At an early period of his life Samuel J. Tilden seems to have had a sense of its importance not ordinarily felt by youth of his age. This may be accounted for in part by the circumstance that while barely out of his teens, both by pen and speech, he had secured the respectful attention of many of the leading statesmen of his generation. At school he preserved all his composition exercises, and from that time to the close of his life it may well be doubted if he ever wrote a note or document of any kind of which he did not preserve the draft or a copy. As the events with which he had to deal came to assume, as they naturally did, increasing importance with his years, one or more corrected drafts were made of important papers, most, if not all, of which were carefully preserved. As what may fitly enough be termed Mr. Tilden's public life covered more than half a century, during most of which time he was one of the recognized leaders of one of the great parties of the country, the public will learn without surprise that the accumulations of social, political, and documentary correspondence which fell into the hands of his executors, to be measured by the ton, embraced among its topics almost every important political question by which this nation has been agitated since the accession of General Andrew Jackson to the Presidency in 1829. A collection of _Tilden's Public Writings and Speeches_ was published in 1885, only a year before his death, but very little of his private correspondence appeared in that publication. The duty imposed upon his executors of looking through such a vast collection of papers and selecting such as would be profitable for publication has been a long and a very tedious one. They indulge the hope, however, that the volumes now submitted will be found to shed upon the history of our country during the latter half of the last century much light unlikely to be reflected with equal lustre from any other quarter. It will also, they believe, help to transmit to posterity a juster sense than as yet generally prevails of the majestic proportions of one of the most gifted statesmen our country has produced. Tilden may be said to have fleshed his maiden sword in politics as a champion of President Jackson in his war against the recharter of a United States bank of discount and deposit. He next became somewhat more personally conspicuous as a fervent champion of Mr. Van Buren's substitute for the national bank, now known as the Assistant Treasury.