He declined any compensation for his services in the Tweed cases. Politics In 1848 he became a member of the Directory of the Friends of Ireland, a society that was organized in anticipation of a rising in Ireland, and he presided at some of the meetings in the same year. In this year he was also a candidate on the Democratic ticket for Lieutenant Governor of New York, but was defeated, although he received several thousand more votes than the other candidates of his party. In 1852, he was a presidential elector on the Democratic ticket, voting for Franklin Pierce. He was United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1853 to 1854. In politics he supported the States' rights Democrats and sympathized throughout the American Civil War with the Southern states. After the war he became senior counsel for Jefferson Davis on his indictment for treason. He also appeared upon Davis's bond when the latter was admitted to bail. These facts and O'Conor's connection with the Roman Catholic Church affected unfavourably his political fortunes. In the 1872 U.S. presidential election, O'Conor was nominated for the presidency by the "Bourbon Democrats" or "Straight-Out Democrats", who refused to support Horace Greeley, and by the "Labor Reformers". He declined the nomination, as did his running mate, John Quincy Adams II, but they remained on the ballot anyway and received 21,559 votes. The election was won by incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant of the Republican Party. In the electoral contest of 1876, he appeared as advocate for the claims of Samuel J. Tilden before the Electoral Commission. Retirement He built a house at Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1881, with a fire-proof library adjoining it, and lived there until his death in 1884; he is entombed in St. Patrick's Old Cathedral, New York. Family In 1854, Charles O'Conor married Mrs. McCracken, formerly Cornelia Livingston. She died on May 12, 1874. Notes References External links Benjamin R. Tucker - Instead Of A Book, By A Man Too Busy To Write One. A Gratifying Discovery. [Liberty, May 31, 1884.] Charles O'Conor at the Catholic Forum Charles O'Conor at the NYU Irish Studies Research Collective NY Times Obituary Celebrated Trials: Case of William M. Tweed Part 1 Part 2 Documents pertaining to a case O'Conor argued The New York Civil List compiled by Franklin Benjamin Hough, Stephen C. Hutchins and Edgar Albert Werner (1867; page