[i]
[ii]

[iii]

THE HISTORY OF
TAMMANY HALL

BY
GUSTAVUS MYERS
Author of “A History of Public Franchises
in New York City,” etc., etc.

SECOND EDITION
REVISED AND ENLARGED

NEW YORK
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
1917

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Copyright, 1917.
By Boni & Liveright, Inc.

[v]

In most men’s minds a certain spell of wonder attaches to the career and character of the Tammany Society and Tammany Hall. The long continuance of this dual power; its control of the city, infrequently interrupted, throughout the century; the nature of its principles, the method of its practices and the character of its personnel—all these combine to furnish a spectacle which exerts over the general mind a peculiar and strong fascination.

It was under the sway of this mood that I began the investigation which has resulted in this volume. I had no thought, on beginning, to carry the work so far: I sought merely to satisfy my curiosity regarding the more important particulars of Tammany’s history. But I soon learned that what I sought was not easily to be obtained. The few narratives already published were generally found to be either extravagant panegyrics, printed under the patronage of the Tammany Society, or else partisan attacks, violent in style and untruthful in statement. Usually both were characterized by their paucity of real information no less than by the number of their palpable errors of fact.

Turning from these, I determined to find the facts for myself. My search led me first through the files of all the available newspapers from 1789 to the present time, and thence—for origins and contributory causes—through publications as far back as 1788; thence through State and city histories, and a great number of biographies, sketches, essays, political pamphlets and broadsides. The fragmentary matter gleaned from these sources was found to be extremely valuable in helping to form the continuous thread of a narrative, and in determining[vi] contemporary spirit; but the statements and conclusions, particularly with regard to the character and conduct of public men, were generally contradictory and inconclusive. Realizing this, I began the last phase of my search—a task that has led me through numberless dreary pages of the Minutes and Documents of the Common Council (which for the years previous to 1881 exist only in manuscript), Journals and Documents of the Senate and Assembly, including the reports of various legislative committees; Congressional and Executive Records, Treasury Reports, Records of the Police, Common Pleas, Superior and Supreme Courts; Minutes of the Oyer and Terminer; Grand Jury Presentments, and Records of the Board of Supervisors. Finally, I have had the good fortune, in developing the story of the middle and later periods, of having secured many valuable interviews with a number of men who actively participated in the stirring events of thirty, forty and even fifty years ago.

The purpose to write a book became fixed as my search progressed. The work is finished, and the result is now to be given to the public. What I have sought to produce is a narrative history—plain, compact and impartial. I have sought to avoid an indulgence, on the one hand, in political speculation, and on the other, in moralizing platitudes. Such deductions and generalizations as from time to time I have made, seem to me necessary in elucidating the narrative; without them the story would prove to the reader a mere chronology of unrelated facts.

If my narrative furnishes a sad story for the leaders and chieftains of the Tammany Society and the Tammany Hall political organization, the fault is not mine, but that of a multitude of incontestible public records. It was in no partizan spirit that I began the work, and in none that I now conclude it. I have always been an independent in politics; and I have even voted, when there seemed to me ample reason for doing so, a Tammany ticket. I have tried to set down nothing in malice, nor[vii] with such exceptions as are obviously necessary with regard to living men, to extenuate anything whatever. Those who may be tempted to consider my work partial and partizan, on account of the showing that it makes of Tammany corruption and inefficiency, will do well to read carefully the pages relating to the Whigs and to some other opponents of Tammany Hall.

The records show that a succession of prominent Tammany leaders were involved in some theft or swindle, public or private. These peculations or frauds ranged, in point of time, from 1799 and 1805-6 to the later decades; in the matter of persons, from the founder of the Tammany Society to some of the subsequent “bosses,” and in gradation of amount, from the petty thousands taken by Mooney, Stagg and Page, in the first decade of the century, to the $1,220,000 taken by Swartwout in 1830-38 and the undetermined millions taken by Wood and Tweed in the fifties, sixties and first two years of the seventies. From nearly the beginning of its active political career, Tammany leaders, with generally brief interruptions, thus continued to abstract money from the city, the State and the nation—the interruptions to the practice generally coinciding with the periods when Tammany in those years was deprived of political power.

My search has shown me the absurdity of the pretense that any vital distinction exists between the Tammany Society and the Tammany Hall political organization. Tammany members industriously propagate this pretense, but it has neither a historic nor an actual basis. From 1805, the date of the apparent separation of the organization from the society, the Sachems of the latter have ruled the policies of the former. Repeatedly, as in 1828, 1838, 1853, and 1857, they have determined the “regularity” of contending factions in the organization, and have shut the hall to members of the faction against which they have decided. The Sachems have at all times[viii] been the leaders in the political body, and the control of the society in every year that Tammany has held control of the city, has determined the division of plunder for the ensuing year. The Tammany Society and the Tammany political organization constitute a dual power—but, unlike Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, a duality working by identical means for an identical end.

The records show that Tammany was thus, from the beginning, an evil force in politics. Its characteristics were formed by its first great leader, Aaron Burr, and his chief lieutenant, Matthew L. Davis; and whatever is distinctive of Tammany methods and policies in 1900 is, for the most part, but the development of features initiated by these two men one hundred years ago. It is curious to recall, on looking back to the time when my researches began, the abundant evidences of misapprehension regarding Tammany’s earlier history. “No especial discredit attached to Tammany Hall before Tweed’s time,” wrote, in effect, Mr. E. L. Godkin in an essay published a few years ago. State Senator Fassett, in 1890, made a similar statement in his report on the investigation of conditions in New York City. “Down to the time,” he says, “that the Tammany ‘ring,’ under the leadership of William M. Tweed, took possession of the government of New York City … the office [of Alderman] was held in credit and esteem.” The exact reverse of both statements is true; and abundant proof of my contention, I believe, will be found in the pages of this book. Another instance may be given—though the opinion expressed, instead of being founded upon misapprehension, may charitably be set down as one of misjudgment. “I was a Sachem of Tammany,” said a one-time noted politician recently, before the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, “in the days when it was an honor to be a Sachem.” The precise time he did not specify; and it would be difficult to identify it from the description he has given. Certainly, since 1805, the office of Sachem[ix] has been one ill calculated, of itself, to bring particular honor to the incumbent.

It would be dishonest to pretend for a moment that Tammany has been alone in its evil-doing; it has been simply the most ingenious and the most pretentious; and its practices have a historic continuity and persistence not shared by any of its rivals. The Whigs, for instance, sought in every possible way to outdo Tammany in election frauds; they stuffed ballot boxes, colonized voters, employed rowdies and thugs at the polls and distributed thousands of deceptive ballots for the use of their opponents. In fiscal frauds, likewise, they left a record well-nigh equaling that of Tammany. The Native Americans imitated both Whigs and Tammany men, and the Republicans have given instances at Albany of a wholesale venality unapproached in the history of legislative bodies. Among the few exceptions, during the earlier half of the century, to the general prostitution of civic ideals, was the career of the Workingmen’s party (1829-31) and of its successor, the Equal Rights party (1834-38). The principles of both these parties were far in advance of their time; and though the effect tended somewhat to the temporary heightening of political standards, a reaction followed, which again brought in a long period of fraud and corruption.

But shameful as this record is, it is one which, viewed in the light of present practises and present ideals, gives the basis for a robust faith in the future. The hiding of vice and the employment of indirect methods in cheating and plundering, are themselves an evidence of the existence of moral standards; and it is unquestionable that Tammany to-day outwardly conforms to ethical demands which would have been scoffed at a half century ago. No one can read the details of political history without acknowledging a growing betterment in political methods.

“Hardly a man [before the Civil War] could be found,” says Jesse Macy in his recent History of Political Parties[x] in the United States, “who felt himself too virtuous to go into politics. The sensitively moral were not repelled by political methods which to-day are regarded as disgraceful.” And further along he says: “It is easy to forget that, from the very nature of moral progress, it often happens that intelligent moral leaders of one generation will in all good conscience say and do things which only the conscious hypocrite or the knave of a later generation can do.” Pessimism as to political progress secures no support from real research.

It may be asked, and with some show of reason, how it has been possible for New York City to achieve its present rank in population, in wealth, in commerce and in transportation facilities; how it has acquired its splendid libraries, its magnificent buildings, its museums, its parks, its benevolent institutions, in the face of this continued dominancy of corruption, violence and fraud. The answer is simple: the city has grown despite these adverse influences. The harbor of New York is one factor; the Erie Canal (constructed notwithstanding the opposition of the dominant political party of the city) is another; the tremendous growth of the nation, and the thousand external influences that determined the location of the nation’s metropolis, are yet other factors. The city has grown to magnificence and world-wide influence; but it has paid dear tribute for every forward step it has taken. Imagination fails at picturing the metropolis that might have been, could the city throughout the century have been guided and controlled in the light of present-day civic ideals.

The difficulties of securing the publication of this work by any of the regular publishing houses proved insurmountable. Two of the best known firms wrote that they could not encourage me to submit the manuscript to them for consideration. Four others considered its publication “inadvisable,” though their readers had returned favorable[xi] recommendations. One other declined it without giving reasons. More recently, when the offer of certain responsible persons who had read the manuscript, to guarantee the expense of its publication, was made to a certain house, the firm replied: “… we should hardly feel warranted in locking horns with Tammany Hall.…” It was thought that perhaps an out-of-town house might issue it, but here again declinations were forthcoming. Finally it was decided to attempt its publication by private subscription. To this end I solicited individual advances to a publication fund, from a number of the city’s public-spirited citizens. The appearance of the work at this time is due to the kindly interests of these men.

Acknowledgments for the courtesies tendered me, and for material aid rendered in the project of issuing the work, are due to a number of persons: To the public-spirited citizens of different political faiths, who, while familiar with the scope of the work, contributed the funds for its publication without insisting upon a censorship of the manuscript or its alteration in any way for political purposes; and particularly to Mr. James B. Reynolds, Mr. James W. Pryor and Milo R. Maltbie, Ph. D.

Gustavus Myers.

New York City, January, 1901.

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Since the original publication of this work, a large number of inquiries have appeared in the Publisher’s Weekly and have come from other quarters requesting information as to where copies of The History of Tammany Hall could be obtained. For the last ten years this work has been in continuous demand but unavailable. For reasons fully set forth in the preface to that issue, the edition of 1901 was brought out in the face of difficulties. Not the least of these was the self-expressed dread of certain publishing houses to bring out a work which (as some of them frankly admitted in their letters of declination) might bring reprisals to them in some unexplained form or other.

Hence to all intents and purposes, that edition was in the nature of a restricted private edition. Denied the usual and almost indispensable publication and distribution facilities by the publishing houses, the work necessarily was subject to obvious disadvantages, and, so far as circulation went, practically took rank as a suppressed book—not, it is true, suppressed by any particular agency, but by the circumstances of the case.

In 1913 Mr. Edward Kellogg Baird, a public-spirited attorney in New York City, kindly undertook, in behalf of the author (who was absent in another country at the time) to see whether some one of the publishing houses would not bring out a new edition of The History of Tammany Hall, brought down to date. In his letters to these publishers, Mr. Baird pointed out that there never had been any lack of general interest in this work, and referred to the extremely large number of reviews in important publications in many countries treating the book at[xiv] length and commending its purpose and scope. Mr. Baird also called the attention of publishers to the fact that the book was recognized as the only authority on the subject; that it had been tested by time; that there had never been a libel suit arising from any of the statements made therein; and that, therefore, there could be no valid objection on the part of any publisher that publication of further editions would lead to any legal trouble.

With such possible objections thus disposed of in advance, Mr. Baird confidently expected that he would find at least one of the old-established publishers who would not be deterred by such considerations as influenced them to refuse publication in 1901. But the replies were virtually repetitions of those received twelve years previously. One of the first replies, dated February 24, 1913, from the senior member of a New York publishing house, read as follows:

“For the very same reason that the author of The History of Tammany Hall was unable to obtain a publisher for the original edition, leads us to decide unfavorably so far as we are concerned. The policy of publishing the book was the first question raised by one of my partners, before he had a chance even to read the preface, and we as a firm have decided that the objection is too strong to permit us to bring the book out over our imprint. I am sorry that we must be so cowardly, for the book itself is worthy of reissue, and I personally should be glad to see it published by my firm.…”

At about the same time, the head of another prominent and older New York publishing house—a citizen, by the way, who had served as foreman of a noted grand jury exposing Tammany corruption—wrote this reply:

“I have given due consideration, with my partners, to the suggestion you are so kind to submit to us in regard to the publication of a new edition of The History of Tammany Hall brought down to date.… I must report that our judgment is adverse to the desirability of[xv] reissuing such a book with the imprint of our house. I should be individually interested in obtaining a copy for my own library in case you may be able to secure for the work a satisfactory arrangement with some other house.”

An equally well-known New York publishing house sent this declination: “We have looked over with interest The History of Tammany Hall, which you were good enough to submit to us, but are sorry to say that after a careful examination we are unable to persuade ourselves that we could successfully undertake its publication.” The head of still another old-established New York publishing house wrote, on March 4, 1913, a long apologetic letter giving his reasons for not caring to undertake the publication of the work, the principal of those reasons being the plea that there was not sufficient prospect of gain “to compensate for some of the unpleasantness its publishers would have to endure.” Yet a year later a magazine published by this identical house contained a laudatory reference to “Myers’s excellent History of Tammany Hall.”

On April 10, 1913, Mr. Baird wrote to a prominent Boston publishing house. “Before offering the book,” Mr. Baird wrote in part, “I want to tell you frankly that it has been turned down by other publishers, not because of any lack of excellence or authenticity, but simply because, as several of the publishers have frankly acknowledged, they ‘are afraid of reprisals from Tammany Hall.’

“Your house has been suggested by a publisher as one which is probably not so timid as some others, and as you are located out of town you are therefore not subject to local influences, and I write to ask if you would be interested in having the publication submitted to you.

“I might add that I have been lecturing on this subject at the City Club and other prominent clubs in the city, and the subject itself seemed to bring out record audiences wherever the lecture was given, and it is because so many people have asked me where they can obtain copies of Mr.[xvi] Myers’s book, that I am prompted to endeavor to have a reprint of it.”

The reply of the Boston publishing house was a curt declination.

Subsequently the following letter was received by the author from a prominent New York City attorney:

“I have been endeavoring to purchase a copy of The History of Tammany Hall published by you, but as yet have been unable to find a copy in any of the book stores. I shall appreciate it very much if you can tell me where I can obtain a copy.

“You may be interested to know that a few months ago a number of booksellers were given instructions to purchase and retire all outstanding copies of the book. For whose account this order was given I do not know. I am told by the booksellers that an advertisement for the book resulted in their being able to purchase only a few copies.”

To the present publishers the author gives all due appreciation for their unqualified recognition of the need of the publication of this work.

Gustavus Myers.

March, 1917.

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[1]

HISTORY OF TAMMANY HALL

The Society of St. Tammany, or Columbian Order, was founded on May 12, 1789, a fortnight later than the establishment of the National Government, by William Mooney.[1] “His object,” says Judah Hammond,[2] an early member of Tammany, “was to fill the country with institutions designed, and men determined, to preserve the just balance of power. His purpose was patriotic and purely republican. The constitution provided by his care contained, among other things, a solemn asseveration, which every member at his initiation was required to repeat and subscribe to, that he would sustain the State institutions and resist a consolidation of power in the general Government.”

Before the Revolution, societies variously known as the “Sons of Liberty” and the “Sons of St. Tammany” had been formed to aid the cause of independence. Tammany,[2] or Tamanend, was an Indian chief, of whom fanciful legends have been woven, but of whose real life little can be told. Some maintain that he lived in the neighborhood of Scranton, Pa., when William Penn arrived, and that he was present at the great council under the elm tree. His name is said to have been on Penn’s first treaty with the Indians, April 23, 1683. He is also described as a great chief of the Delaware nation, and his wigwam is said to have stood on the grounds now occupied by Princeton University. The fame of his wisdom, benevolence and love of liberty spreading to the colonists, they adopted his name for their patriotic lodges. When societies sprang up bearing the names of St. George, St. Andrew or St. David and proclaiming their fealty to King George, the Separatists dubbed Tammany a saint in ridicule of the imported saints. The Revolution over, the “Sons of Liberty” and the “Sons of St. Tammany” dissolved.

The controversy over the adoption of the Federal constitution had the effect of re-uniting the patriotic lodges. The rich and influential classes favored Hamilton’s design of a republic having a President and a Senate chosen for life, and State governments elected by Congress. Opposed to this attempt toward a highly centralized government were the forces which afterward organized the Anti-Federalist party. Their leader in New York was Governor George Clinton. The greater number of the old members of the Liberty and Tammany societies, now familiarly known as “Liberty boys,” belonged to this opposition.

During this agitation Hamilton managed to strengthen his party, by causing to be removed, in 1787, the political disabilities bearing upon the Tories. New York was noted for its Tories, more numerous in proportion than in any other colony, since here, under the Crown, offices were dispensed more liberally than elsewhere. In the heat of the Revolutionary War and the times immediately following it, popular indignation struck at them in severe[3] laws. In all places held by the patriot army a Tory refusing to renounce his allegiance to King George ran considerable danger not only of mob visit, but of confiscation of property, exile, imprisonment, or, in flagrant cases of adherence to the enemy, death. From 1783 to 1787 the “Liberty boys” of the Revolution, who formed the bulk of the middle and working classes, governed New York City politics. In freeing the Tories from oppressive laws, and opening political life to them, Hamilton at once secured the support of a propertied class (for many of them had succeeded in retaining their estates) numerous enough to form a balance of power and to enable him to wrest the control of the city from the “Liberty boys.”

The elevation to office of many of the hated, aristocratic supporters of Great Britain inflamed the minds of the “Liberty boys” and their followers, and made the chasm between the classes, already wide, yet wider. The bitterest feeling cropped out. Hamilton, put upon the defensive, took pains in his addresses to assure the people of the baselessness of the accusation that he aimed to keep the rich families in power. That result, however, had been partially assured by the State constitution of 1777. Gaging sound citizenship by the ownership of property, the draughtsmen of that instrument allowed only actual residents having freeholds to the value of £100, free of all debts, to vote for Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and State Senators, while a vote for the humbler office of Assemblyman was given only to those having freeholds of £20 in the county or paying forty shillings rent yearly. Poor soldiers who had nobly sustained the Revolutionary cause were justly embittered at being disqualified by reason of their poverty, while full political power was given to the property-owning Tories.

“The inequality,” wrote one who lived in those days,

Dr. John W. Francis tells, in his Reminiscences, of the prevalence in New York for years after the Revolution of a supercilious class that missed no opportunity of sneering at the demand for political equality made by the leather-breeched mechanic with his few shillings a day.

Permeated with democratic doctrines, the populace detested the landed class. The founding of the Society of the Cincinnati was an additional irritant. Formed by the officers of the Continental army before disbandment, this society adopted one clause especially obnoxious to the radicals. It provided that the eldest male descendant of an original member should be entitled to wear the insignia of the order and enjoy the privileges of the society, which, it was argued, would be best perpetuated in that way. Jefferson saw a danger to the liberties of the people in this provision, since it would tend to give rise to a race of hereditary nobles, founded on the military, and breeding in turn other subordinate orders. At Washington’s suggestion the clause was modified, but an ugly feeling rankled in the public mind, due to the existence of an active party supposedly bent on the establishment of a disguised form of monarchy.

It was at such a juncture of movements and tendencies that the Society of St. Tammany or Columbian Order was formed. The new organization constituted a formal protest against aristocratic influences, and stood for the widest democratization in political life.

As a contrast to the old-world distinctions of the Cincinnati and other societies, the Tammany Society adopted aboriginal forms and usages. The officers held Indian titles. The head, or president, chosen from thirteen Sachems, corresponding to trustees, elected annually, was[5] styled Grand Sachem. In its early years the society had a custom, now obsolete, of conferring the honorary office of Kitchi Okemaw, or Great Grand Sachem, upon the President of the United States. Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams and Jackson were hailed successively as the Great Grand Sachems of Tammany. After the Sachems came the Sagamore, or Master of Ceremonies, a Scribe, or secretary, and a Wiskinskie,[3] or doorkeeper. Instead of using the ordinary calendar designations, the society divided the year into seasons and these into moons. Its notices bore reckoning from the year Columbus discovered America, that of the Declaration of American Independence and of its own organization. Instead of inscribing: “New York, July, 1800,” there would appear: “Manhattan, Season of Fruits, Seventh Moon, Year of Discovery three hundred and eighth; of Independence twenty-fourth, and of the Institution the twelfth.” In early times the society was divided into tribes, one for each of the thirteen original States; there were the Eagle, Otter, Panther, Beaver, Bear, Tortoise, Rattlesnake, Tiger, Fox, Deer, Buffalo, Raccoon and Wolf tribes, which stood respectively for New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. A new member of the Tammany Society had the choice of saying to which of these tribes he cared to be attached. Frequently the members dressed in Indian garb and carried papooses in their public parades. They introduced the distinction between “long talks” and “short talks” in their public addresses. The name “Wigwam” was given to their meeting-place, and Barden’s Tavern was selected as their first home.

