Samuel Jones Tilden (February 9, 1814 – August 4, 1886) was an American politician who served as the 25th Governor of New York and was the Democratic candidate for president in the disputed 1876 United States presidential election. Tilden was the second presidential candidate to lose the election despite winning the popular vote and is the only candidate to win a majority of the popular vote in a United States presidential election (50.9%), but lose the election.[a]
Tilden was born on February 9, 1814, into a wealthy family in New Lebanon, New York. Attracted to politics at a young age, he became a protégé of Martin Van Buren, the eighth President of the United States. After studying at Yale University and New York University School of Law, Tilden began a legal career in New York City, becoming a noted corporate lawyer. He served in the New York State Assembly and helped launch Van Buren's third party, anti-slavery candidacy in the 1848 United States presidential election. Although he opposed Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 United States presidential election, Tilden supported the Union during the American Civil War. After the Civil War, Tilden was selected as the chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee and managed Democratic nominee Horatio Seymour's campaign in the 1868 United States presidential election.
Tilden initially cooperated with the state party's Tammany Hall faction, but he broke with them in 1871 due to boss William M. Tweed's rampant corruption. Tilden won election as Governor of New York in 1874, and in that office he helped break up the "Canal Ring". Tilden's battle against public corruption, along with his personal fortune and electoral success in the country's most populous state, made him the leading candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 1876. Tilden was selected as the nominee on the second ballot of the 1876 Democratic National Convention. In the general election, Tilden faced Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, another governor with reform credentials. Tilden focused his campaign on civil service reform, support for the gold standard, and opposition to high taxes, but many of his supporters were more concerned with ending Reconstruction in the Southern United States.

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