means they sought to compass by foul. They procured the issue of a writ of quo warranto requiring Mr. Flagg to show cause why Mr. Giles should not have his place.

Mr. Tilden, who had been a life-long personal as well as

political friend of Mr. Flagg, volunteered to defend him in association with Charles O'Conor and William M. Evarts. The case was heard before the late Judge Emott and a special jury. James T. Brady and Judge Edmunds, in whose office Mr. Tilden had studied his profession, were counsel for Giles.

The return made from the first election district, in the nineteenth ward, certified that Mr. Flagg had received 316 votes and his opponent 186. It was claimed by Giles' friends that this was a mistake, that a clerical error had been made and an accidental transposition to Flagg of 316 votes which should have been assigned to Giles, and the 186 assigned to Giles which should have been assigned to Flagg. To maintain this theory the relators produced one of the inspectors of the election, a reputable man, who swore positively to the result corresponding to the altered. tally-sheets. They obtained some support from another inspector, and introduced evidence to show that the third inspector was intoxicated at the time the return was made up. They also produced one clerk of the poll who supported their case, and the other was not produced by either party. Some witnesses were also called, who stated that they were present at the canvass of the votes in that district, heard the result proclaimed, and made a memorandum of it in little pocket-books, which they produced.

The claimants seemed to have monopolized all the proof attainable, and to have left little or nothing for the defence. Add to this, the tally of the regular votes had disappeared - at least could not be produced. The original canvass had been made, as usual, upon distinct papers, commonly called tallies. The split tally comprised three foolscap sheets, which contained the original canvass of the split votes, and transfers from the tally of the regular vote and the aggregate result, showing the number of votes that each candidate had received. The papers of split tallies, transfers, and summaries that were produced corresponded with the

oral testimony, and confirmed the relator's theory of the alleged error in the return.

Such was apparently the desperate attitude of the comptroller's case when Mr. Tilden was called upon to open for the defence. The defence, if any could be made, had to be constructed upon the basis of the testimony offered by the relator, for other testimony there was none. The return showed, as the law required, the entire number of votes given in the district, and the regular varieties of what are called regular votes appeared from the prosecutor's own oral evidence. On this slight basis of actual testimony Mr. Tilden constructed an impregnable defence. He had devoted a part of the two previous nights in analyzing the transfers and summaries from the lost tallies, and in the process discovered the means of reconstructing those tallies. The governing principle was this, that there being twelve officers to vote for, wherever a candidate on a regular ticket had a vote, eleven other candidates must have received the same vote. Seizing this idea, he went through all the combinations, the results of which appeared partially on the split tallies and the transfers, and by means of these combinations, eighty-four in number, he succeeded in a complete reproduction of the missing tallies. These results contradicted and completely disproved the pretended transposition of votes, and gave a mathematical demonstration that the relator's case was constructed upon a forgery.

In his opening, and after reviewing the weak points in the testimony of the relator which he was enabled to discover by the light of his midnight researches, he, for the first time, gives an intimation to his adversaries of the weapon he had improvised for their destruction.

"If, by a violent blow," he said, "I should break out the corner of this table, split a piece off, the fractured and abraded fibres of the wood would be left in forms so peculiar, that though all human ingenuity might be employed to fashion a piece that would fit in the place from which the

fragment had been broken it could not be done. These things that are the work of God are so much superior in texture to anything we can do, that when they are broken up our ingenuity cannot restore them.

"There is doubtless some difficulty, occasionally, in interpreting this sort of evidence, or rather in ascertaining enough of the associated facts to found your reasoning upon. And when you think you have to meet a fabricated testimony, what you have to do is to study all the other facts, and all their relations to the particular facts in question, so that you can spread out a full map of the fabricated testimony in equal detail. If, after all this has been done patiently and thoroughly, if the lie escape the ordeal, I shall believe that the God of justice and truth has not well constructed the work of his hands."

He then placed in the hands of the court and jury printed copies of his reconstructed tallies, and of all the regular tickets, and went over them step by step, with the jury, pencil in hand, by which process they were enabled to perceive and demonstrate each for himself the impossibility of the alleged transposition.

Before Mr. Tilden took his seat the case was won and the leading witnesses of the relator were demonstrated perjurers, and his whole case a bungling conspiracy to get possession of the auditing machinery of the city. Within fifteen minutes after the case was submitted to the jury, and without any interchange of opinion, said one of the jurors, they returned a verdict in favor of Mr. Flagg.

To appreciate fully the importance of this decision, it would be necessary to recall the grave issues pending at that election, the vast interests depending upon the retention of Mr. Flagg in office, and upon the defeat of the corrupt conspiracy by which it was intended to oust him. It would be necessary to know what amount of fraudulent bills which Mr. Flagg had refused to audit were depending on the success of Mr. Giles, whose chief witnesses were

more or less dependent upon the owners of these claims. It is not, however, necessary to know anything of all this to appreciate the originality, the ingenuity, and the boldness which were required to conceive and execute a system of defence which literally snatched victory from the jaws of despair.

Mr. O'Conor, one of the associate counsel, has been heard to speak of Mr. Tilden's opening in this case as one of the most remarkable intellectual efforts he had ever witnessed. If anything could add to the value of such a compliment from such a source, it would be the fact, which it is but justice to Mr. Tilden to record here, that he rendered his services in the case gratuitously.

The notoriety which this controversy had acquired, the multitude of the interests depending upon it, the ingenuity by which the counsel for the relator was surprised and disarmed, all conspired to place Mr. Tilden at once in the rank of those who are destined to become leaders in their profession.

Two years later Mr. Tilden achieved another and, in some respects, even a more signal professional triumph.

On the 1st of February, 1857, one Dr. Harvey Burdell was murdered in his own house.

Mrs. Cunningham, a widow lady, and her daughters, to whom he had rented a portion of his dwelling, were suspected of the murder, tried, and found "not guilty." Soon after her acquittal she applied to the surrogate for letters of administration and a widow's third, on the ground of a private marriage solemnized shortly before Burdell's death. Mr. Tilden was retained by the heirs of Dr. Burdell to contest the fact of the alleged marriage. In this, as in the case of Mr. Flagg, his adversaries had all the affirmative testimony, the marriage certificate, the positive oath of the clergyman who solemnized the marriage, the testimony of the daughter Augusta, who was claimed to be the only witness of the alleged ceremony, and the subscribing