At the initiation of the Grand Sachem a song beginning, “Brothers, Our Council Fire Shines Bright, et-hoh!”[6] was sung, and at the initiation of a member another song was sung, beginning:

The society contemplated founding a chain of Tammany societies over the country, and accordingly designated itself as Tammany Society, No. 1. A number sprang into life, but only a few—those in Philadelphia, Providence, Brooklyn and Lexington, Ky., continued for any time, and even these disappeared about the year 1818 or a few years later.

The society showed its Indian ceremonies to advantage and gained much prestige by aiding in the conciliation of the Creek Indians. After useless attempts to make a treaty with them, the Government undertook, as a last resort, in February, 1790, to influence Alexander McGillivray, their half-breed chief, to visit New York, where he might be induced to sign a treaty. To Col. Marinus Willett, a brave soldier of the Revolution, and later Mayor of New York City, the mission was intrusted. In July, 1790, Willett started North accompanied by McGillivray and twenty-eight Creek chiefs and warriors. Upon their arrival in New York, then the seat of the National Government, the members of the Tammany Society, in full Indian costume, welcomed them. One phase of the tale has it that the Creeks set up a wild whoop, at whose terrifying sound the Tammany make-believe red-faces fled in dismay. Another version tells that the Tammany Society and the military escorted the Indians to Secretary Knox’s house, introduced them to Washington and then led them to the Wigwam at Barden’s Tavern, where seductive drink was served. On August 2 the Creeks were entertained at a Tammany banquet. A treaty was signed on August 13.

In June of the same year Tammany had established, in the old City Hall, a museum “for the preservation of Indian relics.” For a brief while the society devoted[7] itself with assiduity to this department, but the practical men grew tired of it. On June 25, 1795, the museum was given over to Gardiner Baker, its curator, on condition that it was to be known for all time as the Tammany Museum and that each member of the society and his family were to have entrance free. Baker dying, the museum eventually passed into the hands of a professional museum-owner.

Tammany’s chief functions at first seem to have been the celebration of its anniversary day, May 12; the Fourth of July and Evacuation Day. The society’s parades were events in old New York. On May 12, 1789, the day of organization, two marquees were built two miles above the city, whither the Tammany brethren went to hold their banquet. Thirteen discharges of cannon followed each toast. The first one read: “May Honor, Virtue and Patriotism ever be the distinguishing characteristics of the sons of St. Tammany.” John Pintard,[4] Tammany’s first Sagamore, wrote an account[5] of the society’s celebration of May 12, 1791. “The day,” he says,

The toasts, that now seem so quaint, mirror the spirit of the diners. “The Grand Sachem of the Thirteen United Fires,” ran the first, “may his declining sun be precious in the sight of the Great Spirit that the mild luster of his departing beams may prove no less glorious than the effulgence of the rising or transcendent splendor of his meridian greatness.” The second: “The head men and chiefs of the Grand Council of the Thirteen United Fires—may they convince our foes not only of their courage to lift, prudence to direct and clemency to withhold the hatchet, but of their power to inflict it in their country’s cause.”

Up to 1835, at least, toasts were an important feature in public dinners, as they were supposed to disclose the sentiments, political or otherwise, of the person or body from whom they came. In this fashion the Tammany Society announced its instant sympathy with the French Revolution in all its stages. On May 12, 1793, the sixth toast read: “Success to the Armies of France, and Wisdom, Concord and Firmness to the Convention.” “The first sentence was hardly articulated,” a newspaper[6] records, “when as one the whole company arose and gave three cheers, continued by roars of applause for several minutes; the toast was then given in whole and the applauses reiterated.”

At ten o’clock that morning, the same account relates, “the society had assembled at Tammanial Hall, in Broad street, and marched to St. Paul’s Church, where Brother Cadwallader D. Colden delivered to a crowded and brilliant audience an animated talk on the excellence of the Government and situation of the United States when contrasted with those of despotic countries.” In the procession[9] were about 400 members in civilian dress. From each hat flowed a bucktail—the symbol of Liberty—and the standard and cap of Liberty were carried in front of the line. From the church “the Tammanials went to their Hall, where some 150 of them partook of an elegant dinner.”

Public feeling ran high in discussing the French Revolution, and there were many personal collisions. The Tammany Society was in the vanguard of the American sympathizers and bore the brunt of abuse. The pamphlets and newspapers were filled with anonymous threats from both sides. “An Oneida Chief” writes in the New York Journal and Patriotic Register, June 8, 1793:

There is no record of the carrying out of this threat.

Despite its original composition of men of both parties, the Tammany Society drifted year by year into being the principal upholder of the doctrines of which Jefferson was the chief exponent. Toward the end of Washington’s administration political feelings developed into violent party divisions, and the Tammany Society became largely Anti-Federalist, or Republican, the Federalist members either withdrawing or being reduced to a harmless minority. It toasted the Republican leaders vociferously to show the world its sympathies and principles. On May 12, 1796, the glasses ascended to “Citizen” Thomas Jefferson, whose name was received with three cheers, and to “Citizen” Edward Livingston, for whom nine cheers were[10] given. “The people,” ran one toast, “may they ever at the risk of life and liberty support their equal rights in opposition to Ambition, Tyranny, to Sophistry and Deception, to Bribery and Corruption and to an enthusiastic fondness and implicit confidence in their fellow-fallible mortals.”

Tammany had become, by 1796-97, a powerful and an extremely partizan body. But it came near being snuffed out of existence in the last year of Washington’s presidency. Judah Hammond writes that when Washington, before the close of his second term,

To such straits was driven the society which, a short time after, secured absolute control of New York City, and which has held that grasp, with but few and brief intermissions, ever since. The contrast between that sorry festival, with its trio of lonesome celebrators, and the Tammany Society of a few years afterwards presents one of the most striking pictures in American politics.

[11]

The second period of the Tammany Society began about 1798. Relieved of its Federalist members, it became purely partizan. As yet it was not an “organization,” in the modern political sense; it did not seek the enrollment and regimentation of voters. Its nature was more that of a private political club, which sought to influence elections by speeches, pamphlets and social means. It shifted its quarters from Barden’s Tavern to the “Long Room,” a place kept by a sometime Sachem, Abraham or “Brom” Martling,[1] at the corner of Nassau and Spruce streets. This Wigwam was a forlorn, one-story wooden building attached to Martling’s Tavern, near, or partly overlapping, the spot where subsequently Tammany Hall erected its first building—recently the Sun newspaper building. No larger than a good-sized room the Wigwam was contemptuously styled by the Federalists “the Pig Pen.” In that year New York City had only 58,000 inhabitants. The Wigwam stood on the very outskirts of the city. But it formed a social rendezvous very popular with the “Bucktails” of the time. Every night men gathered there to drink, smoke and “swap” stories. Fitz-Greene Halleck has written of a later time:

[12]

This social custom was begun early in the life of the society, and was maintained for several decades.

Aaron Burr was the first real leader of the Tammany Society. He was never Grand Sachem or even Sachem; it is doubtful whether he ever set foot in the Wigwam; it is known that it was never his habit to attend caucuses; but he controlled the society through his friends and protégés. The transition of Tammany from an effusive, speech-making society to an active political club was mainly through his instrumentality. Mooney[2] was a mediocre man, delighting in extravagant language and Indian ceremonials, and was merely a tool in the hands of far abler men. “Burr was our chief,”[3] said Matthew L. Davis, Burr’s friend and biographer, and several times Grand Sachem of the society.

Davis’s influence on the early career of Tammany was second only to that of Burr himself. He was reputed to be the originator of the time-honored modes of manufacturing public opinion, carrying primary meetings, obtaining the nomination of certain candidates, carrying a ward, a city, a county or even a State. During one period of his activity, it is related, meetings were held on different nights in every ward in New York City. The most forcible and spirited resolutions and addresses were passed and published. Not only the city, but the entire country, was aroused. It was some time before the secret was known—that at each of these meetings but three persons were present, Davis and two friends.

Though Davis was credited with the authorship of these methods, it is not so certain that he did not receive his lessons[13] from Burr. Besides Davis, Burr’s chief protégés, all of whom became persons of importance in early New York, were Jacob Barker, John and Robert Swartwout, John and William P. Van Ness; Benjamin Romaine, Isaac Pierson, John P. Haff and Jacob Hayes.[4] When Burr was in disgrace William P. Van Ness, at that time the patron of the law student Martin Van Buren, wrote a long pamphlet defending him. At the time of his duel with Hamilton these men supported him. They made Tammany his machine; and it is clear that they were attached to him sincerely, for long after his trial for treason, Tammany Hall, under their influence, tried unsuccessfully to restore him to some degree of political power. Burr controlled Tammany Hall from 1797 until even after his fall. From then on to about 1835 his protégés either controlled it or were its influential men. The phrase, “the old Burr faction still active,” is met with as late as 1832, and the Burrites were a considerable factor in politics for several years thereafter. Nearly every one of the Burr leaders, as will be shown, was guilty of some act of official or private peculation.

These were the men Burr used in changing the character of the Tammany Society. The leader and his satellites were quite content to have the Tammany rank and file parade in Indian garb and use savage ceremonies; such forms gave the people an idea of pristine simplicity which was a good enough cloak for election scheming. Audacious to a degree and working through others, Burr was exceedingly adroit. One of his most important moves was the chartering of the Manhattan Bank. Without this institution Tammany would have been quite ineffective. In those days banks had a mightier influence over politics than is now thought. New York had only one bank, and that one was violently Federalist. Its affairs were administered[14] always with a view to contributing to Federalist success. The directors loaned money to their personal and party friends with gross partiality and for questionable purposes. If a merchant dared help the opposite party or offended the directors he was taught to repent his independence by a rejection of his paper when he most needed cash.

Burr needed this means of monopoly and favoritism to make his political machine complete, as well as to amass funds. He, therefore, had introduced into the Legislature (1799) a bill, apparently for the purpose of diminishing the future possibility of yellow fever in New York City, incorporating a company, styled the Manhattan Company, to supply pure, wholesome water. Supposing the charter granted nothing more than this, the legislators passed it. They were much surprised later to hear that it contained a carefully worded clause vesting the Manhattan Company with banking powers.[5] The Manhattan Bank speedily adopted the prevailing partizan tactics.

The campaign of 1800 was full of personal and party bitterness and was contested hotly. To evade the election laws disqualifying the poor, and working to the advantage of the Federalists, Tammany had recourse to artifice. Poor Republicans, being unable individually to meet the property qualification, clubbed together and bought property. On the three election days[6] Hamilton made speeches at the polls for the Federalists, and Burr directed political affairs for the Republicans. Tammany used every influence, social and political, to carry the city for Jefferson.

Assemblymen then were not elected by wards, but in bulk, the Legislature in turn selecting the Presidential[15] electors. The Republican Assembly candidates in New York City were elected[7] by a majority of one, the vote of a butcher, Thomas Winship, being the decisive ballot. The Legislature selected Republican electors. This threw the Presidential contest into the House of Representatives, insuring Jefferson’s success. Though Burr was the choice of the Tammany chiefs, Jefferson was a favored second. Tammany claimed to have brought about the result; and the claim was generally allowed.[8]

The success of the Republicans in 1800 opened new possibilities to the members of the Tammany Society. Jefferson richly rewarded some of them with offices. In 1801 they advanced their sway further. The society had declared that one of its objects was the repeal of the odious election laws. For the present, however, it schemed to circumvent them. The practise of the previous year of the collective buying of property to meet the voting qualifications was continued. Under the society’s encouragement, and with money probably furnished by it, thirty-nine poor Republicans in November, 1801, bought a house and lot of ground in the Fifth Ward. Their votes turned the ward election. The thirty-nine were mainly penniless students and mechanics; among them were such men as Daniel D. Tompkins, future Governor of New York and Vice-President of the United States; Richard Riker, coming Recorder of New York City; William P. Van Ness, United States Judge to be, Teunis Wortman, William[16] A. Davis, Robert Swartwout and John L. Broome, all of whom became men of power.

The result in the Fifth Ward, and in the Fourth Ward, where seventy Tammany votes had been secured through the joint purchase of a house and lot at 50 Dey street, gave the society a majority in the Common Council.[9] The Federalist Aldermen decided to throw out these votes, as being against the spirit of the law, and to seat their own party candidates. The Republican Mayor, Edward Livingston, who presided over the deliberations, maintained that he had a right to vote.[10] His vote made a tie. The Tammany, or Republican, men were arbitrarily seated, upon which, on December 14, 1801, eight Federalists seceded to prevent a quorum;[11] they did not return until the following March.

The Tammany Society members, or as they were called until 1813 or 1814, the Martling Men (from their meeting place), soon had a far more interesting task than fighting Federalists. This was the long, bitter warfare, extending over twenty-six years, which they waged against De Witt Clinton, one of the ablest politicians New York has known, and remembered by a grateful posterity as the creator of the Erie Canal.

[17]

The quarrel between Tammany and De Witt Clinton arose from Clinton’s charge in 1802 that Burr was a traitor to the Republican party and had conspired to defeat Jefferson. De Witt Clinton was a nephew of George Clinton. When a very young man he was Scribe of the Tammany Society. Owing to the influence of his powerful relative, backed by his own ability, he had become a United States Senator, at the promising age of thirty-three. His principal fault was his unbridled temper, which led him to speak harshly of those who displeased him. George Clinton thought himself, on account of his age and long public service, entitled to the place and honors heaped upon Burr, whom he despised as an unprincipled usurper. He was too old, however, to carry on a contest, and De Witt Clinton undertook to shatter the Burr faction for him. To oppose the Tammany Society, which embraced in itself nearly all there was of the Republican party in New York City, was no slight matter. But De Witt Clinton, with the confidence that comes of steady, rapid advancement, went about it aggressively. He had extraordinary qualities of mind and heart which raised him far above the mere politicians of his day.

Such of the elective offices as were allowed the city were filled by the Tammany Republicans from 1800 to 1809. State Senators, Assemblymen and Aldermen were elective, but the Mayor, Sheriff, Recorder, Justices of the Peace of counties—in fact, nearly all civil and military[18] officers from the heads of departments and Judgeships of the Supreme Court down to even auctioneers—were appointed by a body at Albany known as the Council of Appointment, which was one of the old constitutional devices for centralizing political power. Four State Senators, chosen by the Assembly, comprised, with the Governor, this Council. Gov. Clinton, as president of this board, claimed the exclusive right of nomination, and effectually concentrated in himself all the immense power it yielded. He had De Witt Clinton transferred from the post of United States Senator to that of Mayor of New York City in 1803, and filled offices in all the counties with his relatives or partizans. The spoils system was in full force, as exemplified by the Council’s sudden and frequent changes. Though swaying New York City, Tammany could get only a few State and city offices, the Clintons holding the power elsewhere throughout the State and in the Council of Appointment. Hence in fighting the Clintons, Tammany confronted a power much superior in resources.

One of the first moves of the Clintons was to get control of the Manhattan Bank. They caused John Swartwout, Burr’s associate director, to be turned out. Some words ensued, and De Witt Clinton styled Swartwout a liar, a scoundrel and a villain. Swartwout set about resenting the insult in the gentlemanly mode of the day. Clinton readily accepted a challenge, and five shots were fired, two of which hit Swartwout, who, upon being asked whether he had had enough said that he had not; but the duel was stopped by the seconds.

While the Clintons were searching for a good pretext to overthrow Burr, the latter injudiciously supplied it himself when in 1804 he opposed the election of Morgan Lewis, his own party’s nominee for Governor. Burr’s action gave rise to much acrimony; and from that time he was ostracized by every part of the Republican party in New York except the chiefs of the Tammany Society, or Martling Men. He fell altogether into disgrace with the general[19] public when he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel, July 11, 1804. Tammany, however, still clung to him. Two of Tammany’s chiefs—Nathaniel Pendleton and William P. Van Ness—accompanied Burr to the field; John Swartwout, another chief, was at Burr’s house awaiting his return. The Tammany men looked upon much of the excitement over Hamilton’s death as manufactured. But as if to yield to public opinion, the society on July 13 issued a notice to its members to join in the procession to pay the “last tribute of respect to the manes of Hamilton.”

In the inflamed state of public feeling which condemned everything connected with Burr and caused his indictment in two States, the Sachems knew it would be unwise for a time to make any attempt to restore him to political power. They found their opportunity in December, 1805, when, strangely enough, De Witt Clinton, forced by the exigencies of politics, made overtures to form a union with the Burrites in order to resist the powerful Livingston family, which, with Gov. Morgan Lewis at its head, was threatening the Clinton family. The Burrites thought they would get the better of the bargain and be able to reinstate their chief.

The negotiators met secretly February 20, 1806, at Dyde’s Hotel. John Swartwout and the other Tammany chiefs insisted as conditions of the union that Burr should be recognized as a Republican; that his friends should be well cared for in the distribution of offices, and that “Burrism” should never be urged as an objection against them. The Clintons, anxious to beat down the Livingstons, were ready to agree to these terms, knowing that Burr’s prestige was utterly swept away and that any effort of his followers to thrust him forward again would be a failure. Clintonites and Burrites set to drinking hilariously as a token of good will. But their joy was premature.

When the body of the Tammany men learned of the[20] arrangement they were aroused. The Sachems drew off, and the Tammany Society continued to revile Clinton and to be reviled in return.

It was just before this that the Tammany Hall political organization, as apparently distinct from the Tammany Society, was created. In 1805 the society made application for, and obtained from the Legislature, the charter, which still remains in force, incorporating it as a benevolent and charitable body “for the purpose of affording relief to the indigent and distressed members of said association, their widows and orphans and others who may be proper objects of their charity.”

The wording of the charter deluded only the simple. Everybody knew that the society was the center around which the Republican politics of the city revolved. It had its public and its secret aspects. “This society,” says Longworth’s American Almanac, New York Register and City Directory for 1807-1808, in a description of Tammany, “has a constitution in two parts—public and private—the public relates to all external or public matters; and the private, to the arcana and all transactions which do not meet the public eye, and on which its code of laws are founded.”

The Sachems knew that to continue appearing as a political club would be most impolitic. Year after year since 1798 the criticisms directed at the self-appointed task of providing candidates for the popular suffrage grew louder. In 1806 these murmurings extended to Tammany’s own voters. Honest Republicans began to voice their suspicions of caucuses which never met and public meetings called by nobody knew whom. The Sachems, though perfectly satisfied with the established forms which gave them such direct authority, wisely recognized the need of a change.

It was agreed that the Republicans should assemble in each ward to choose a ward committee of three and that these ward committees should constitute a general committee,[21] which should have the power of convening all public meetings of the party and of making preparatory arrangements for approaching elections. This was the origin of the Tammany Hall General Committee, which, consisting then of thirty members, has been expanded in present times to over five thousand members.

At about the same time each of the ten wards began sending seven delegates to Martling’s, the seventy forming a nominating committee, which alone had the right to nominate candidates. The seventy met in open convention. At times each member would have a candidate for the Assembly, to which the city then sent eleven members. These improvements on the old method gave, naturally, an air of real democracy to the proceedings of the Tammany faction in the city and had the effect of softening public criticism. Yet behind the scenes the former leaders contrived to bring things about pretty much as they planned.

The action of the nominating committee was not final, however. It was a strict rule that the committee’s nominations be submitted to the wards and to a later meeting of all the Republican electors who chose to attend and who would vote their approval or disapproval. If a name were voted down, another candidate was substituted by the meeting itself. This was called the “great popular meeting,” and its design was supposed to vest fully in the Republican voters the choice of the candidates for whom they were to vote. But in those days, as has always been the case, most voters were so engrossed in their ordinary occupations that they gave little more attention to politics than to vote; and the leaders, except on special occasions, found it easy to fill the great popular meeting, as well as other meetings, with their friends and creatures, sending out runners, and often in the winter, sleighs, for the dilatory. To the general and nominating committees was added, several years later, a correspondence committee, which was empowered to call meetings of the party when necessary, the leaders having found the general committee[22] too slow and cumbersome a means through which to reach that important end.

To hold public favor, the Tammany Society thought prudent to make it appear that it was animated by patriotic motives instead of the desire for offices. That the people might see how dearly above all things Tammany prized its Revolutionary traditions, the society on April 13, 1808, marched in rank to Wallabout, where it laid the corner-stone of a vault in which were to be placed the bones of 11,500 patriots who had died on board the British prison ships. On April 26, the vault being completed, the remains were laid in it. The Tammany Society, headed by Benjamin Romaine and the military; the municipal officials, Gov. Daniel D. Tompkins, members of Congress, Army and Navy officers, and many other detachments of men of lesser note participated in the ceremony.

The Federalists maintained that Tammany’s patriotic show was merely an election maneuver. Subsequent developments did not help to disprove the charge. The society proclaimed far and wide its intention of building a monument over the vault, and induced the Legislature to make a grant of land worth $1,000 for the purpose. Associations and individuals likewise contributed. The political ceremonies connected with the burial having their expected effect, Tammany forgot altogether about its project until ugly rumors, pointing to the misuse of the money collected, forced the society in 1821 to petition the Legislature for further aid in erecting the monument. On that occasion the Tammany Society was denounced bitterly. It was brought out that such was Tammany’s interest in the monument that no request was ever made for the land granted by the Legislature in 1808. The Legislature, however, granted $1,000 in cash.[1] This sum was not enough; and as Tammany did not swell the amount, though its Sachems were rich with the spoils of office, a[23] resolution was introduced in the Assembly, March 4, 1826,[2] stating that as the $1,000 appropriated February 27, 1821, had not been used for the purpose but remained in the hands of Benjamin Romaine, the society’s treasurer, it should be returned, and threatening legal proceedings in case it was not. This resolution, slightly amended, was passed on a close vote. There is, however, no available record of what became of the $1,000.

During three years, culminating in 1809, a series of disclosures regarding the corruption of Tammany officials astounded the city. Rumors grew so persistent that the Common Council was forced by public opinion to investigate. In the resultant revelations many Tammany chiefs suffered.

Benjamin Romaine, variously Sachem and Grand Sachem, was removed in 1806 from the office of City Controller for malfeasance, though the Common Council was controlled by his own party.[3] As a trustee of corporation property he had fraudulently obtained valuable land in the heart of the city, without paying for it. The affair caused a very considerable scandal. The Common Council had repeatedly passed strong resolutions calling on him to explain. Romaine must have settled in some fashion; for there is no evidence that he was prosecuted.

On January 26, 1807, Philip I. Arcularius, Superintendent of the Almshouse, and Cornelius Warner, Superintendent of Public Repairs, were removed summarily.[4] It was shown that Warner had defrauded the city as well as the men who worked under him.[5]

Jonas Humbert, Inspector of Bread and sometime Sachem, was proved to have extorted a third of the fees collected by Flour Inspector Jones, under the threat of having Jones put out of office. In consequence of[24] the facts becoming known, Humbert and his associate Inspector, Christian Nestell, discreetly resigned their offices—probably to avert official investigation.[6]

Abraham Stagg, another of the dynasty of Grand Sachems, as Collector of Assessments failed, it was disclosed in 1808, to account for about $1,000.[7] Two other Assessment Collectors, Samuel L. Page (for a long time prominent in Tammany councils), and Simon Ackerman, were likewise found to be embezzlers.[8] Stagg and Page managed to make good their deficit by turning over to the city certain property, but Ackerman disappeared.

John Bingham, at times Sachem, and a noted politician of the day, managed, through his position as an Alderman, to wheedle the city into selling to his brother-in-law land which later he influenced the corporation to buy back at an exorbitant price. The Common Council, spurred by public opinion, demanded its reconveyance.[9] Even Bingham’s powerful friend, Matthew L. Davis, could not silence the scandal, for Davis himself had to meet a charge that while defending the Embargo at Martling’s he was caught smuggling out flour in quantities that yielded him a desirable income.

But worse than these disclosures was that affecting the society’s founder, William Mooney. The Common Council in 1808 appointed him Superintendent of the Almshouse, at an annual recompense of $1,000 and the support of his family in the place, provided that this latter item should not amount to over $500. Mooney had a more exalted idea of how he and his family ought to live. In the summer of 1809 the city fathers appointed a committee to investigate. The outcome was surprising. Mooney had spent nearly $4,000 on himself and family in addition to his salary; he had taken from the city supplies about $1,000 worth of articles, and moreover had expended various sums for “trifles for[25] Mrs. Mooney”—a term which survived for many years in local politics. The ofttimes Grand Sachem of the Tammany Society could not explain his indulgences satisfactorily, and the Common Council relieved him of the cares of office, only one Alderman voting for his retention.[10]

Most of these leaders were only momentarily incommoded, the Tammany Society continuing many of them, for years after, in positions of trust and influence. Mooney subsequently was repeatedly chosen Grand Sachem and Father of the Council; Romaine was elected Grand Sachem in 1808, again in 1813, and frequently Sachem; Matthew L. Davis was elected Grand Sachem in 1814 and reelected in 1815[11] and was a Sachem for years later; Abraham Stagg remained a leader and continued to get contracts for street paving and regulating, and neither Jonas Humbert nor John Bingham suffered a loss of influence with the Wigwam men.

Meanwhile the Sachems were professing the highest virtue. The society’s calls for meetings ran like this:

The public, however, took another view of the matter. These scandals, and the showing of a deficit in the city’s accounts of $250,000, hurt Tammany’s prestige considerably. The Republican strength in the city at the election of April, 1809, showed a decrease of six hundred votes, the majority being only 116, while the Federalists carried[26] the State, and thus secured control of the Council of Appointment.

The lesson was lost on the leaders. The society at this time was led by various men, of whom Teunis Wortman[13] was considered the chief power. Wortman was as enraged at the defection of these few hundred voters as his successors were at a later day at an adverse majority of tens of thousands. He caused a meeting to be held at Martling’s on May 19, and secured the appointment of a committee, with one member from each of the ten wards, instructed to inquire into the causes contributing to lessen Tammany’s usual majority. The committee was further instructed to call a general meeting of the Republican citizens of the county, on the completion of its investigation, and to report to them, that it might be known who were their friends and who their enemies. Here is to be seen the first manifestation of that systematic discipline which Tammany Hall thereafter exercised. Wortman’s plan excited both Clintonites and Federalists. The committee was called “the committee of spies,” and was regarded generally as the beginning of a system of intimidation and proscription.

In the passionate acrimony of the struggle between Tammany and the Clintons, the Federalists seemed to be well-nigh forgotten. The speakers and writers of each side assailed the other with great fury. One of these was James Cheetham, a Clinton supporter and editor of the American Citizen. Goaded by his strictures, the Tammany Society on the night of February 28, 1809, expelled him from membership on the grounds that he had assailed the general Government and vilified Jefferson.

In the American Citizen of March 1, Cheetham replied that the resolution was carried by trickery. “Tammany Society,” Cheetham continued, “was chartered by the[27] Legislature of the State for charitable purposes. Not a member of the Legislature, when it was chartered, imagined, I dare to say, that it would be thus perverted to the worst purposes of faction.” On May 1 he sent this note to the Grand Sachem:

Cheetham then wrote to Grand Sachem Cowdrey for a certified copy of the proceedings, saying he wanted it to base an action which he would bring for the annulment of the charter of the Tammany Society for misuser. Cowdrey expressed regret at not being able to accommodate him. “Tammany Society,” wrote Cowdrey,

The American Citizen thereupon bristled with fiercer attacks upon Tammany. “Jacobin clubs,” says “A Disciple of Washington,” in this newspaper, July 29, 1809,

Tammany retaliated upon Cheetham by having a bill passed by the Legislature taking away from him the position of State Printer, which paid $3,000 a year.

Tammany’s comparative weakness in the city, as shown in the recent vote, prompted Clinton to suggest a compromise and union of forces. Overtures were made by[28] his agents, and on July 13, 1809, twenty-eight of the leaders of the Clinton, Madison, Burr and Lewis factions met in a private room at Coleman’s Fair House. Matthew L. Davis told them the chiefs ought to unite; experience demonstrated that if they did they would lead the rest—meaning the voters. Tammany, he said, welcomed a union of the Republican forces so as to prevent the election of a Federalist Council of Appointment. Davis and Wortman proposed that they unite to prevent any removals from office; that the two opposition Republican clubs in turn should be destroyed and that their members should go back to the Tammany Society, which, being on the decline, must be reenforced. Or, if it should be thought advisable to put down the Tammany Society, “considering its prevailing disrepute,” then a new society should be organized in which Burrites, Lewisites, Clintonites and Madisonians were to be admitted members under the general family and brotherly name of Republican.

De Witt Clinton cautiously kept away from this meeting, allowing his lieutenants to do the work of outwitting Tammany. A committee of ten was appointed to consider whether a coalition of the chiefs were practicable; whether, if it were, the people would agree to it; whether the Whig (opposition Republican) clubs should be destroyed and whether the Tammany Society should be reenforced.

The meeting came to naught. In this effort to win over the Tammany chiefs, De Witt Clinton abandoned his protégé and dependent, Cheetham, who had made himself obnoxious to them. Finding Clinton’s political and financial support withdrawn, Cheetham, out of revenge, published the proceedings of this secret meeting in the American Citizen, and, awakening public indignation, closed the bargaining. A few nights later a Tammany mob threw brickbats in the windows of Cheetham’s house. By his death, on September 19, 1810, Tammany was freed from one of its earliest and most vindictive assailants.

[29]

The Tammany men fared badly for a time. During 1809 the Council of Appointment removed numbers of them from office. In November the Federalists elected a majority of their Aldermanic ticket, and in April, 1810, they elected their Assembly ticket by the close majority of 36. Even when the Federalists were beaten the following year, it brought no good to Tammany, for a Clintonite Council of Appointment dispensed the offices. Clinton, though ousted from the Mayoralty in 1810 to make room for the Federalist Jacob Radcliff, was again made Mayor in the Spring of 1811.

But before long affairs took another turn. Tammany was the only real Republican organization in the city. It stood for the national party. As men were inclined to vote more for party success than for particular local nominees, Tammany’s candidates were certain to be swept in at some time on the strength of party adherence. While the rank and file of the organization were concerned in seeing its candidates successful only inasmuch as that meant the success of democratic principles, the leaders intrigued constantly for spoils at the expense of principles. But whatever their conduct might be, they were sure of success when the next wave of Republican feeling carried the party to victory.

De Witt Clinton’s following was largely personal. Drawing, it was estimated, from $10,000 to $20,000 a year in salary and fees as Mayor, he lived in high style[30] and distributed bounty liberally among his supporters. His income aroused the wonder of his contemporaries. The President of the United States received $25,000 annually; the Mayor of Philadelphia, $2,000. “Posterity,” said one observer, “will read with astonishment that a Mayor of New York should make the enormous sum of $15,000 out of his office.” This was no inconsequential salary at a time when a man worth $50,000 was thought rich; when a good house could be rented for $350 a year, and $750 or $800 would meet the expenses of the average family. Many of those whom Clinton helped picked a quarrel with him later, in order to have a pretext for the repudiation of their debts, and joined Tammany.

Tammany had the party machine, but Clinton had a powerful hold on the lower classes, especially the Irish. As United States Senator he had been foremost in having the naturalization period reduced from fourteen to five years, and he made himself popular with them in other ways. He, himself, was of Irish descent.

The Irish were bitter opponents of Tammany Hall. The prejudice against allowing “adopted citizens” to mingle in politics was deep; and Tammany claimed to be a thoroughly native body. As early as May 12, 1791, at Campbell’s Tavern, Greenwich, the Tammany Society had announced that being a national body, it consisted of Americans born, who would fill all offices; though adopted Americans were eligible to honorary posts, such as warriors and hunters. An “adopted citizen” was looked upon as an “exotic.” Religious feeling, too, was conspicuous. It was only after repeated hostile demonstrations that Tammany would consent, in 1809, for the first time to place a Catholic—Patrick McKay—upon its Assembly ticket.

The accession of the Livingston family had helped the society, adding the support of a considerable faction and “respectability.” The Livingstons, intent on superseding the Clintons, seized on Tammany as a good lever.[31] Above all, it was necessary to have a full application of “respectability,” and to further that end the society put up a pretentious building—the recent Sun newspaper building. In 1802 the Tammany Society had tried by subscription to build a fine Wigwam, but was unsuccessful. The unwisdom of staying in such a place as Martling’s, which subjected them to gibes, and which was described as “the Den where the Wolves and Bears and Panthers assemble and drink down large potations of beer,” was impressed upon the Sachems who, led by Jacob Barker, the largest shipbuilder in the country at the time, raised the sum of $28,000. The new Wigwam was opened in 1811, with the peculiar Indian ceremonies. Sachem Abraham M. Valentine—the same man who, for malfeasance, was afterward (May 26, 1830) removed from the office of Police Magistrate[1]—was the grand marshal of the day.

From 1811 the Tammany, or Martling, men came under the general term of the Tammany Hall party or Tammany Hall; the general committee was called technically the Democratic-Republican General Committee. The Tammany Society, with its eleven hundred members, now more than ever appeared distinct from the Tammany Hall political body. Though the general committee was supplied with the use of rooms and the hall in the building, it met on different nights from the society, and to all appearances acted independently of it. But the society, in fact, was and continued to be, the secret ruler of the political organization. Its Sachems were chosen yearly from the most influential of the local Tammany political leaders.

De Witt Clinton aimed to be President of the United States and schemed for his nomination by the Republican[32] Legislative caucus. Early in 1811 he sought and received from the caucus the nomination for Lieutenant-Governor. He purposed to hold both the offices of Mayor and Lieutenant-Governor, while spending as much time as he could at Albany so as to bring his direct influence to bear in person. As a State officer he could do this without loss of dignity. He would have preferred the post of State Senator, but he feared if he stood for election in New York City Tammany would defeat him. The chiefs, regarding his nomination as treachery toward Madison, immediately held a meeting and issued a notice that they ceased to consider him a member of the Republican party; that he was not only opposing Madison but was bent on establishing a pernicious family aristocracy.

When the Clinton men tried to hold a counter meeting at the Union Hotel a few days later, the Tammany men rushed in and put them to flight.[2] Tammany was so anxious to defeat Clinton that it supported the Federalist candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, defeating the aggressive Mayor. But Clinton obtained the caucus nomination for President. His partizans voted the Federalist Assembly ticket (1812) rather than aid the Republican ticket of Tammany Hall. Assisted by the Federalists, Clinton received the electoral vote of New York State, but was overwhelmed by Madison. His course seemed precisely that with which Tammany had charged him—treason to the party to which he professed to belong. In a short time, the Wigwam succeeded in influencing nearly all the Republicans in New York City against him.

One other event helped to bring back strength and prestige to Tammany Hall. This was the War of 1812, which Tammany called for and supported. On February 26, four months before war was declared, the Tammany[33] Society passed resolutions recommending immediate war with Great Britain unless she should repeal her “Orders in Council.” The members pledged themselves to support the Government “in that just and necessary war” with their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor.” The conservative element execrated Tammany, but the supporters of the war came to look upon it more favorably, and about a thousand persons, some of whom had been members before but had ceased attendance, applied for membership. Throughout the conflict Tammany Hall was the resort of the war-party. At the news of each victory the flag was hoisted to the breeze and a celebration followed. The successful military and naval men were banqueted there, while hundreds of candles illumined every window in the building. On August 31, 1814, 1150 members of the society marched to build defenses in Brooklyn; but this was not done until public pressure forced it, for by August 15 at least twenty other societies, civil and trades, had volunteered, and Tammany had to make good its pretensions.

The leaders prospered by Madison’s favor. From one contract alone Matthew L. Davis reaped $80,000, and Nathan Sanford was credited with making his office of United States District Attorney at New York yield as high as $30,000 a year. The lesser political workers were rewarded proportionately. Having a direct and considerable interest in the success of Madison’s administration, they were indefatigable partizans. Some of the Tammany leaders proved their devotion to their country’s cause by doing service in the Quartermaster’s Department. Among these were the two Swartwouts (John and Robert), who became Generals, and Romaine, who became a Colonel.

This war had the effect of causing the society to abandon its custom of marching in Indian garb.[3] In 1813 the Indians in the Northwest, incited by British agents,[34] went on the war-path, torturing and scalping, devastating settlements and killing defenseless men, women and children. Their very name became repulsive to the whites. The society seemed to be callous to this feeling, and began preparations for its annual parades, in the usual Indian costumes, with painted faces, wearing bearskins and carrying papooses. The Federalists declared that these exhibitions, at all times ridiculous and absurd, would be little short of criminal after the cruelties which were being committed by the Tammany men of the wilderness. These attacks affected the Tammany Society so much that a majority of the members, consisting mainly of the politicians and young men, held a secret meeting and abolished all imitations of the Indians, in dress and manners as well as in name, and resolved that the officers should thereafter bear plain English titles.

Mooney opposed the change.[4] He would not listen to having those picturesque and native ceremonies, which he himself had ordained, wiped out. He resigned as Grand Sachem, and many of the Sachems went with him. On May 1, 1813, Benjamin Romaine was elected Grand Sachem, and other “reformers” were chosen as Sachems. On July 4 the Tammany Society marched with reduced numbers in ordinary civilian garb. From that time the society contented itself with civilian costume until 1825, when its parades ceased.

The attitude of the political parties to the war had the effect of making Tammany Hall the predominant force in the State, and of disorganizing the Federalist party beyond hope of recovery. Tammany began in 1813 to organize for the control of the State and to put down for all time De Witt Clinton, whom it denounced as having tried to paralyze the energies of Madison’s administration. Meanwhile the Federalist leaders in the city, with a singular lack of tact, were constantly offending the[35] popular feeling with their political doctrines and their haughty airs of superior citizenship. To such an extent was this carried that at times they were mobbed, as on June 29, 1814, for celebrating the return of the Bourbons to the French throne.

The organization of Tammany Hall, begun, as has been seen, by the formation of the general, nominating and correspondence committees, in 1806 and 1808, was now further elaborated. A finance committee, whose duty it was to gather for the leaders a suitable campaign fund, was created, and this was followed by the creation of the Republican Young Men’s General Committee,[5] which was a sort of auxiliary to the general committee, having limited powers, and serving as a province for the ambitions of the young men. The Democratic-Republican General Committee was supposed to comprise only the trusted ward leaders, ripe with years and experience. About the beginning of the War of 1812, it added to its duties the issuing of long public addresses on political topics. These general committees were made self-perpetuating. At the close of every year they would issue a notice to the voters when and where to meet for the election of their successors. No sooner did the committee of one year step out than the newly elected committee instantly took its place. There were also ward or vigilance committees, which were expected to bring every Tammany-Republican voter to the polls, to see that no Federalist intimidation was attempted and to campaign for the party. The Tammany Hall organization was in a superb state by the year 1814, and in active operation ceaselessly. The Federalists, on the contrary, were scarcely organized, and the Clintonites had declined to a mere faction.

The Tammany leaders, moreover, were shrewd and conciliating. About forty Federalists—disgusted, they[36] said, with their party’s opposition to the war—joined the Tammany Society. They were led by Gulian C. Verplanck, who severely assailed Clinton, much to the Wigwam’s delight. Tammany Hall not only received them with warmth, but advanced nearly all of them, such as Jacob Radcliff, Richard Hadfelt, Richard Riker and Hugh Maxwell, to the first public positions. This was about the beginning of that policy, never since abandoned, by which Tammany Hall has frequently broken up opposing parties or factions. The winning over of leaders from the other side and conferring upon them rewards in the form of profitable public office or contracts has been one of the most notable methods of Tammany’s diplomacy.

[37]

By 1815 Tammany Hall obtained control of the State, and in 1816 completely regained that of the city. The Common Council and its dependent offices since 1809 had been more or less under Federalist rule, and from the beginning of the century the city had had a succession of Clintonite office-holders in those posts controlled by the Council of Appointment.

At the close of the War of 1812 the population of the city approached 100,000, and there were 13,941 voters in all. The total expenses of the municipality reached a little over a million dollars. The city had but one public school, which was maintained by public subscription. Water was supplied chiefly by the Manhattan Company, by means of bored wooden logs laid underground from the reservoir in Chambers street. No fire department was dreamed of, and every blaze had the city at its mercy. The streets were uncleaned; only two or three thoroughfares were fit for the passage of carriages, though until 1834 the law required the inhabitants to clean the streets in front of their houses. Many of those elaborate departments which we now associate with political control were then either in an embryo state or not thought of.

The Aldermen were not overburdened with public anxieties. No salary was attached to the office, yet none the less, it was sought industriously. In early days it was regarded as a post of honor and filled as such, but with the[38] beginning of the century it was made a means of profit. The professional politician of the type of to-day was rare. The Aldermen had business, as a rule, upon which they depended and to which they attended in the day, holding sessions of the board sporadically at night. The only exception to this routine was when the Alderman performed some judicial office. Under the law, as soon as an Alderman entered office he became a judge of some of the most important courts, being obliged to preside with the Mayor at the trial of criminals. This system entailed upon the Aldermen the trial of offenses against laws many of which they themselves made, and it had an increasingly pernicious influence upon politics. Otherwise the sole legal perquisites and compensation of the Aldermen consisted in their power and custom of making appropriations, including those for elaborate public dinners for themselves. It was commonly known that they awarded contracts for city necessaries either to themselves or to their relatives.

The backward state of the city, its filthy and neglected condition and the chaotic state of public improvements and expenditures, excited little public discussion. The Common Councils were composed of men of inferior mind. It is told of one of them that hearing that the King of France had taken umbrage he ran home post haste to get his atlas and find out the location of that particular spot. In the exclusive charge of such a body New York City would have struggled along but slowly had it not been for the courage and genius of the man who at one stroke started it on a dazzling career of prosperity. This was De Witt Clinton.

No sooner did a Republican Council of Appointment step into office, early in 1815, than Tammany Hall pressed for the removal of Clinton as Mayor and announced that John Ferguson, the Grand Sachem of the Society, would have to be appointed in his place.[1] The[39] Council, at the head of which was Gov. Tompkins, wavered and delayed, Tompkins not caring to offend the friends of Clinton by the latter’s summary removal. At this the entire Tammany representation, which had gone to Albany for the purpose, grew furious and threatened that not only would they nominate no ticket the next Spring, but would see that none of their friends should accept office under the Council, did it fail to remove Clinton. This action implied the turning out of the Council of Appointment at the next election. Yielding to these menaces, the Council removed Clinton. Then by a compromise, Ferguson was made Mayor until the National Government should appoint him Naval Officer when Jacob Radcliff (Mayor 1810-1811) was to succeed him—an arrangement which was carried out.[2]

The Wigwam was overjoyed at having struck down Clinton, and now expected many years of supremacy. From youth Clinton’s sole occupation had been politics. He had spent his yearly salaries and was deeply in debt. His political aspirations seemed doomed. Stripped, as he appeared, of a party or even a fraction of one, the Sachems felt sure of his retirement to private life forever. In this belief they were as much animated by personal as by political enmity. Clinton had sneered at or ridiculed nearly all of them, and he spoke of them habitually in withering terms.

Besides, to enlarge their power in the city they needed the Mayor’s office. The Mayor had the right to appoint a Deputy Mayor from among the Aldermen, the Deputy Mayor acting with full power in his absence. The Mayor could convene the Common Council, and he appointed and licensed marshals, porters, carriers, cartmen, carmen, cryers, scullers and scavengers, and removed them at[40] pleasure. He licensed tavern-keepers and all who sold excisable liquors by retail. The Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen were ex-officio Justices of the Peace, and were empowered to hold Courts of General Sessions. The Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen were also Justices of Oyer and Terminer; and the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Recorder could preside over the Court of Common Pleas with or without the Aldermen. The gathering of all this power into its own control gave further strength to Tammany Hall.

But the expressions of regret at Clinton’s removal were so spontaneous and sincere that Tammany feigned participation in them and took the utmost pains to represent the removal as only a political exigency. The Common Council (which was now Federalist) passed, on March 21, 1815, a vote of thanks to Clinton for his able administration.[3] Curiously, the very Wigwam men who had made it their business to undertake the tedious travel over bad roads to Albany to effect his removal (Aldermen Smith, George Buckmaster, Mann and Burtis) voted loudest in favor of the resolution.

Out of office, Clinton found time to agitate for the building of a navigable canal between the great western lakes and the tide waters of the Hudson. The idea of this enterprise was not original with him. It had been suggested over thirty years before, but it was he who carried it forward to success. The bigotry and animus with which it was assailed were amazing. Tammany Hall frequently passed resolutions denouncing the project as impracticable and chimerical, declaring that the canal would make a ditch fit to bury its author in. At Albany the Tammany representatives greeted the project with a burst of mockery, and placed obstacle after obstacle in its path.

In the intervals of warring upon Clinton, Tammany[41] was adroitly seizing every post of vantage in the city. The Burr men ruled its councils and directed the policy and nominations of the Republican, or, as it was getting to be more generally known, the Democratic-Republican party. Three men, in particular, were foremost as leaders—George Buckmaster, a boat builder; Roger Strong and Benjamin Prince, a druggist and physician. Teunis Wortman, one of the energetic leaders in 1807-10, was now not quite so conspicuous. What the Wigwam lacked to make its rule in the city complete was a majority in the Common Council. The committees of the Council not only had the exclusive power of expenditures, but they invariably refused an acceptable accounting.[4] The Federalists, though vanishing as a party owing to their attitude in the recent war, still managed, through local dissensions among the Republicans, to retain control of the Common Council. The Federalists, therefore, held the key to the purse. It had always been customary for the Mayor to appoint the Common Council committees from the party which happened to be dominant.

Established forms meant nothing to Mayor Radcliff and to Buckmaster[5] and other Tammany Aldermen, who late in December, 1815, decided to turn out the Federalist chairmen of committees and put Tammany men in their[42] places. Radcliff imprudently printed a handbill of officers he intended appointing, copies of which he sent to his partizans. A copy fell into a Federalist’s hands. At the next meeting, before the Mayor could get a chance to act, the Federalist majority altered the rules so as to vest in future the appointment of all committees in a majority of the board. The Sachems were so enraged at Radcliff’s bungling that they declared they would have him removed from office. About a year afterward they carried out their threat.

In 1816 Tammany elected not only its Congress and Assembly ticket, but a Common Council, by over 1000 majority out of 9000 votes. This victory was the result of the wily policy of further disrupting the Federalist party by nominating its most popular men. Walter Bowne, a late Federalist, an enemy of Clinton and a man of standing in the community, was one of those nominated by Tammany Hall for State Senator, and the support of the wealthy was solicited by the selection of men of their own class, such as Col. Rutgers, said to be the richest man in the State.

Most of Tammany’s early members, certainly the leaders, were now rich and had stepped into the upper middle class; but their wealth could not quite secure them admittance to that stiff aristocracy above them, which demanded something more of a passport than the possession of money. Another body of members were the small tradesmen and the like, to whom denunciations of the aristocracy were extremely palatable. A third class, that of the mechanics and laborers, believed that Tammany Hall exclusively represented them in its onslaughts on the aristocracy. From the demands of these various interests arose the singular sight of Tammany Hall winning the support of the rich by systematically catering to them; of the middle class, which it reflected, and of the poor, in whose interests it claimed to work. The spirit of the Tammany Society was well illustrated in its odd[43] address on public affairs in 1817, wherein it lamented the spread of the foreign game of billiards among the aristocratic youth and the prevalence of vice among the lower classes. Again, in May, 1817, the Tammany majority of the Common Council, under pressure from the religious element, passed an ordinance fining every person $5 who should hunt, shoot, fish, spar or play on Sunday—a law which cut off from the poor their favorite pastimes.

Here, too, another of the secrets by which the organization was enabled to thrive, should be mentioned. This was the “regularity” of its nominations. Teunis Wortman, a few years before, had disclosed the real substance of the principle of “regularity” when he wrote: “The nominating power is an omnipotent one. Though it approaches us in the humble attitude of the recommendation, its influence is irresistible. Every year’s experience demonstrates that its recommendations are commands. That instead of presenting a choice it deprives us of all option.”[6] The plain meaning was that, regardless of the candidate’s character, the mass of the party would vote for him once he happened to be put forth on the “regular” ticket. Fully alive to the value of this particular power, the Tammany Hall General Committee, successively and unfailingly, would invite in its calls for all meetings “those friendly to regular nominations.” Its answer to charges of dictatorship was plain and direct. Discipline was necessary, its leaders said, to prevent aristocrats from disrupting their party by inciting a variety of nominations.

It was through this fertile agency that “bossism” became an easy possibility. With the voters in such a receptive state of mind it was not difficult to dictate nominations. The general committee was composed of thirty members; its meetings were secret and attended seldom by more than fourteen members. So, substantially,[44] fourteen men were acting for over five thousand Republican voters, and eight members of the fourteen composed a majority. Yet the system had all the pretense of being pure democracy; the wards were called upon at regular intervals to elect delegates; the latter chose candidates or made party rules; and the “great popular meeting” accepted or rejected nominees; it all seemed to spring directly from the people.

This exquisitely working machine was in full order when the organization secured a firm hold upon the city in 1816. The newly elected Common Council removed every Federalist possible and put a stanch Tammany man in his place. The Federalist Captains of Police and the heads and subordinates of many departments whose appointments and removal were vested in the Common Council were all ejected. This frequent practice of changes in the police force, solely because of political considerations, had a demoralizing effect upon the welfare of the city.

Both parties were as responsible for this state of affairs as they were for the increase in the city’s debt. To provide revenue the Aldermen repeatedly caused to be sold ground owned by the municipality in the heart of the city. This was one of their clumsy or fraudulent methods of concealing the squandering of city funds, on what no one knew. They were not ignorant that with the growth of the city the value of the land would increase vastly. It was perhaps for this very reason they sold it; for it was generally themselves or the Tammany leaders who were the buyers. One sale was of land fronting Bowling Green, among the purchasers being John Swartwout, Jacob Barker and John Sharpe. A hint as to the fraudulent ways in which the Tammany leaders became rich is furnished by a report made to the Common Council respecting land in Hamilton Square, bought from the city by Jacob Barker, John S. Hunn and others. The report[45] stated that repeated applications for the payment of principal and interest had been made without effect.[7]

By 1817 the Federalists in New York City were crushed, quite beyond hope of resurrection as a winning party. The only remaining fear was Clinton, whose political death the organization celebrated prematurely. Public opinion was one factor Tammany had not conquered.

This inclined more and more daily to the support of Clinton. Notwithstanding all the opposition which narrow-mindedness and hatred could invent, Clinton’s grand project of the Erie Canal became popular—distinctively so throughout the State, then so greatly agricultural. On April 15, 1817, the bill pledging the State to the building of the canal became a law, the Tammany delegation and all their friends voting against it.

Gov. Tompkins becoming Vice-President, a special election to fill the gubernatorial vacancy became necessary. A new and powerful junction of Clinton’s old friends and the disunited Federalists joined in nominating him to succeed Tompkins. This was bitter news to Tammany, which made heroic efforts to defeat him, nominating as its candidate Peter B. Porter, and sending tickets with his name into every county in the State.

Inopportunely for the Wigwam, the resentment of the Irish broke out against it at this time. Tammany’s long-continued refusal to give the Irish proper representation among its nominations, either in the society or for public office, irritated them greatly. On February 7, a writer in a newspaper over the signature “Connal,” averred in an open letter to Matthew L. Davis that on the evening of February 3, the Tammany Society had considered a resolution for the adoption of a new constitution, the object of which was to exclude foreigners entirely from holding office in the society. This may not have been strictly true, but the anti-foreign feeling in the organization[46] was unquestionably strong. The Irish had sought, some time before, to have the organization nominate for Congress Thomas Addis Emmett, an Irish orator and patriot and an ardent friend of Clinton. As Tammany Hall since 1802 had not only invariably excommunicated all Clintonites, but had broken up such Clinton meetings as were held, this demand was refused without discussion. The Irish grew to regard Tammany Hall as the home of bigotry; the Wigwam, in turn, was resolved not to alienate the prejudiced native support by recognizing foreigners; furthermore, the Irish were held to be Clintonites trying to get into Tammany Hall and control it.

The long-smouldering enmity burst out on the night of April 24, 1817, when the general committee was in session. Two hundred Irishmen, assembled at Dooley’s Long Room, marched in rank to the Wigwam and broke into the meeting room. The intention of their leaders was to impress upon the committee the wisdom of nominating Emmett for Congress, as well as other Irish Catholics on the Tammany ticket in future, but the more fiery spirits at once started a fight. Eyes were blackened, noses and heads battered freely. The invaders broke the furniture, using it for weapons and shattering it maliciously; tore down the fixtures and shivered the windows. Reinforcements arriving, the intruders were driven out, but not before nearly all present had been bruised and beaten.[8]

Clinton received an overwhelming majority for Governor, Porter obtaining a ridiculously small vote in both New York City and the rest of the State.[9] Thus in the feud between Tammany Hall and DeWitt Clinton, the latter, lacking a political machine and basing his contest solely on a political idea—that of internal improvements—emerged triumphant.

[47]

With Gov. Clinton at the head of the Council of Appointment, Tammany men expected the force of his vengeance. They were not disappointed. He removed many of them for no other reason than that they belonged to the organization.

Hoping to make terms with him, the Wigwam Assemblymen, early in 1818, presented to the Council of Appointment a petition praying for the removal of Mayor Radcliff and the appointment in his place of William Paulding, Jr. “Radcliff,” the paper read, “is an unfit person longer to fill that honorable and respectful office.” Clinton smiled at this ambidexterity. It was rumored that he intended to award the honor to Cadwallader D. Colden, a Federalist supporter of the War of 1812, and one of the Federalists Tammany Hall had sent to the Assembly in 1817, as a means of breaking up that party. Colden now let it be understood that he sided with Clinton.

The whole Tammany delegation lived in a single house at Albany and met in a large room, No. 10, in Eagle Tavern. “This system of acting as a separate body,” admitted Tammany’s own organ,[1] “was very injudicious to our city. It created suspicion and distrust among country members; it looked like a separate interest; a combination of a powerful delegation to frown down or overpower[48] the delegation of a smaller county.” Colden did not join in these nightly meetings. One day he was coaxed in to take a glass of wine. To his surprise, upon opening the door of No. 10, he found the delegation in caucus. The meeting seemed to be waiting for him before transacting business. He had scarcely taken a seat, when one of the members arose, and in a long speech protested against any member of the city delegation accepting an office, and suggested that each member should pledge himself not to do so. Colden saw at once that the resolution was directed against himself. He exclaimed energetically against the trickery, declaring that he had not asked for the office of Mayor, but would accept it if offered. The meeting broke up; Colden was appointed Mayor, and Tammany Hall from that time denounced him.

In Albany, Clinton was vigorously pushing forward the Erie Canal project; the Tammany men were as aggressively combatting it.[2] While Clinton was thus absorbed in this great public enterprise the Wigwam was enriching its leaders in manifold ways. An instance of this was the noted Barker episode. Jacob Barker was a Sachem, a leader of great influence in the political organization, and such a power in financial and business circles that at one time he defied the United States Bank. He and Matthew L. Davis were Burr’s firmest friends to the hour of Burr’s death. Early in 1818 a bill prohibiting private banking, prepared at the instance of the incorporated banks, which sought a monopoly, passed the Senate; though as a special favor to Barker the Senate exempted from its provisions the latter’s Exchange Bank for three years. But Barker desired an indefinite lease. To create a show of public sentiment he had the hall packed with his friends and creatures on April 14, when resolutions were passed stating that the proposed bill would destroy all competition with the incorporated banks, “benefit the rich, oppress[49] the poor, extend the power of existing aristocracies, and terminate the banking transactions of an individual whose loans have been highly advantageous to many laborious and industrious mechanics and neighboring farmers.” The Legislature granted the privileges Barker asked. A few years later (1826) the sequel to this legislative favoritism appeared in the form of one of the most sensational trials witnessed in early New York.

The year 1818 saw Tammany Hall in the unusual position of advocating a protective tariff. The War of 1812 having injured domestic manufacturing, the demand for such a measure was general. Party asperity had softened, and Republicans, or Democrats—as they were coming to be known—and Federalists alike favored it. The society made the best of this popular wave. It issued an address, advising moderate protective duties on foreign goods. But New York then, and until after the Civil War, was a great shipbuilding center; and the shipbuilders and owners and the importing merchants soon influenced Tammany to revert to the stanch advocacy of free trade.

The almost complete extinction of national party lines under Monroe caused the disappearance of violent partizan recriminations and brought municipal affairs more to public attention. From 1817 onward public bodies agitated much more forcibly and persistently than before for the correction of certain local evils. Chief among these were the high taxes. In 1817 the city tax levy was $180,000; in 1818 it rose to $250,000, “an enormous amount,” one newspaper said. Though the city received annually $200,000 in rents from houses and lots, for wharves, slips and piers, and also a considerable amount from fines, yet there was a constantly increasing deficit. The city expenses were thought to be too slight to devour the ordinary revenue. The Democratic, or Tammany, officials made attempts to explain that much of the debt was contracted under Federalist Common Councils, and[50] said that sufficient money must be provided or “the poor would starve.”

At almost the identical time this plea was entered, E. C. Genet was laying before the Grand Jury a statement to this effect: that although it was known that the aggregate capital of the incorporated banks, insurance and commission companies in New York City, exclusive of one branch of the United States Bank, amounted in 1817 to about $22,000,000, in addition to the shares in those companies, yet the city and States taxes combined “on all that vast personal estate in New York City are only a paltry $97,000.”

The explanation of the blindness of the Wigwam officials to the escape of the rich from taxation is simple. The Tammany Hall of 1818 was not the Tammany Hall of 1800. In that interval the poor young men who once had to club together in order to vote had become directors in banking, insurance and various other corporations, which as members of the Legislature or as city officials they themselves had helped to form. Being such, they exerted all the influence of their political machinery to save their property from taxation. From about 1805 to 1837 Tammany Hall was ruled directly by about one-third bankers, one-third merchants and the remaining third politicians of various pursuits. The masses formed—except at rare times—the easily wielded body. The leaders safeguarded their own interests at every point, however they might profess at election times an abhorrence of the aristocracy; and the Grand Jury being of them, ignored Genet’s complaint.

A new series of revelations concerning the conduct of Tammany chieftains was made public during 1817-18. Ruggles Hubbard, a one-time Sachem and at the time Sheriff of the county, absconded from the city August 15, 1817, leaving a gap in the treasury.[3] John L. Broome,[51] another Sachem, was shortly after removed from the office of City Clerk by the Council of Appointment for having neglected to take the necessary securities from Hubbard. John P. Haff, a one-time Grand Sachem and long a power in the organization, was removed by President Monroe on November 14, 1818, from the office of Surveyor of the Port, for corruption and general unfitness.[4]

But the most sensational of these exposures was that concerning the swindling of the Medical Science Lottery, by which Naphtali Judah[5] and others profited handsomely. The testimony brought out before Mayor Colden, November 10, 1818, showed that a corrupt understanding existed between Judah and one of the lottery’s managers, by which the former was enabled to have a knowledge of the state of the wheel. Not less than $100,000 was drawn on the first day, of which Judah received a large share. Further affidavits were submitted tending to show a corrupt understanding between Judah and Alderman Isaac Denniston in the drawing of the Owego Lottery, by which Denniston won $35,000. John L. Broome was also implicated in the scandal, and Teunis Wortman, while not directly concerned in it, was considered involved by the public, and suffered a complete loss of popular favor,[6] though retaining for some time a certain[52] degree of influence in the society and organization.

Always as popular criticism began to assert itself, Tammany would make a sudden display of patriotism, accompanied by the pronouncement of high-sounding toasts and other exalted utterances. Such it did in 1817, when the society took part in the interment of the remains of Gen. Montgomery in St. Paul’s Church. And now the Sachems prepared to entertain Andrew Jackson at a banquet, and also indirectly signify that he was their choice for President. William Mooney, again elected Grand Sachem, sent to Gen. Jackson, under date of February 15, 1819, a grandiloquent letter of invitation which, referring to the battle of New Orleans, said in part:

Jackson accepted the invitation. Cadwallader D. Colden, who had been reappointed Mayor a few days before, was asked to preside. When, on February 23, the banquet was held and Jackson was called for his toast, Colden arose, and to the consternation of the Tammany men proposed: “De Witt Clinton, the Governor of the great and patriotic State of New York.” This surprising move made it appear that Jackson favored the Clinton party. To counteract the impression, the General instantly[53] left the room, “amidst reiterated applauses,” and a dead silence ensued for three minutes. This incident, it may well be believed, did not dampen the society’s enthusiasm for Jackson; it continued to champion him ardently.

Colden was reappointed Mayor for the third time in February, 1820. Municipal issues were dividing the public consideration with Tammany’s renewed efforts to overthrow Clinton. The report of the Common Council Finance Committee, January 10, 1820, showed that the city would soon be $1,300,000 in debt. An attempt was made to show how the money had been spent on the new City Hall and Bellevue Hospital, but it proved nothing. Although the law expressly prohibited Aldermen from being directly or indirectly interested in any contract or job, violations were common. It was alleged that streets were sunk, raised and sunk again, to enable the contractors to make large claims against the city. To soothe public clamor, the Aldermen made a show of reducing city expenses. The salary of Colden—he being a Clintonite—was reduced $2,500, and the pay of various other city officers was cut down. The salaries of the Wigwam men were not interfered with.

The wholesome criticism of municipal affairs was soon obscured again by the reviving tumult of the contest between Tammany and Clinton. The Governor stood for reelection against Daniel D. Tompkins in April, 1820. Tompkins had long been the idol of the Tammany men and for a time was one of the society’s Sachems. In 1818 he had been practically charged with being a public defaulter. State Controller Archibald M’Intyre submitted to the Legislature a mass of his vouchers, public and private (for the time Tompkins was Governor), which showed a balance against him of $197,297.64. In this balance, however, was included the sum of $142,763.60 which was not allowed to Tompkins’s credit because the vouchers were insufficient. Allowing Tompkins this[54] amount, the balance against him was $54,533.44. Tompkins, on the other hand, claimed the State owed him $120,000. His partisans in the Senate in 1819 passed a bill to re-imburse him, but it was voted down in the Assembly.[7]

The statements of both sides during the campaign of 1820 were filled with epithets and strings of accusations. Tammany contrasted Clinton’s alleged going over to the British with Tompkins’s patriotism in the War of 1812. Party lines were broken down, and Federalists and Tammany men acted together, as they had done the year before (1819), when their Legislative ticket won over the Clintonites by 2,500 majority. The Clintonites were tauntingly invited to visit the Wigwam, because in that “stronghold of Democracy would be found no ‘Swiss’ Federalism, no British partizans, no opponents of the late war, no bribers or bribed for bank charters, no trimming politicians, no lobby members or legislative brokers.” In Tammany Hall they would see a body of independent yeomen, of steady and unerring Republicans and men who rallied around their country in the hour of danger.[8]

While Clinton’s adherents in New York City on election day were inactive, his opponents, ever on the lookout, carried the city by 675 majority. The popularity of the Erie Canal, however, which was fast nearing completion, carried the rest of the State for Clinton.[9] “Heads up! tails down,” shouted the exuberant, successful Clintonites some days after, pointing to the disappointed, discomfited Bucktails. For Tammany had been so sure of Tompkins’s[55] election that it had procured, at considerable expense, a painting of him which was to be exhibited in the hall when the news of his election should arrive. By way of consolation the Sachems drank to this toast at their anniversary on May 12:

[56]

Tammany Hall now entered upon a step destined to change its composition and career, and greatly affect the political course of the State and nation.

From its inception the society had declared among its objects the accomplishment of two special reforms—the securing of manhood suffrage and the abolition of the law for the imprisonment of debtors. No steps so far had been taken by either the organization or the society toward the promotion of these reforms; first, because the leaders were engaged too busily in the contest for office, and second, because Tammany Hall, though professing itself devoted to the welfare of the poor, was, to repeat, essentially a middle-class institution. Having property themselves, the men who controlled and influenced the organization were well satisfied with the laws under which Tammany had grown powerful and they rich; they could not see why so blissful a state of affairs should be changed for something the outcome of which was doubtful. The farmer, the independent blacksmith, the shoemaker with an apprentice or two, the grocer—these had votes, and though they looked with envy on the aristocratic class above them, yet they were not willing that the man with the spade should be placed on a political equality with themselves. In addition, most of the aristocratic rich were opposed to these reforms, and the Tammany leaders were either ambitious to enter that class or desirous of not estranging it. Lastly, the lower classes had sided with[57] Clinton generally; they regarded him as their best friend; to place the ballot unrestrictedly in their hands, Tammany Hall reckoned, would be fatuous. As to the debtors’ law, the tradesmen that thronged Tammany were only too well satisfied with a statute that allowed them to throw their debtors, no matter for how small an amount, into jail indefinitely.

Agitation for these two reforms, begun by a few radicals, gradually made headway with the public. The demand for manhood suffrage made the greater progress, until in 1820 it overshadowed all other questions. The movement took an such force and popularity that Tammany Hall was forced, for its own preservation, to join. Agreeable to instructions, the National Advocate, September 13, 1820, began to urge the extension of the right of suffrage and the abolition of those cumbersome relics of old centralizing methods, the Council of Appointment and the Council of Revision—the latter a body passing finally on all laws enacted by the Legislature. On October 7, a meeting of Democrats from all parts of the State was held in the Wigwam, Stephen Allen presiding, and the Legislature was called upon to provide for a constitutional convention for the adoption of the amendments.

The aristocracy and all the powers at its command assailed the proposed reforms with passionate bitterness. “Would you admit the populace, the patron’s coachman to vote?” asked one Federalist writer. “His excellency (the Governor) cannot retain the gentry, the Judges, and the ‘manors’ in his interest without he opposes either openly or clandestinely every attempt to enlarge the elective franchise.” “We would rather be ruled by a man without an estate than by an estate without a man,” replied one reform writer. The Legislature passed a bill providing for the holding of a constitutional convention, and the Council of Revision, by the deciding vote of Clinton, promptly rejected it. Doubtless this action was due to the declared intention of the advocates[58] of the constitutional convention to abolish this body. Again an assemblage gathered at Tammany Hall (December 1) and resolved that as the “distinction of the electorial rights, the mode of appointment to office and the union of the judiciary and legislative functions were objectional and highly pernicious,” the next Legislature should pass the pending bill.

Upon this issue a Legislature overwhelmingly favorable to the extension of suffrage and other projected reforms was elected. The aristocratic party opened a still fiercer onslaught. But when the Legislature repassed the convention bill, the Council of Revision did not dare to veto it. The convention bill was promptly submitted to the people and ratified. On the news of its success the Democratic voters celebrated the event in the Wigwam, June 14, 1821.

Beaten so far, the Federalists tried to form a union with the reactionary element in Tammany Hall by which they could elect delegates opposed to the projected reforms. All opposition was unavailing, however; the reformers had a clear majority in the convention, and the new amendments, embodying the reforms, were submitted to the people. They were adopted in January, 1822, the city alone giving them 4608 majority.[1] When the Legislature took oath under the revised constitution on March 4, the bells of the city churches were rung; flags were flung on the shipping and public buildings; “a grand salute” was fired by a corps of artillery from the Battery; the City Hall was illuminated at night, and the municipality held a popular reception there. In Tammany Hall a[59] gala banquet was spread, one toast of which ran: “The right of suffrage—Corruption in its exercise most to be apprehended from its limitation to a few.” After that pronouncement, so edifying in view of later developments, came another as instructive: “The young and rising politician—May integrity and principle guide him—studying the public good, not popularity.”

So Tammany Hall built for itself a vast political following, which soon made it practically invincible.

[60]

Inevitably the greater part of the newly created voters gravitated to Tammany Hall, but they did not instantly overrun and rule it.

A new set of leaders came in view. Wortman and Judah had been forced from public life through the lottery exposures of 1818, and Broome had lost prestige. Hubbard had fled; Haff, Buckmaster, Strong and Prince were no longer powerful, and Jonas Humbert, who until 1820 had been a person of some authority, was now no longer in public notice. Stephen Allen and Mordecai M. Noah, with a following of some of the old Burrites, were now regarded as being at the helm.

The pro-Tammany Council of Appointment chosen late in 1820, before the new constitutional amendments were adopted, had removed Colden and appointed Allen (Grand Sachem about this time) Mayor[1] in his place. Noah was made Sheriff, and all the other offices were filled with Wigwam men.

The new voting element coming into the organization had to be impressed with the traditional principle of discipline. Otherwise there might be all kinds of nominations, whose effect upon the machine-made “regular” nominations of the organization would be disastrous, if not destructive. To this end the different ward committees[61] passed resolutions (April 27 and 28, 1822) declaring in nearly identical terms that the sense of a majority, fairly expressed, ought always to govern, and that no party, however actuated by principle, could be truly useful without organization. “Therefore, that the discipline of the Republican party, as established and practised for the last twenty-five years, has, by experience, been found conducive to the general good and success of the party.”[2]

In 1822 Clinton declined to stand for reelection. Tammany Hall was considered so invincible in the city that the Clintonites and the remnant of the Federalists refused to nominate contesting candidates for Congress and the Legislature. Experience demonstrating that almost all the voters cast their ballots for the “regular” ticket without asking questions, competition for a place on that ticket, which now was equivalent to election, became sharp. When, on October 30, the nominating committee reported the name of M. M. Noah for the office of Sheriff, Benjamin Romaine moved to have that of Peter H. Wendover substituted. Two factors were at work here; one was religious prejudice against Noah, who was a Jew; the other and greater, was the struggle between the partizans of Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and William H. Crawford to get control of Tammany Hall, as a necessary preliminary to the efforts of each for the nomination for President.[3] Romaine was an Adams supporter and could easily have nominated a ticket independent of Tammany Hall, but it would have lacked “regularity,” and hence popular support. A row ensued; and while Noah’s party rushed out of Tammany Hall claiming the “regular” nomination, the other faction, by the light of a solitary candle, passed resolutions denouncing[62] Noah and claiming that Wendover was the “regular” nominee.

Each of the candidates put himself before the people, declaring that a majority of the nominating committee favored him as “regular.” The leaders of the organization inclined to Noah, as one of its heads, but Wendover skillfully appealed to Anti-Semitic bigotry and gathered a large following. The Sachems dared not interfere between them, and each in consequence had a room in Tammany Hall, where his tickets were distributed and his agents made their headquarters. Noah was defeated at the polls; but his defeat did not impair his influence in Tammany Hall. He was a person of singular ability. A facile writer and effective manipulator, he maintained his hold.

“Regularity,” then, was the agency by which the leaders imposed their candidates upon the thousands of voters who, from their stores and benches, offices and farms, went to the polls to deposit a list of names prepared for them. The voters were expected only to vote; the leaders assumed the burden of determining for whom the voting should be done. An instance of the general recognition of this fact was given in 1820 when the counties of Suffolk, Queens, Kings and Dutchess voted to discontinue the practice of holding Senatorial conventions in Tammany Hall because a fair expression of the wishes of a great proportion of the Democratic-Republican electors was not obtainable there. At the same time, and for years later, complaints were frequent that the ward meetings had long since become an object of so little interest that they were nearly neglected; and that a small knot of six or eight men managed them for their own purposes.

In 1823 attempts were made by different factions to obtain the invaluable “regular” nominations. Seemingly a local election, the real point turned on whether partisans of Jackson, Adams or Crawford should be chosen. Upon this question Tammany Hall was still[63] divided. The nominating committee, however, was for Jackson. The voters were bidden to assemble in the hall at 7 o’clock on the evening of October 30 to hear that committee’s report. When they tried to enter, they found the hall occupied by the committee and its friends. This was a new departure in Tammany practices. Since the building of the hall the nominating committee had always waited in a lower room for the opening of the great popular meeting, and had then marched up stairs and reported. To head off expected hostile action by the Adams men, the committee this time started proceedings before the appointed hour. The names of its candidates were called and affirmed in haste. Gen. Robert Swartwout, a corrupt but skillful politician and an Adams supporter, proposed a substitute list of names, upon which the chairman declared that the meeting stood adjourned. A general fist-fight followed, in the excitement of which Swartwout took the chair, read off a list of names and declared it adopted. Epithets, among which “liar” and “traitor” figured most, were distributed freely. Both tickets went to the people under the claim of “regularity,” and each carried five of the ten wards.

Though Robert Swartwout[4] was for Adams, another Swartwout (Samuel), an even shrewder politician, was Jackson’s direct representative in the task of securing the organization’s support for President. A third and less important group were the Crawford advocates. They were led by Gen. John P. Van Ness, an adroit intriguer[64] and one of the old Burr chieftains of Tammany. In 1821 Adams, then Secretary of State, ascertaining that Van Ness, as president of the Bank of the Metropolis, was indebted to that institution to the amount of $60,000 and that its affairs were in bad condition, transferred the account of the State Department to another bank. From that time Van Ness bore deep hatred against Adams, and supported Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, for President. Crawford had deposited as a standing balance with Van Ness about the same sum Adams had withdrawn, notwithstanding the bank’s suspicious character. The Crawford men went first about the business of obtaining complete ascendency in the Tammany Society. With that end in view they tried in 1823 to elect a Grand Sachem favoring Crawford. The old Burr faction now brought forth a Presidential candidate of its own in the person of John C. Calhoun, and taking advantage of the absence of most of the society’s members, dexterously managed to elect William Todd, a partisan of Calhoun, Grand Sachem.

The popular voice for Jackson becoming daily stronger, some of the Adams leaders changed about. Perhaps having a premonition that Adams would be chosen President by the House of Representatives, the general committee of Tammany Hall, on October 3, 1823, resolved that the election of President by that branch of Congress was “an event to be deprecated,” and that the constitution ought to be so amended as to give the election directly to the people without the intervention of electors. The ward committees passed similar resolutions. This action was on a line with that of a few years before when the Wigwam, fearing the nomination of Clinton for Governor by legislative caucus, recommended that State nominations be made by a State convention of delegates. In the following April (1824) Jackson’s friends filled Tammany Hall and nominated him for President.

Before the election came on, however, the organization,[65] in the full swing of power, again brought public odium upon itself. De Witt Clinton, having filled his gubernatorial term, was now serving in the modest post of a Canal Commissioner, without pay and utterly without political power. Yet Tammany carried its hatred of him so far as to cause the Legislature to remove him (April 12, 1824), despite the protests of a few of its more sagacious members.[5]

Naturally, this petty act caused an immediate and strong reaction in a community endeared to Clinton by that splendid creation of his energy—the Erie Canal. No sooner did the news reach New York City than 10,000 persons held an indignation meeting in the City Hall Park and in front of Tammany Hall. Throughout the State similar meetings were held. In spite of the politicians, the cyclonic popular movement forced Clinton to be again a candidate for Governor.

The chiefs regretted their folly. At the same time they were subjected to public criticism in another direction. One of them, William P. Van Ness, Burr’s companion at the Hamilton duel, a Judge of the United States District Court, took it upon himself to select Tammany Hall permanently for a court-room, his object being to have the Government pay rent to the Tammany Society. His colleague, Judge Thompson, a scrupulous official, indignantly asked why the courts were not to be held in the City Hall, as usual. Judge Van Ness defiantly held court in Tammany Hall, Judge Thompson going to the City Hall. Public disgust asserting itself, an investigation was set afoot. Van Ness tried to throw the blame on his marshal. But this officer, as was conclusively shown, acted under written instructions from Van Ness in refusing to consider any other place than Tammany Hall, and he agreed to pay to the society $1,500 a year rent. The lease, which was made under the plea that no room was[66] available in the City Hall, contained a stipulation that not only should the tavern be allowed in Tammany Hall but that the court-room should be used, when required, as the meeting place of the society or of the political conventions. The citizens assembled in the wards and denounced the proceeding. The Aldermen decided to shift the responsibility which Van Ness attempted to place upon them. Their committee reported (October 24, 1824),[6] that the City Hall always had been and would be at the service of the United States Court Judges, and that a room had been set apart especially for their use. Judge Van Ness was forced to return to the City Hall to hold court.[7]

Tammany now had recourse to its customary devices in endeavoring to bring out its usual vote in the coming election. The general committee announced that at no period in the last twenty years had the welfare and perpetuity of the party more imperiously required a rigid adherence to ancient usages and discipline. This was meant to play on the partizan emotions of the Democrats. It was likewise a threat to punish any man of independent views who disobeyed the orders of the general committee. Such summary, veiled notifications of the general committee were seldom disregarded by those who profited or expected to profit by politics. After toasting their “squaws and papooses” on July 4 the society impressively made this toast: “May regular nominations ever prevail”—a thrust at the method of Clinton’s nomination and a warning for the future guidance of all Tammany men.

Tammany further attempted to counteract the impetus of the Clinton movement by touching at length upon its own patriotism in the past and by stirring up class hatreds. On the vital issues the Wigwam was silent; but in another long fulmination it recalled the “sins” and[67] “treason” of Clinton against the Democratic party. “He is haughty in his manners,” it went on, “and a friend of the aristocracy—cold and distant to all who cannot boast of wealth and family distinctions and selfish in all the ends he aims at.”

The partizans of Jackson carried the city. Presidential electors were still selected by the Legislature, and it is therefore impossible to determine Jackson’s vote. A fusion between the Clintonites and the People’s party caused the defeat of most of Tammany’s Assembly candidates, but the victors were Jackson men, and Clinton himself had declared for Old Hickory. The full Jackson strength was shown in the vote for the three Tammany candidates for Congress, who were elected.

Clinton’s victory was sweeping. The near completion of the Erie Canal, for which he had labored so zealously and which Tammany had opposed so pertinaciously, made him the idol of the people, and he was again elected Governor, carrying even New York City by 1,031 majority. That eye was blind which could not see in the opening of the canal the incalculable benefits Clinton had estimated from the first. This great work secured as a virtual gift to New York City the inland commerce of the vast empire west of the mountains, no rival being able to contend for it. The trade of the canal almost immediately increased the city’s business $60,000,000 annually, and year by year the amount grew. Along its course a hundred new and thrifty villages sprang into existence, and the State’s wealth and population went upward by leaps and bounds.

Compared with this illustrious achievement, a summary of the record of Clinton’s antagonists, the Tammany leaders, makes but a poor showing. Contributing to the development of democracy, for the most part, only so far as it benefited themselves; declining to take up even the question of manhood suffrage until forced to, they did little or nothing, even in the closer domain of the city, for the good of their own time or of posterity. In the[68] years when Clinton was engaged in projecting and building the canal, they were too busy wrangling over offices or cribbing at the public treasury to improve city conditions. The streets were an abomination of filth. The local authorities long refused, despite public pressure, to take steps to have the city furnished with pure water. As a result of the bad water of a private corporation and the uncleanliness of the streets, yellow fever and cholera had several times devastated the city, and in one year (1822) it was so deserted that grass grew in the streets. To make up for municipal deficits the city fathers continued selling the public land, that might have been made into parks or retained for future uses, buying it in as individuals. Between 1813 and 1819, according to the admission of the Tammany organ in the latter year, $440,347 worth of land, whose present value probably amounts to tens of millions of dollars, was thus fraudulently disposed of.[8] In a word, their records, public and private, furnish an extreme contrast to the record of Clinton, who, while a politician when need be, gave his years and his talents to the completion of a public work of the greatest utility and importance.

[69]

Factional strife had not entirely smothered the demand for improvement in the city government.[1] The arbitrary powers of the Common Council, composed, as it was, of one Board in which sat both Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen, excited general dissatisfaction. Having the power of making assessments, ordering public improvements, and disposing of the public property at will, the Aldermen made no detailed account of their expenditures. One writer advised the Aldermen to curtail some of their own extravagances: “Why not stop,” he wrote,

The State constitution of 1821-22 had granted the Common Council greater powers than before in vacating and filling important offices in the city. In 1823 the city debt was rising, and though the Common Council professed to attempt retrenchment, no real effort was made, the fathers being loth to give over the voting of pretended improvements out of which they benefited as individual contractors. The agitation continuing, the Legislature,[70] in April, 1824, had passed a law to “erect” two separate chambers—a Board of Aldermen to be elected from among the freeholders for two years, and a Board of Assistants for one year, with concurrent powers. The opponents of the new branch termed it derisively the “House of Lords” and denounced its aristocratic nature. The amendment was defeated by the radicals in June, though the interest in it was slight. Over 8,000 electors failed to vote.

Other schemes for municipal reform dissolved in talk, and by the Spring of 1825 public attention became concentrated again on the matter of Jackson’s candidacy for the office of President. Barely had John Quincy Adams been inaugurated when Tammany set about to make Jackson his successor. On May 12 Sachem Nicholas Schureman, at the anniversary celebration of the society, gave this toast: “Jackson, the Hero of New Orleans, our next President.” Again, on July 4, the principal toast was to Jackson.[2]

The Jackson campaign went energetically on. But it was rudely interrupted during the following Autumn by a fresh series of revelations regarding certain Tammany chieftains. The legislative favoritism by which Jacob Barker was enabled to secure advantages for his Exchange Bank (1818)[3] now culminated in a grave public scandal. In September, 1826, Barker, Henry Eckford, another of the line of Sachems; Matthew L. Davis, lately Grand Sachem, and several other accomplices were principals in one of the most extended and sensational trials which the city had known. They stood charged with swindles aggregating several million dollars. The Grand Jury’s indictment of September 15 charged them, and also[71] Mark Spencer, William P. Rathbone, Thomas Vermilyea and others, with defrauding the Mechanics’ Fire Insurance Company of 1,000 shares of its own capital stock, 1,000 shares of United States Bank stock and $50,000; the Fulton Bank of 2,000 shares of its own capital stock and $50,000; the Tradesmen’s Bank of 2,000 shares of its own capital stock and $50,000; the Morris Canal and Banking Company of 2,000 shares of its own capital stock and $50,000; and the Life and Fire Insurance Company of 2,000 shares of its own capital stock. The indictment further charged these men with obtaining fraudulently 1,000 promissory notes for the amount of nearly $100 each, belonging to the Fulton Bank; and the same number of notes for similar sums belonging respectively to the Tradesmen’s Bank, the Morris Canal and Banking Company, and the Life and Fire Insurance Company, and with additionally obtaining by fraud the sum of $50,000, the property of Henry Barclay, George Barclay and others.[4]

A disagreement of the jury marked the first trial; the second brought a conviction of the prisoners. Tammany Hall was unwilling to see any of its leaders go to prison. As soon as the storm of popular indignation blew over, a new trial was had for Davis, and owing to strong political influence his acquittal was the outcome. Barker was again convicted, but, thanks to the discreet use of his money, never saw a cell. He went South and lived on till over ninety years of age.[5] Eckford fled to the Orient and died in Syria. The severity of the law fell on the minor offenders, two of whom, Mowatt and Hyatt, went to prison for two years, and the Lambert brothers for one year.

The trial over, public interest again centered on the Presidential struggle. Alive to the necessity of winning[72] Tammany to his interest, President Adams chose most of his New York appointees from its organization, thereby creating in that body an alert clique of devoted partizans. If the leaders had been able to direct the organization absolutely, Adams might have bribed nearly all of them with offices, favors or promises, but there were other deciding factors. The first was the mass of the Democrats who favored Jackson and forced most of the leaders to his support. The second was the organizing genius of Martin Van Buren. He was a member of the Tammany Society, and in September, 1827, he visited New York to compose the discord in the general committee, which was divided equally on the question of the Presidency, although in the society itself a majority was for Jackson. The Jackson men quickly gained predominant influence. On September 27 the general committee recommended in a public address to its “fellow-citizens” that when they met in their wards, they should elect such citizens only, to represent them in their different committees, as were favorable to Jackson. The Adams men were enraged.[6] Col. James Fairlie, a veteran of the Revolution; Benjamin Romaine, Peter Sharpe, William Todd, W. H. Ireland, Abraham Stagg, Peter Stagg and John L. Lawrence, known as “the elite” of Tammany Hall, and others, denounced this action. “Was such a power of proscription and dictation ever delegated to or practised by any other general committee?” they asked in an address.

The ward primary elections on the night of October 3 were tumultuous. The Jackson men took possession of the meeting rooms, installed their own chairmen and passed resolutions, without allowing the Adams supporters a chance to be heard. Both factions then alternately[73] held meetings in Tammany Hall. So determined was the struggle to get possession of the Wigwam that the Adams men contrived to expel their opponents from it for one day, and the Jackson men had to make their nominations in the cellar called “the Coal Hole.” At a later meeting of the Adams faction, embracing a group of old Federalists, Col. Marinus Willett, a venerable Revolutionary patriot, who presided, spoke of “the danger and absurdity of confiding the destinies of the country to a mere arbitrary soldier.” The meeting passed resolutions denouncing the general committee majority and reiterating its support of Adams. The Jackson men rallied to the Wigwam in force and approved the ticket nominated in “the Coal Hole.” The nominees were for local offices and were themselves of no particular importance. The great question was whether New York City favored Jackson or Adams, and the coming election was the accepted test.

The Jackson men made desperate efforts to carry the city. Now were observable the effects brought about by the suffrage changes of 1822 and 1826. The formerly disinherited class had become attached to Tammany Hall, and the organization, entirely reversing its exclusive native policy, declared for a reduction of the five-year naturalization period. From that time forth the patronage of aliens became a settled policy of Tammany. In this election these aliens exercised a powerful influence, materially aiding Jackson.

Cases of fraud and violence had hitherto been frequent; but nothing like the exhibition at the primaries and polls in November, 1827, had ever been known. Cart-loads of voters, many of whom had been in the country less than three years, were used as repeaters in the different wards. An instance was known of one cart-load of six men voting at six different places. Other men boasted of having voted three and four times. In an upper ward, where the foreign population had full sway, an American found it almost impossible to appear or vote at all. If he tried the[74] experiment, he was arrested immediately, his votes were taken from him and Jackson votes put in his hands. Many of the polling places had no challengers, and most of the inspectors did duty for the Jackson ticket by a display of stout hickory branches. By such means the Jackson men rolled up in the city a majority of nearly five thousand.

Reflective citizens of both parties were alarmed and humiliated by the events of the election. The public conscience was not used to the indiscriminate stuffing of ballot boxes. To the revelations of this election can be traced the origin of the Native American party, whose cry that “political privileges should belong exclusively to the natives of the country” even now was heard.

Though a year before the time for choosing a President, the result of this election strongly indicated the choice of Jackson and caused great exultation and encouragement among his supporters in other cities. In the Winter of 1827, Tammany sent a delegation to visit him at New Orleans, ostensibly to present an address on the anniversary of the battle of New Orleans, but in reality, it was supposed, to confer with him on the work to be done in his behalf. By the beginning of 1828 the organization was controlled wholly by Jackson men. Not a nomination, however petty, was made of a man not known to be his partizan. The great body of Democrats approved this course on the ground that Jackson’s election was the real issue, and that local issues were subordinate for the time. When the Adams men tried to hold anti-Jackson meetings in the Wigwam, the Sachems stepped forward and exercised a long dormant power—a power which explains the real connection between the society and the organization, and which it frequently used later against hostile factions. Through pressure, the lessee of Tammany Hall sold to the society his lease. This secured, the society put in charge of the building[75] (which was fitted in part as a hotel as well as a hall) another person, instructed not to let any room to the Adams committee. The Adams men asked by what right a “charitable and benevolent society” interfered in politics. But, being excluded, they could no longer claim they represented Tammany Hall—a fatal loss to them and an important advantage to the Jackson men, who now were the only Tammany organization. The Adams committees were thus shut off from holding any meetings in the hall.

With the Adams committees put out, the Jackson men began to quarrel among themselves for local and State nominations. The Wigwam’s inveterate foe, De Witt Clinton, was out of the way, he having died on February 11, 1828, while still Governor. As nominations continued to be looked upon as almost certainly resulting in election, there was a swarm of candidates.[7] The ambitions of few of these were gratified. The nominations were settled beforehand by a small clique, headed, it was said, by M. M. Noah.

Of a voting population of 25,000, Tammany Hall secured a majority of 5,831 for Jackson[8] and elected all its candidates except one. That hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal votes were counted was admitted. Boys of 19 and 20 years of age voted and were employed to electioneer for the Jackson ticket. On the other hand, raftsmen just arrived from the interior and men who had no homes were gathered in bunches and sent to swell the[76] Adams vote, though it is doubtful whether their votes were counted. For the first time in city elections money was used to influence voting.

The Common Council soon after removed every office-holder not of the Jackson faith. As a matter of course, Jackson rewarded his friends. He made Samuel Swartwout Collector of the Port and filled every Federal local post with his Tammany adherents.

[77]

In 1829 the indignation against the Tammany leaders crystallized in a “purifying” movement. Under the direction of its banker, merchant and lawyer leaders, Tammany Hall had been made a medium for either coercing or bribing the Legislature or the Common Council into passing dozens of bank charters and franchises with scarcely any provision for compensation to either State or city.[1] In 1819 the Tammany Society, in one of its pompous addresses, had recited the speculative spirit and consequent distress brought about by the multiplication of incorporated banks, and suggested that the Legislature adopt a prompt and decisive remedy tending to the abolition of those institutions. This sounded well; but at that very time, as before and after, the Sachems were lobbying at Albany for charters of banks of which they became presidents or directors. By one means or another these banks yielded fortunes to their owners; but the currency issued by them almost invariably depreciated. The laboring classes on whom this bad private money was imposed complained of suffering severely. Each year, besides, witnessed[78] an increase in the number of chartered monopolies, armed with formidable powers for long periods, or practically in perpetuity.[2] To the first gas company, in May, 1823, the Common Council had granted the exclusive right to light all the streets south of Grand street for thirty years, without returns of any kind to the city.[3] At the rate at which the city was expanding, this was a concession of immense value, and formed one of the subjects of complaint in 1829.

While laws were instituted to create a money aristocracy, the old debt and other laws bearing on the working classes were not changed. No attempt was made to improve a condition which allowed a dishonest contractor to put up a building or a series of buildings, collect his money and then swindle his laborers out of their wages. The local administration, moreover, continued corrupt. It was freely charged at this time that $250,000 of city money was being stolen outright every year. The city charter drafted and adopted in 1829-30 contained provisions which, it was thought, might remedy matters. It created two bodies of the Common Council—the Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen—and gave each a negative upon the propositions of the other, vesting a supreme veto power in the Mayor. It again separated the election of the Common Council from the general election. It abolished secret contracts and compelled all resolutions involving appropriations of public money or placing taxes or assessments to be advertised, and included other precautionary measures against corruption. But it opposed the public wish in still vesting the appointment of the Mayor in the Common Council.

To battle against the prevailing injustices the Mechanics’ or Workingmen’s party was formed. Its chief inspiration was Robert Dale Owen, son of the famous Robert Owen. “Dale” Owen, as he was familiarly[79] known, and others had recently returned to the city after an unsuccessful experiment at cooperative colonizing at New Harmony, Indiana, and a number of bright and ardent intellects gathered about him. Boldly declaring against the private and exclusive possession of the soil and against the hereditary transmission of property, the new party won over a large part of the laboring element. “Resolved,” ran its resolutions adopted at Military Hall, October 19, 1829,

After declaring that the Workingmen’s party would oppose all exclusive privileges, monopolies and exemptions, the resolutions proceeded:

The banks, too, came in for a share of the denunciation. The bankers were styled “the greatest knaves, impostors and paupers of the age.” The resolutions continued:

The Workingmen put a full ticket in the field.

Tammany Hall, dominated by some of the same men and interests denounced by the Workingmen’s party,[80] opened a campaign of abuse. Commercial and banking men outside the Wigwam joined ardently in the campaign. The new movement was declared to be a mushroom party, led by designing men, whose motives were destructive. The Evening Post, which represented the commercial element and which sided with Tammany in opposition to the new party, said that it remained for the really worthy mechanics who might have associated accidentally with that party, to separate themselves from it, now that its designs and doctrines were known. The Courier and Enquirer, partly owned and edited by Noah,[4] styled the Workingmen’s party an infidel ticket, hostile to the morals, to the institutions of society and the rights of property. The Tammany Hall, or to speak more technically, the Democratic-Republican General Committee, declaiming on the virtues of Jackson and Democracy, advised all good men, and especially all self-respecting laborers, not to vote the Workingmen’s ticket.

Nevertheless, its principles made such an impression that in November it polled over 6,000 votes, while Tammany, with its compact organization, could claim little more than 11,000 votes. It was well settled that numbers of Whig workingmen voted the new party’s ticket; and that the rich Whigs secretly worked for the success of Tammany Hall, whose ticket was almost entirely successful, though the Workingmen elected Ebenezer Ford to the Assembly.

Tammany was dismayed at the new party’s strength, and determined to destroy it by championing one of the reform measures demanded. In January, 1830, a bill for the better security of mechanics and other laborers of New York City was introduced by Silas M. Stillwell. The Tammany men immediately took it up as if it were their[81] own, urged its passage and secured the credit of its adoption, when in April, much emasculated, it became a law. It required, under penalties, the owner of a building to retain from the contractor the amount due to the mechanics employed thereon. By exploiting this performance to the utmost, Tammany succeeded in making some inroads on the Workingmen’s party. The organization leaders had recognized that it was time they did something for the laboring classes. They were fast losing caste with even independent Democrats of means, because of their subservience to the aristocracy and of the common knowledge of the illegitimate ways in which they were amassing wealth.

One result of the Workingmen’s movement was the failure of the Wigwam to secure a majority in the Common Council. This seemed to frustrate the design to reelect, as Mayor, Walter Bowne (Grand Sachem in 1820 and 1831). Fourteen Aldermen and Assistants were opposed to Bowne, and thirteen favored him. There was but one expedient calculated to reelect him, and to this Tammany Hall resorted. Bowne, as presiding officer of the Council, held that the constitution permitted him to vote for the office of Mayor. “I will persist in this opinion even though the board decide against me,” he said. To prevent a vote being taken, seven of Bowne’s opponents withdrew on December 28, 1829. They went back on January 6, 1830, when Tammany managed to reelect Bowne by one vote. How this vote was obtained was a mystery. Fourteen members declared under oath that they had voted for Thomas R. Smith, Bowne’s opponent.[5] Charges of bribery were made, and an investigating committee was appointed on January 11; but as this committee was composed[82] of Bowne’s own partizans, it announced its inability to find proofs. Meanwhile the general committee[6] had issued a loftily worded manifesto saying that it (the committee) was established and was maintained to watch over the political interests of the Democratic-Republicans of the city and “to expose and repel the insidious and open machinations of their enemies,” that it could not discover anything wrong in the conduct of the Chief Magistrate of the city, and that it “repelled the accusations of his enemies.”

The Workingmen’s party continued its agitation, and prepared for another campaign. In the meantime the Wigwam’s agents skilfully went about fomenting divisions, with the result that three tickets, all purporting to be the genuine Workingmen’s, were put into the field in October, 1830. One was that of the “Clay Workingmen”; it was composed of a medley of admirers of Clay, the owners of stock in various great manufacturing establishments, workingmen who believed in a protective tariff, Whigs,[7] and a bunch of hack politicians who had taken up the Workingmen’s movement for selfish ends. The second was that of a fragment of the Workingmen’s party of the year before, standing resolutely for their principles and containing no suspicious politicians or monopolists. The third was that of the Agrarian party, embracing a few individuals of views too advanced even for the Workingmen’s party.

[83]

To the Clay Workingmen’s party[8] Tammany Hall gave little attention, since it was made up mainly of Whigs who had always, under different names, been opposed to the organization. But the genuine movement Tammany Hall covered with abuse. “Look, fellow-citizens,” said the address of the “general nominating committee,”

To display its devotion to the cause of Democracy, Tammany Hall celebrated, on November 26, the revolution in France. It persuaded former President James Monroe to preside in Tammany Hall at the preliminary arrangements, and made a studied parade of its zeal. There was a procession, Samuel Swartwout acting as grand marshal. Monroe, in a feeble state of health, was brought in a stage to Washington Square, where for ten minutes he looked on. A banquet, the usual high-flown speeches, and fireworks followed.

The election was favorable to Tammany. About 3,800 workingmen who had supported the independent movement the previous year, went back to Tammany, because of its advocacy of the mechanics’ lien law. The average Tammany plurality was 3,000. The real Workingmen’s ticket polled a vote of about 2,200; the Clay Workingmen’s ticket a little above 7,000, and the Agrarian, 116.

[84]

For the next few years the contest of Jackson with the United States Bank drew together the energies of all Democrats supporting him. Dropping local contests, they united to renew his power. For the time, the Workingmen’s movement ceased to exist.

[85]

Tammany lost no time in announcing its intention to support the renomination of Jackson. The general committee, on March 3, 1831, unanimously passed a resolution approving of his renomination by the Democratic members of the Legislature. Seven days later the General Committee of Democratic Young Men and the ward committees acted likewise.

Since the campaign of 1800 there had not been a Presidential contest in which the masses joined with such enthusiasm. Although the national election was more than 18 months distant, the excitement was intense. The late Workingmen’s party and Tammany men fraternized. The ward resolutions were full of fire, the meetings spirited. The Democratic electors of the Sixth Ward “friendly to regular nominations” resolved, on March 15:

The organization’s first object was to gain a majority of the local offices in the Spring election of 1831 on the Jackson issue. The National Republican party, recently[86] organized in New York City on the same general lines as Tammany Hall, and headed by Clarkson Crolius, a former Grand Sachem, set out to crush the Jackson movement. If a defeat could be administered to it at this time, the practical effect would be great; New York would possibly influence the entire Union. To accomplish this, the National Republicans tried to divert the issue to local lines and agitated for the election of the Mayor by the people. The Tammany men joined issue at once, and in February, 1831, the Common Council committee on application, composed chiefly of Tammany men, reported adversely on a motion to suggest to the Legislature a revision of the charter. The time was declared to be inexpedient for such an innovation, one Tammany Alderman, Thomas T. Woodruff, declaring, when the matter again came up, on April 8, that the people could not be trusted with the choice of that important official. The National Republicans replied by denouncing the Common Council for its lavish expenditures of public money, its distribution of favors in the shape of “jobs” and contracts among a few retainers whose sole merits lay in their close relationship to certain managing members of the board, and for its efforts to prevent the people from having the right to elect their own Mayor.[2]

The opposition to Tammany was ineffectual. In the ensuing election, not less than 22 of the 28 members chosen for the new double-chamber Common Council were Tammany men, elected solely upon their pledge of allegiance to the national and State administrations. The first trial of the new charter, therefore, showed that the separation of municipal from general elections did not prevent the division of the voters on national party lines. The extent of this preliminary Jackson victory made a sensation throughout the Union and caused gloom among the United States Bank supporters.

[87]

The prestige of Tammany Hall was now overwhelming; its influence upon the Democratic party, great before, became greater. No aspirant for public favor could ignore its demands and decrees. When, on May 12, the society held an imposing celebration of the forty-second anniversary of its founding, politicians from the highest to the lowest, national and local, four hundred and over, crowded there with words of flattery. Lewis Cass, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the State of New York; members of the National Senate and of the House of Representatives—these and the rest were glad to avail themselves of the invitation. William Mooney was there, very old and feeble, beaming with pride at the power of the institution he had founded.[3] After the banquet, which was described in the old Indian terms, as consisting “of the game of the forest, the fish of the lakes, the fruits of the season and the waters of the great spring,” came the reading of letters. Jackson wrote: “Nothing could afford me greater gratification than to participate with your ancient and honorable society of Republicans on such an occasion,” but that press of official duties kept him away. A letter of regret, in high-flown and laudatory diction, from Secretary of State Martin Van Buren followed. James Watson Webb proposed this toast: “Martin Van Buren, the Grand Sachem of the Eagle Tribe—The Great Spirit is pleased with his faithful support of the Great Grand Sachem of the Nation and smiles graciously upon the sages and warriors of the tribe who aim to elevate their chief in 1836 to the highest station in the country.” This was greeted by nine cheers, and instantly disclosed Tammany’s choice for Jackson’s successor in 1836. The only troublous note was furnished by Duff Green, who sprang this toast upon the surprised[88] gathering: “De Witt Clinton—His friends honor his memory—his enemies dare not assail it!” By “enemies” he referred to those present; they retorted that he was an intruder, was not invited, and had not paid for his ticket.[4] Mayor Bowne was then installed as Grand Sachem in place of Stephen Allen, the former Mayor.

The Fall election of 1831 also turned upon national issues. Upon Jackson’s popularity nearly every Democratic candidate in New York city was elected by an average majority of 6,000. There were rumors of illegal voting, but no proof was submitted. The Wigwam was so overjoyed at the result that a banquet was held on November 21, presided over by Benjamin Bailey, who for a dozen years had been chairman of the general committee. He had reached his seventy-second year and could claim little political influence. But as a captain in the Revolutionary army, and as one of those confined in the Jersey prison ships, the Tammany chiefs considered him a valuable figurehead. Gen. Wool, Cols. Twiggs and Crogham and five hundred men of various importance spent the night in the Wigwam drinking to Jackson, Tammany Hall and coming victory.

Not only did Tammany take the initiative in supporting Jackson, but it was the first body to nominate Van Buren for Vice-President. On the news of the Senate’s rejection of Van Buren as Minister to England, an indignation meeting was held in Tammany Hall, January 30, 1832, this being the opening expression of public opinion. Van Buren was suggested for Vice-President, and the Wigwam gathering showed its satisfaction by repeated cheers.[5] Twenty-four leading Tammany men drew up a[89] letter containing their sentiments on Van Buren’s rejection, and on May 31 an outpouring in the Wigwam approved his nomination.

Then followed a striking revelation, showing the venality of some of Tammany’s leaders. The United States Bank officials began bargaining for the betrayal of Jackson. The Courier and Enquirer suddenly abandoned him for the support of the bank candidates, giving as a reason the fear of the “fearful consequences of revolution, anarchy and despotism,” which assuredly would ensue if Jackson were reelected. The real reason was that Webb and Noah, as revealed by a Congressional investigation,[6] had borrowed directly and indirectly $50,000 from the United States Bank, which had now called them to time. Mayor Bowne was their sponsor to Nicholas Biddle, head of the bank. Some of the other Tammany leaders, it appeared, had been for years the bank’s retainers. Representative Churchill C. Cambreleng enjoyed a place on its pay rolls. Gulian C. Verplanck, another of the Wigwam’s representatives in Congress, had voted in its behalf, and Stephen Allen, in the State Senate, had voted for a resolution in its favor. Peter Sharpe, Ogden Edwards,[7] William H. Ireland, John Morss—all influential men in times past—now vigorously opposed Jackson, and the services of other Tammany chiefs were secured.

Two influences, however, prevented the organization leaders from betraying the Democratic cause—one the common people, the other the owners of the State banks,[90] whose self-interest called for the speedy downfall of the United States Bank. Finding that they could not control the Wigwam, the Tammany agents of that bank seceded, and joined the National Republicans. The State Bank men remained in the organization and labored for Jackson, with no other idea than that their institutions would benefit in the distribution of Government funds if the United States Bank were put down. The course of the leaders remaining in Tammany smacked of double dealing. Refusing to renominate Verplanck, they put in his place Dudley Selden, who had borrowed $8,000 from the United States Bank, but who had professed to support Jackson’s veto. It looked as though certain potent influences were operating in Tammany Hall for the election of a pro-bank Congress, whoever might be chosen President.

The Tammany ward organizations, assisted by the men of the late Workingmen’s party, appointed vigilance committees to undo any mischief the leaders might attempt, and to electioneer for Jackson’s success. So enthusiastic was the Jackson feeling that many politicians of note, understanding its depth and having a care for their political futures, made haste to change front. Almost daily the people were rallied to the Wigwam by the beating of drums. A few years before, a hickory tree had been planted in front of the Wigwam; now, on October 30, a second was put there, and a barrel of beer was used to moisten its roots.

Both sides were guilty of election frauds. Votes were bought at the rate of $5 each, most of the buying being done by the National Republicans, who were supplied with abundant resources. The National Republicans, moreover, had sought to bribe certain men with the promise of offices, and on the three election days they foisted upon the voters a Jackson electoral ticket containing forty-three names, instead of the legal number, forty-two, thereby invalidating each of these ballots voted. This[91] trick, it was calculated, lost to Jackson more than a thousand votes. Of a total of 30,474 votes, Tammany carried the city by 5,620 majority. The Wigwam for many successive nights was filled with celebrating crowds. Jackson gave a conspicuously public display of his recognition of Tammany’s invaluable services, when, on the evening of June 13, 1833, he visited the society, attended by the Vice-President, Secretary Woodbury, Gov. William L. Marcy, the Mayor, and the members of the Common Council.

The United States Bank supporters did not surrender with Jackson’s reelection. They exerted themselves to influence Congress by means of a defeat for the anti-bank forces in New York City in the Fall election of 1833. Tammany Hall during the campaign sent out runners ordering every office-holder to his electioneering post. Vigorous meetings were held, and all the secret influences of the general committee were employed. On the other hand, merchants laid aside their ruffled shirts and broadcloth coats, put on their roundabouts and worked at the polls on the three election days for the Whig ticket. Tammany carried the city by between 2,000 and 3,000 majority. Touching this and previous elections a committee of Assistant Aldermen reported on February 10, 1834: “That frauds have been practised at the polls, the committee are convinced. At any rate, a universal and deep conviction prevails among our citizens that tricks have been resorted to for the purpose of defeating the election of one candidate and securing that of another.” It was further set forth that persons were brought up to vote who were not citizens of the United States nor qualified to vote in the State. Others voted in more than one ward. Voters also were transferred overnight from a sure to a doubtful ward.[8] No remedy followed the report.

[92]

The Spring election of 1834, though local, again turned upon national issues. For the first time in the history of the city, the Mayor was to be elected by the people. The growth of public opinion had been such that the Legislature was forced, in 1833, to grant this reform.

The contending hosts were swayed, first, by the question of the United States Bank, and second, by the spoils. The merchants shut their shops and sent their whole body of clerks and laboring men to surround the polls and influence voters against Tammany Hall. The United States Bank spread abroad the cry of “panic.” If its directors could show that public opinion in the foremost city in the Union had altered so as to favor the continuation of the bank charter, then they could use that as a good basis for influencing Congress. There was no concealment of coercion of voters; the weak, the timid, the fearful were overawed by the increasing clamor of paid newspapers that the destruction of the United States Bank meant “widespread revulsion of trade and everlasting injury to the poor.” In fact, a general depression of business was produced. A row began in the “bloody ould Sixth,” by the breaking of some ballot boxes. Both parties armed with stones and bludgeons, and turned the scene into one of violence. The riot became general. A crowd, composed chiefly of Whigs, ransacked gun-shops in Broadway and made for the State arsenal at Elm and Franklin streets. Rumors of their intentions spreading, a gathering of peaceably inclined citizens arrived before them and held the arsenal until the militia hastened there and restored order.[9]

Cornelius W. Lawrence, the Tammany candidate, was declared elected by 181 votes out of a total of nearly 35,000[10] over Gulian G. Verplanck, who had gone over to the Whigs. Verplanck never ceased to contend that he[93] had been defrauded of the office. The Whigs obtained a majority in a Common Council, 17 members to the Wigwam’s 15, and joyfully said that Tammany Hall in electing the Mayor had the shadow; while they, in securing the corporation, had the substance. With the Common Council they could carry the whole patronage of the city, amounting to more than $1,000,000 a year.

This election demonstrated clearly that the propertied classes as a whole were combined against the laborers, mechanics, farmers and producing classes generally, and that they were as much concerned over the spoils of office as was the most rabid Tammany man. As a protest against the indifference of the local leaders of both parties to the real interests of the people, and to put a stop to the granting of special privileges, the Equal Rights party now came into existence.

[94]

The Equal Rights movement, which began its activity inside the Tammany organization, was virtually a moral, then a political, revival of the Workingmen’s movement. Its principles, however, were less radical, and its demands more moderate. It advocated the equal rights of every citizen in his person and property and in their management; declared unqualified and uncompromising opposition to bank notes as a circulating medium, because gold and silver were the only safe and constitutional currency, and a like opposition to all monopolies by legislation. It also announced hostility “to the dangerous and unconstitutional creation of vested rights by legislation, because these were a usurpation of the people’s sovereign rights,” and asserted that all laws or acts of incorporation passed by the Legislature could be rightfully altered or repealed by its successors. The Equal Rights movement comprised men of various classes. Moses Jacques and Levi D. Slamm were its principal leaders. To comprehend its nature, a brief review of the causes which conspired to bring it into being will be necessary.

Up to 1831 the repeal of the law for the imprisonment of debtors had been a subject of almost constant agitation by reformers and workingmen. Under this law more than 10,000 persons, mainly unfortunate laborers, were imprisoned annually in loathsome prisons, without inquiry as to their innocence or guilt, lying there at their[95] creditors’ will, unsupplied by the city with any of the necessities of life.[1] Tammany Hall had taken no action until 1831, when its leaders gave a belated approval to a bill introduced in the Assembly, abolishing imprisonment for debts of any sum except in the cases of non-residents.[2]

This bill had become a law in that year; yet by 1833 the interest of Tammany’s chiefs in the workingman had died away to such an extent that the Assembly was allowed to pass a measure entitled “a law abolishing imprisonment for debt,” but reinstituting imprisonment on all debts under $50, thus completely nullifying the law so far as the poor were concerned.

The measure failed to become a law; but the sharp practise shown in its wording, and in the means taken to push it through the Assembly, disgusted the Equal Rights men, and in their meetings they passed resolutions denouncing the chiefs responsible therefor. Their resolutions furthermore declared that the proceedings at Tammany Hall were a sealed book; that a few men—William Paxen Hallett, Elisha Tibbits, J. J. Roosevelt and John Y. Cebra—made up important nominations in Wall street after the bankers had decided upon the candidates and then had the nominating committee accept them.

Popular disaffection was increased by the manner in which the Legislature and the Aldermen continued to create corporations with enormous grants. The scandals over the procurement of legislative charters, particularly bank charters, had for more than 25 years aroused a growing indignation among the people. In[96] 1805, shortly after the passage of the Merchants’ Bank charter, Peter Betts, an Assemblyman, declared in open session of the lower house, that Luke Metcalfe, a fellow-member, had sought to bribe him to vote for the measure. The price promised was 15 shares of the bank’s stock, valued at $50 each. Conflicting testimony was given on the matter, and a motion was made to expel Metcalfe; the house, however, retained him in his seat by a vote of 37 to 16.[3]

Charges of the same kind, affecting practically every session of the Legislature, were common, though only occasionally were they made the subject of official investigation. In 1812, however, shortly after the Assembly, forced by public criticism, had passed a resolution compelling each member to pledge himself that he had neither taken nor would take, “any reward or profit, direct or indirect, for any vote on any measure,”[4] another scandal arose. The Bank of America, with very moderate assets of any sort, received a charter on a stated capitalization of $6,000,000, an enormous sum in those days. Charges of corruption were bandied about, one Assemblyman, Silas Holmes, declaring under oath that the sum of $500, “besides a handsome present,” had been offered him. A committee of the lower house listened to testimony in the case, and then, by a decisive majority, voted that the body was above suspicion.[5] But in a pronunciamento to Gov. Tompkins during the same year the same house graciously reported: “We are well aware that the number of charters for banking institutions already granted has awakened general solicitude and anxiety.”

The Chemical Bank was a more modern instance. The report of the joint legislative committee in 1824 had shown that its promoters set apart $50,000 worth of[97] stock at par value[6] to buy the votes of members, Gen. Robert Swartwout—he who had defaulted for $68,000 in 1820—acting as one of the lobbyists and claiming $5,000 for his services.[7] Other scandals throwing strong light on legislative practises were those of the Ætna and Chatham Fire Insurance Companies. The testimony brought out in the investigation of these companies in 1826 showed that William J. Waldron (one of the line of Grand Sachems) gave $20,000 in certificates of stock to Gen. Jasper Ward, a State Senator, and $20,000 more to various other persons to get the Ætna charter through the Legislature.[8] The Chatham charter, passed in 1822, cost $20,000 in stock at par value, additional sums being paid for the passage of certain amendments in 1824.[9] Ward wrote from Albany to a friend in the city, complaining that the Jefferson Fire Insurance Company, which secured a charter at the same time (1824), had paid only 5 per cent. of what it had promised, giving notes for the remainder.[10] These were but a few examples of the general legislative corruption. The men who profited by these charters brought about, in 1830, the exemption of bank stock in the city from taxation. That nearly every Tammany leader held bank stock was proved by the testimony before an investigating committee in June, 1833, which set forth how the organizers of the newly founded Seventh Ward Bank had distributed thousands of shares among over one hundred State and city office-holders, both Tammany and Anti-Masonic. Every Tammany Senator was involved.[98] James Perkins, the principal lobbyist for the charter, swore repeatedly that $5,000 in stock at par value had been taken directly by State Senators and from $10,000 to $25,000 in stock distributed indirectly.[11] Perkins charged Thurlow Weed with accepting a $500 bribe.[12] The investigating committee reported finally that it could find no proof involving any but one of the accused.[13] As the bill for the charter had originally passed the Senate by a vote of 27 to 2,[14] and as the members of the investigating committee had been chosen from this majority, its conclusions were naturally viewed with a good deal of suspicion.

The Equal Rights men complained that 75 per cent. of the whole of the bank notes circulating in New York City consisted of depreciated paper. The circulation of these in notes of $5 or under amounted by March, 1835, to nearly $1,500,000. One establishment alone, whose weekly payroll in 1834 amounted to $40,000, paid the greater part of this sum in depreciated notes. The wage-earner was in constant fear that any morning he might wake to hear that the bank whose notes he held had failed. Frequently the worst deceptions on the public were connived at by the officials. The Hudson Insurance Company, for instance, with a nominal capital of $200,000, was permitted to issue bonds to the amount of $800,000, upon the most fictitious resources. This was far from being an isolated instance. The law allowed a bank with only $100,000 capital to loan $250,000, thus receiving interest on more than twice the capital actually invested.[15]

The Council was more than ever a hotbed of venality. Numberless small “jobs” were perpetrated without public notice; but when it was proposed in October, 1831,[99] to give the Harlem Railroad Company the franchise for the perpetual and exclusive use of Fourth avenue, free of all payment to the city, Alderman George Sharp, one of the few public-spirited members, drew general attention to the matter by an energetic denunciation. After every other means had been resorted to without success to influence his vote, he was told that he would be excluded from the party by certain persons at Tammany Hall. Alderman Stevens, who declared that he had seen stock given to members of the board and to the “corps editorial” to secure their influence, was also threatened. The words of these two men proved conclusively the truth of what for a long time was common report: that the group of Tammany leaders not only controlled the party nominations but threatened public officials with their displeasure, with all which that implied—exile from public life, loss of political influence, perhaps ruin of fortune—in case they did not vote for certain measures whose “merits” were recommended to them.

The laborer had other grievances. For seventeen years the Council had refused to grant any additional ferries between New York City and Brooklyn. During that period the population of New York had increased 150,000 and that of Brooklyn 15,000. This growth involved a vast amount of marketing and increased the business intercourse between the two places more than fourfold. The lessees of the Fulton Ferry—the sole ferry—had made an agreement in 1811, it was alleged, with the New York City Corporation, by which the latter undertook to bind itself not to establish any additional ferries from south of Catherine street to the Village of Brooklyn for twenty-five years. The large landholders influenced the Common Council to continue this monopoly, their aim being to force the people to stay in New York, where rents were 35 per cent. higher than in any other city in the Union. The exactions of[100] the water, gas and steamboat monopolies likewise had a share in causing the formation of the Equal Rights party.

Besides the dispensing to favored knots of citizens of trading privileges and immunities which were withheld from the great body of the community, the laboring element believed that there was a gross inequality of taxation in the interests of the rich. Taxes rose from $550,000 in 1832 to $850,000 in 1833, but the increase fell upon the poor. The Merchants’ Bank was assessed at $6,000; the lot and building had cost that sum twenty years before, and were now worth at least twice as much. The Merchants’ Exchange was assessed at $115,000, yet it was known that the land and building had cost $800,000. Dozens of like instances were cited by the reformers and they now determined upon a concerted effort looking to better government.

A powerful influence came to the aid of the Equal Rights men when William Cullen Bryant and William Leggett assumed the editorship of the Evening Post. This journal now advocated industrial and political reforms with singular independence and ability. It revived the original conception of the nominating committee’s functions. It urged the electors to remember that the nomination by a nominating committee was but a recommendation to the people of certain candidates whose merits and qualifications were as fair a matter of discussion as any under Heaven; and that it was for this very purpose that nominations were made so long before the great popular meeting was convened. Besides his editorial support of the movement, Leggett participated in the practical work of its organization and management. The clear thought and definite expression shown in most of the Equal Rights manifestoes and resolutions are perhaps directly due to him.

The Equal Rights faction became especially active in the Fall of 1884. Its orators raised such a stir that both[101] Tammany Hall and the Whigs suddenly developed an astonishing care for the workingmen. To conciliate them, the Tammany Nominating Committee exacted a written pledge from every one of its candidates requiring an expression of his sentiments on the monopoly question. To counteract the Wigwam, the Whigs gathered a meeting of “Whig Mechanics” at Masonic Hall, October 14, at which opposition to monopolies, especially banking monopolies, was declared. Not to be outdone, the Wigwam got together a meeting of “Democratic Mechanics,” who resolved to oppose monopolies and to restore the constitutional currency. Tammany also began to recognize, even more liberally than before, the naturalized citizens. As a consequence, it won the Fall (1834) election by over 2,300 majority, most of the Equal Rights men voting with it. One-third of its 18,000 voters were estimated at this time to be of foreign birth.

Nearly all the Tammany Assemblymen proceeded to forget their pledges, only four of the delegation voting in the February following against the bill giving exclusive privileges to the Peaconic Company.

The first clash between the Equal Rights faction and the Tammany monopolists occurred at a meeting at the Wigwam on March 31, 1835. Certain that the Aldermen would never grant additional ferries, the Equal Rights men favored a measure, then pending in the Legislature, for the establishment of a State Board of Commissioners clothed with that power. Gideon Lee,[16] a Wall Street banker, called the meeting to order and nominated Preserved Fish for chairman. Many objections were uttered, and Fish retired. The radicals howled down the Tammany speakers and ran the meeting themselves, adopting resolutions prepared by Joel P. Seaver, declaring for the creation of the State board.[102] A bill for a new ferry—the present South Ferry—was passed the same year.

The Equal Rights men still hoped to gain their ends inside the organization. When Cornelius W. Lawrence[17] stood for reelection as Mayor in April, 1835, there was scarcely any opposition to him from any quarter, he receiving 17,696 votes out of a total of 20,196.

In the Fall of 1835, however, the Tammany Nominating Committee recommended for State offices candidates of a character most obnoxious to the Equal Rights men, and called a meeting for the evening of October 29, to ratify its nominations. Barely were the doors opened when the Equal Rights men rushed in and frustrated an attempt to place Isaac L. Varian in the chair. In the mêlée, the Bank Democrats, finding themselves unable to control the meeting, withdrew, but in doing so turned off the gas, leaving the Equal Rights men in total darkness. The trick must have been anticipated; for each man drew forth a candle and a lucifer, or “loco foco” match, and in a twinkling the hall was resplendent with dancing lights. The Equal Rights men adopted resolutions and a suitable ticket of their own.[18]

Three sets of candidates stood for election. The Native Americans, who opposed the election of foreigners to office and urged the repeal of the naturalization laws, took the place of the Whigs. In the face of this strong sentiment, Tammany Hall acted with its usual diplomacy. The general committee boasted that the regular Tammany ticket was composed of only native Americans, which was true, the naturalized citizens having been cajoled on the promise of receiving the usual[103] quota among nominations the next year. Of the nearly 23,000 votes cast at the election, Tammany Hall obtained an average majority of about 800. The Native Americans polled 9,000 votes, and the Equal Rights men, or Anti-Monopolists, over 3,500. It was estimated that 2,000 Whigs voted the Tammany ticket to defeat the Anti-Monopolists, and that about 5,500 Whig votes were divided between Tammany Hall and the Native Americans.

The news of its slight plurality was hailed with anything but pleasure at the Wigwam, where the Anti-Monopolists were denounced as political swindlers and adventurers. Instead, however, of making a show of outward fairness, the organization leaders blindly took the course most adapted to fan the flame of opposition to themselves. After the great fire of 1835, which destroyed $20,000,000 worth of property, and the extent of which was due to the refusal of the corrupt Aldermen to give the city a proper water supply, the Common Council agreed to loan $6,000,000 at 5 per cent. interest for the relief of insurance companies and banks which had suffered from the fire.[19] Nothing was said or done for the relief of the poor sufferers whom the Wigwam claimed to have under its especial protection. The Council allowed pawnbrokers 25 per cent. interest and prohibited them from loaning more than $25 on a single pledge.[20] The city institutions were in a melancholy state.[21] Most serious of all on the public mind were the disclosures concerning the Commercial Bank, from which funds were embezzled in the scheme of cornering the stock of the Harlem Railroad. As a step towards this end, Samuel Swartwout and Garrit Gilbert (a sometime Sachem) lobbied for the passage of a bill to increase the capital stock of this road, which in turn, it was thought, would increase[104] the price of all the stock—two Senators agreeing to raise objections temporarily “so as to blind the eyes of the New Yorkers.”[22]

The leaders made no effort to stop the granting of charters, or to curtail the monopolist privileges already granted. It was admitted generally that no legislation even remotely affecting the interests of the banks could pass without the consent of those institutions. Tradesmen also had their combinations. But combinations, legal enough when organized by capital, were declared illegal when formed by workingmen. At this time the Supreme Court of the State of New York decided that combinations to raise the wages of any class of laborers amounted to a misdemeanor, on the ground that they were injurious to trade. Later, in June, 1836, twenty tailors were found guilty of conspiracy under that decision and fined by Judge Edwards $1,150 in the aggregate for engaging in a strike for higher wages.

The mechanics prepared to hold an indignation meeting and applied for permission to use Tammany Hall. This was refused by the Sachems.[23] In defiance of the Wigwam, the meeting, a gathering of 20,000 persons, was held in the park fronting Tammany Hall. “Are workingmen,” read the address of the committee of this meeting,

The meeting, in strong resolutions, condemned the Supreme Court decision and that of Judge Edwards.

At this moment the peculiar Wigwam methods were being displayed in another direction to an edified public. In the first days of May, 1836, the Board of Aldermen found itself divided equally, Tammany Hall and the Whigs each having eight votes, precluding either from electing a president. The Tammany members, in the tea-room downstairs, made merry over refreshments. The Whigs could not muster a quorum, and sent word to the organization men to appear; the Wigwam men replied that they didn’t choose, and bade the Whigs come to them. Meanwhile the public business stood still. Finally the balloting was begun. On May 23, seventeen votes were found to have been cast, although there were only sixteen voting Aldermen.[24] By the end of May more than 120 ballots were had. At last, on July 1, the Tammany men persuaded Alderman Ward, a Whig, to offer a resolution electing Isaac L. Varian, a Wigwam candidate, for the first six months, which was done.

Taking these proceedings as a cue, the Equal Rights party, on June 6, at Military Hall, adopted a long series of resolutions stating that the aristocracy of the Democracy, or in other words, the monopolists, the paper-currency Democrats, the partizans of the “usages,” had long deceived and misguided the great body of the Democrats. Through these “usages,” the tools of the[106] banks and other incorporated and speculative interests were enabled to take advantage of the unsuspicious self-security of the people, both before and at primary meetings. By the aristocracy and through secret caucuses, candidates were chosen, proceedings were cut and dried, and committees were packed. When committees could not be packed without opposition, the resolutions further read, two sets of committeemen were usually elected, and that set whose political complexion best suited the packed majority of the general committee was always accepted without any regard to the majorities of the people. The Union did not furnish a more dangerous usurpation upon the sovereignty of the people than the fact of the Tammany Hall Nominating Committee sending recently a petition to the Legislature in favor of chartering more banks and banking paper capital and designating themselves, not as citizens, but as members of the nominating committee, notwithstanding the very nominees of such a committee had given their written pledge to oppose new banks and monopolies.

The “usages,” the Equal Rights party next resolved, so productive of secret caucuses, intrigues and abuses, furnished the avenue through which one portion of the Democracy had been corrupted, and the other portion—the great mass—led astray. The latter was taught to believe that “usages” alone made men Democrats, and that to keep Federalists and Whigs out of office was the very essence of Democracy.[25]

The Equal Rights party then nominated Isaac L. Smith, of Buffalo, for Governor, and Moses L. Jacques, of New York City, for Lieutenant-Governor.

To draw from the strength of the new party, some of Tammany’s leaders—Samuel Swartwout, Jesse Hoyt, Stephen Allen, Saul Alley and a few others—professed to favor the repeal of the Restraining law, which[107] in effect prohibited private banking and gave the incorporated institutions a monopoly. The Anti-Monopolists were not to be deluded. On September 21 they declared that in the recent professions of the Tammany corruptionists in advocating this repeal and in favoring some other few minor democratic measures, they beheld the stale expedient of luring the bone and sinew of the country to the support of their monopoly and banking men and measures and that they had no faith in Tammany “usages,” policy or its incorrigible Sachems.

The characters of most of the Wigwam nominations were so tainted that it seemed as if the candidates were put forward in defiance of the best public sentiment. It is not so certain that outside the Equal Rights party the voters were repelled by the current methods of buying legislation and dictating nominations. A low tone of public morals was manifested. Men were bent on money-making. He who could get rich by grace of the Legislature was thought “smart” and worthy of emulation. The successful in politics were likewise to be envied, and, if possible, imitated. A large part of the community bowed in respect to the person of wealth, no matter whence came his riches; and the bank lobbyists were the recipients of a due share of this reverence.

From these men the Tammany leaders selected candidates. One of the Assembly nominees was Prosper M. Wetmore, who had lobbied for the notorious State Bank charter. This bank, according to the charter, was to have $10,000,000 capital, although its organizers did not have more than a mere fraction of that sum. This was going too far, even for Albany, though upon modifying their application, the charter was granted.[26] Reuben Withers and James C. Stoneall, bank lobbyists; Benjamin Ringgold, a bank and legislative “go-between,” and Morgan L. Smith, preeminent among lobbyists, were[108] other Tammany nominees. Notwithstanding the low standards of public morals, these men were so unpopular, that when the form of submitting their names for ratification to the great popular meeting at the Wigwam on November 1, was carried out, a hostile demonstration followed. The names of Wetmore, Smith and Ringgold especially were hooted. But the leaders had groups of “whippers-in” brought in hurriedly to vote affirmatively, and the presiding officer declared all the nominees duly accepted by the people.

Only six of the organization’s thirteen Assembly nominees survived the popular wrath, and the nominees for nearly all the other offices were beaten, notwithstanding the expectation that the Presidential election would carry them in on the party ticket. A number of Tammany men of principle refused to vote. The Whigs, the Native Americans and some “Locofocos” joined forces. They were aided by the panic, which, breaking out shortly before election, reacted against the Democrats. The Equal Rights men as a rule voted for Van Buren. Tammany Hall and the Whigs both committed frauds. Van Buren received 1,124 majority in New York City, which in 1832 had given Jackson nearly 6,000 majority.

Made wiser by defeat, the organization leaders realized the importance of the Equal Rights movement, and caused, as a sop, the passage, in February, 1837, of the bill repealing the Restraining act. The Common Council likewise modified the Pawnbrokers’ act by cutting down the interest to a more reasonable percentage.[27]

Their providence stopped at this point, however,[28] and during the panic Winter following neither Legislature nor Common Council did anything to alleviate the miseries of the poor. On the contrary, the poor complained that the tendency more and more was to use the power of the law to make the rich richer. While the suffering[109] was greatest, Alderman Aaron Clark, a Whig, who had made his fortune from lotteries, proposed that the city spend several millions of dollars to surround its water front with a line of still-water ponds for shipping purposes, his justification for this expenditure being that the North River piers would “raise the price of every lot 25 × 100 feet west of Broadway $5,000 at a jump.”[29] “Millions to benefit landowners and shippers, but not a dollar for the unemployed hungry!” exclaimed the Anti-Monopolists. Alderman Bruen, another Whig, at a time when the fall in the value of real estate in New York City alone exceeded $50,000,000, suggested the underwriting by the city to the speculators for the sum of $5,000,000, to take in pledge the lands they had bought and to give them the bonds of the city for two-thirds their value. To the Equal Rights men there was not much difference between the Tammany Hall and the Whig leaders. Both, it was plain, sweated the people for their own private interests, although the Whigs, inheriting the Federalist idea that property was the sole test of merit, did not flaunt their undying concern for the laborer so persistently as did the Wigwam.

The city in 1837 was filled with the homeless and unemployed. Rent was high, and provisions were dear. Cattle speculators had possession of nearly all the stock, and a barrel of flour cost $12. On February 12 a crowd met in the City Hall Park, after which over 200 of them sped to the flour warehouse of Eli Hart & Co., on Washington street. This firm and that of S. B. Herrick & Son, it was known, held a monopoly in the scarce supply of flour and wheat. The doors of Hart’s place were battered down, and nearly 500 barrels of flour and 1,000 bushels of wheat were taken out and strewed in the street. Herrick’s place likewise was mobbed.[30] On May 10, when the banks suspended specie payments, a vast and[110] excited crowd gathered in Wall Street, and a riot was narrowly averted.[31]

The Equal Rights party could not be bought out or snuffed out. To deprive it of its best leaders Tammany Hall resorted to petty persecution. Jacques and Slamm had headed a petition to the Legislature protesting against the appointment of a certain suspicious bank investigating committee. The Wigwam men in the Legislature immediately secured the passage of a resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate this petition, and this committee instantly haled Jacques and Slamm to appear at Albany and give testimony.[32] The purpose was plain. The Tammany men sought to have the Equal Rights leaders at Albany, which was not as accessible from the city as now, and there keep them under various pretexts while the Spring campaign for Mayor was going on. Jacques and Slamm did not appear and were adjudged guilty of contempt. When they were most needed in New York City they were arrested and arraigned before the Legislature. William Leggett also was threatened, but escaped arrest.

The Equal Rights party, however, was soon to demonstrate its capacity to do harm to Tammany. The organization nominated John J. Morgan for Mayor; the Whigs named Aaron Clark, and the Equal Rights party opposed them with Jacques. The 3,911 votes Jacques received were enough to defeat Morgan, with his 12,974 votes, against Clark’s 16,140. Worst blow of all, Tammany Hall lost the Common Council. When the new body came in it removed all of the Wigwam’s office-holders that it could. The spoils in the form of annual salaries paid by the city, amounting to $468,000; the perquisites and contracts—such as that for the Croton Aqueduct, in favor of which the people had voted some years before—and other improvements, all went to the Whigs.

[111]

The Tammany men, regarding the Equal Rights men responsible for this loss of power, were now disposed to treat with them and willing enough to throw over the banker-corporation element.

[112]

One of the important changes in the composition of Tammany Hall came in 1837. The United States Bank dependents, lobbyists and supporters had left the Wigwam, as has been noted, in 1832, but the State Bank men, well satisfied with the destruction of the great rival corporation, had remained. Finding the organization no longer subservient to them they, in turn, quit Tammany during Van Buren’s administration.

This happened in the Fall of 1837. The Tammany General Committee, whose membership had recently been increased from thirty-six to fifty-one members, held a meeting on September 7, thirty-six members being present. Resolutions were offered upholding Van Buren’s scheme of placing the United States funds in sub-treasuries. This was a bitter dose to the State Bank men who, wanting to retain Government deposits, opposed the sub-treasury plan. The “bank conservatives” vainly tried to put off a vote on the resolutions, but being repeatedly outvoted, all but one of them left the room before the main question was put. Nineteen members remained. As seventeen formed a quorum, the question was put and the resolutions were adopted by a vote of 18 to 1. The bank men pretended that the resolutions were passed clandestinely, and they so deviously managed things that in a few days they regained control of the general committee, which at their behest refused to call a public meeting to act on the resolutions.

[113]

But the Democratic-Republican Young Men’s Committee was saturated with Equal Rights ideas and rebelled at the policy which allowed the acts of the bankers to antagonize Democrats of principle and bring defeat to Tammany Hall. This committee met in the Wigwam on September 11 and passed a series of resolutions with which the Anti-Monopolists were as pleased as the bankers were angry. The resolution declared the public satisfaction in anticipating the separation of bank and state, and welcomed the approach of an era when legislation should not be perverted to the enrichment of a few and the depression of the many. The Young Men resolved that the crisis was sufficient reason for their committee assuming to recommend a public meeting of those who approved Van Buren’s recent message, to be held in Tammany Hall, on September 21.

The bank men were angry that the Young Men’s committee should dare to act independently of the elder, the general committee. The latter, meeting on September 14, disapproved of the manner in which the Young Men’s meeting had been called, declined cooperation with it, and by a vote of 21 to 16 ordered the Young Men’s General Committee to withdraw the recommendation for that meeting. The Young Men ignored the order and held their meeting. Van Buren and his prospective sub-treasuries were indorsed and fiery resolutions adopted denouncing the incorporated banks.

Coming, as this denunciation did, from Tammany Hall, which had a far-reaching influence over the Union, the “bank conservatives” grew even more exasperated, for they had come to look upon the organization as almost their private property. As two-thirds of the Sachems belonged to their clique, they held a meeting in the Wigwam, on September 25, to disapprove of the sub-treasury scheme. In rushed the progressive Democrats in overwhelming force, and for an hour the place was a fighting arena. The bank men were forced to leave, and[114] the progressives organized and carried out the meeting.

Regarding Tammany as having ceased to be the tool of the exploiting interests, the Anti-Monopolists were disposed to a union with the advanced organization party. When the Equal Rights men met at Military Hall on October 27, Col. Alexander Ming, Jr., one of the party’s organizers, said that one of the chief purposes of the Equal Rights party was to effect reform in Tammany Hall; this having been accomplished, it was the duty of every Democrat to unite on one ticket against the “high-toned Federalists, Whigs and aristocrats.” A fusion Assembly ticket was made up, composed of both Tammany and Equal Rights men, each Tammanyite subscribing in writing to the Equal Rights principles. A small contingent of the Equal Rights party, however, accused their comrades of selling out to the Wigwam, and nominated their own candidates—Job Haskell, Daniel Gorham, William E. Skidmore and others.

The “bank conservatives” allied themselves with the Whigs. They were credited with raising an election fund of $60,000, a sum which at that time could do great execution. By raising the cries of “agrarianism” and “infidelity,” ascribing the effects of the panic of 1837 to the Democrats, coercing laborers and using illegal votes, the combined conservatives wrested nearly 3,000 majority out of a total of 33,093 votes.

Stimulated by this victory, the bank men attempted to regain control of Tammany and called a meeting for January 2, 1838, at 7 o’clock, in the Wigwam. The Anti-Bank Democrats then issued a call for a meeting on the same night, but one hour earlier. The Council of Sachems were mostly either “bank conservatives” themselves or sympathizers; but they feared to alienate the dominant progressives. As the best solution, they agreed that neither party should meet in the Wigwam. On January 1 they resolved that both calls were unauthorized and that neither had been sanctioned by any act of the general[115] committee. “The lease of Tammany Hall,” read their resolution, “reserves to the Council of Sachems of the Tammany Society the right to decide on all questions of doubt, arising out of the rooms being occupied by or let to a person or persons as a committee or otherwise for political purposes!” The Council sent a copy of these resolutions to Lovejoy and Howard, the lessees[1] of Tammany Hall, forbidding them to “rent, hire to, or allow either of the assemblages named on the premises.” Identical with this decree, Lovejoy and Howard issued a notice (which was published in the public prints) that their lease of Tammany Hall “contained covenants” that they would not permit any persons to assemble in the hall “whose political opinions the Council of Sachems of Tammany Society should declare not to be in accordance with the political views of the general committee of said Tammany Society,” and they (Lovejoy and Howard) therefore could not permit either meeting.[2] The conservatives then met in the City Hall Park, where they were assaulted and maltreated.[3]

The Anti-Bank men won over the general committee, which gave the necessary permission for their meeting in the Wigwam on January 9. The policy of Jackson and of Van Buren was upheld, and it was set forth that while the Democracy, unlike its calumniators, did not arrogate to itself “the possession of all the decency, the virtue, the morals and the wealth of the community,” it felt no more disturbed at being called “Agrarians,” “Locofocos” or[116] “Radicals” than it did at being abused in the days of Jefferson.

That foremost Equal Rights advocate, the Evening Post, now acknowledged the purification of Tammany Hall;[4] saying that the spurious Democrats who had infested the party for their own selfish purposes had either been drummed out of the ranks, had left voluntarily, or had acquiesced sullenly in the decision of the majority.

[117]

The course of the Whig city administration served only to strengthen Tammany and was responsible for the conviction, which later so often prevailed, that if Tammany Hall was bad the Whigs were no better, and were perhaps worse. At this time of general distress complaints were numerous that the sum of $1,300,000 was exacted from the rentpayers in a single year. In the early part of 1838 one-third of all the persons in New York City who subsisted by manual labor was substantially or wholly without employment.[1] Not less than 10,000 persons were in utter poverty and had no other means of surviving the Winter than those afforded by the charity of neighbors. The Almshouse and all charitable institutions were full to overflowing; the usual agencies of charity were exhausted or insufficient, and 10,000 sufferers were still uncared for. The great panic of 1837 had cut down the city’s trade one-half. Notwithstanding the fall of prices, the rents for tenements in New York were greater than were paid in any other city or village upon the globe.[2] So exorbitant were the demands of the landlords that the tenants found it impossible to meet them. The landowners were the backbone of the Whig party; it was not unnatural, therefore, that[118] their rapacity developed among the people at large a profound distrust of Whig men and principles.

The Whig officials, so far as can be discovered, took no adequate steps to relieve the widespread suffering. The Tammany ward committees, on the other hand, were active in relief work. This was another of the secrets of Tammany Hall’s usual success in holding the body of voters. The Whigs made fine speeches over champagne banquets, but kept at a distance from the poor, among whom the Wigwam workers mingled, and distributed clothing, fuel and food and often money. The leaders set the example. One of these was John M. Bloodgood,[3] who frequently went among the charitable citizens, collecting, in a large basket, cakes, pies, meat and other eatables, and distributing them among the needy.

In the Spring of 1838 Tammany nominated Isaac L. Varian for Mayor, and the Whigs renominated Aaron Clark. The Whigs used the panic as an example of the result of Democratic rule. Controlling the city, they employed all its machinery to win. It was reasonably certain that they did not stop at fraud. In some wards canvassing was delayed until other wards were heard from. In still other wards the Whigs refused to administer the oath to naturalized citizens. With all this they obtained a plurality of only 519 out of 39,341 votes. Had it not been for dissensions in the tumultuous Sixth Ward, Tammany would have won.

In the Fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were handed to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two hundred roughs were brought from Philadelphia, in different divisions, each man receiving $22. Gen. Robert Swartwout, now a Whig, at the[119] instance of such men as Moses H. Grinnell, Robert C. Wetmore and Noah Cook, former Wigwam lights, who left the Hall because the “destructionist” Anti-Monopolists captured it, arranged for the trip of these fraudulent voters. After having voted in as many wards as possible, each was to receive the additional compensation of $5. They were also to pass around spurious tickets purporting to be Democratic. The aggregate Whig vote, it was approximated, was swelled through the operations of this band by at least five to six hundred.[4] One repeater, Charles Swint, voted in sixteen wards. Such inmates of the House of Detention as could be persuaded or bullied into voting the Whig ticket were set at large. Merritt, a police officer, was seen boldly leading a crowd of them to the polls. Ex-convicts distributed Whig tickets and busily electioneered. The cabins of all the vessels along the wharves were ransacked, and every man, whether or not a citizen or resident of New York, who could be wheedled into voting a Whig ballot, was rushed to the polls and his vote was smuggled in. The Whigs were successful, their candidate for Governor, William H. Seward, receiving 20,179 votes, to 19,377 for William L. Marcy.

Departing from its custom of seeking local victory on national issues, Tammany, in April, 1839, issued an address expatiating on the increase of the city expenses from a little over $1,000,000 in 1830 to above $5,000,000 in 1838. Deducting about $1,500,000 for the Croton works, there would still remain the enormous increase of $2,500,000. The city population had not trebled in that time, nor had there been any extraordinary cause for expenditure. Where had all this money gone?

Tammany further pointed out that, unlike the Whigs, it had never stooped so low as to discharge the humble laborers in the public service, when it (Tammany) held[120] the Common Council. Nor had it ever been so abject as to provide them with colored tickets, as the Whigs had done, so that the laborers might be detected if they voted contrary to their masters. Tammany further charged that the Whigs in the previous election had taken the Almshouse paupers, with embossed satin voting tickets in their hands, to the polls, and were planning to do it again.

Tammany made good use of this charge. But the practise was not exclusively a Whig industry. In those years both Democrats and Whigs, according to which held power, forced Almshouse paupers to vote. For a fortnight before the election the paupers were put in training. On the morning of election they were disguised with new clothing, so that the public might not see their gray uniforms. They were given tickets to vote “and tickets for grog, silver coin and also good advice as to their conduct at the polls.” Then they were carried to the polls in stages, with an officer on each step to see that none escaped. Many would return to the Almshouse drunk and with torn clothing, or after having exchanged their new garments for liquor.[5] There were usually about 300 paupers. In the Fall and Winter of 1838 a quarter of the population was relieved at the Almshouse.

Clark and Varian were both renominated for Mayor in the Spring of 1839. Preparations for fraud on a large scale were made by both parties. The newspapers supporting Varian admitted that Tammany thought proper to follow the Whigs’ example, and to counteract its effects, by colonizing the doubtful wards with Democratic voters. On both sides repeating was general. An Albany police officer named Coulson brought twenty-three persons, one of whom was only seventeen years old, to New York City, where they voted the Whig ticket in the different wards. For this they received $5 in advance, and $1 a day.

Of the 41,113 votes Varian[6] received 21,072, and Clark[121] 20,005. The Wigwam secured a majority of 12 in the Common Council.

Fearing that Tammany in power would use the administration machinery in elections even more than had the Whigs, the latter now made a great outcry for a registry law,[7] proclaiming it the only fraud preventive. The sudden conversion of the Whig leaders to civic purity called forth derision. But the people at large, the non-politicians, ashamed of such barefaced frauds in their city, took up the agitation. The Registry bill was introduced in the Legislature in May, 1839. It provided for the registration of voters in New York City, and made fraudulent voting a felony, with severe penalties.

After the frauds of 1834 the Wigwam leaders had given out that they would take serious steps to obtain from the Legislature a law causing voters to be registered, but had done nothing. They now opened a campaign against the Whig bill. In the Spring of 1840 the ward committees declared against it on the pretext that it interfered with constitutional rights; that it was an insidious attempt to take from the poor man either his right of suffrage or to make the exercise of that right so inconvenient as practically to debar him from voting. The Common Council, on March 16, 1840, denounced the proposed law as inquisitorial,[122] tyrannical and disfranchising in its effect, as well as unjust, because they (the Aldermen) “know of no sin which she (New York City) has committed to make her worthy of the signal reproach now sought to be cast upon her.”[8] A few days later the Common Council on joint ballot delivered itself of a solemn protest against the constitutionality of the Registry bill, and on the night of March 24 an assemblage in the Wigwam did likewise. It was in this year that the full account of the Whig frauds of 1838 was made public. Commenting upon this, the Tammany Nominating Committee, with characteristic naïveté, said in its address: “It is with shame that we record these dark transactions and proclaim them to the people. We would, if we could, blot out their existence, for it brings disgrace on our whole country and will make the enemies of civil freedom laugh with joy.”

The Registry bill became a law, but Tammany continued to protest against it. When, in 1841, the Legislature increased the penalties for its violation, Acting Mayor Elijah F. Purdy commented upon it severely.[9]

The able, sincere and high-minded William Leggett, the guiding spirit of the Equal Rights party, died on May 29, 1839, not quite forty years old. The Tammany Young Men’s General Committee eulogized his virtues and talents, proclaimed him amongst the purest of politicians and announced the purpose of raising a monument to his memory. Of this committee, curious to relate, the chairman was Fernando Wood and the secretary Richard B. Connolly—two men who became known for anything but devotion to the virtues they here exalted.

Leggett, some years before this, had become a radical Abolitionist. By this time the anti-slavery movement in the city and State had grown to considerable proportions, though as yet it had exercised but little influence on politics. Several riots had taken place in the streets of the[123] city, two rather serious ones happening on July 9 and 10, 1834, and June 21, 1835, and Lewis Tappan, an anti-slavery propagandist, had been mobbed. The local movement gradually acquired new adherents, and constantly increased its propaganda. At this period, however, it was more in the nature of a growing moral force.

During this period another great series of disclosures regarding Tammany chieftains was made public. Samuel Swartwout, whom Jackson had made Collector of the Port shortly after coming into office in 1829, fled from the city late in 1838. He had long been a power in the organization. His name had been mentioned unpleasantly when he, with M. M. Noah and Henry Ogden,[10] contrived by means of their official positions to get $10,000 reward for the recovery of the jewels stolen from the Prince of Orange, though the recovery had been made by others. And in 1833 he had threatened, as Collector of the Port, to remove the Custom House uptown because the merchants would not lend him more than $7,000 on the strength of some worthless “Jersey meadows.” Three years later he was connected with the unsavory Harlem Railroad stock corner and the manipulation of the funds of the Commercial Bank. Early in 1838 he joined forces with the notorious politicians of the Seventh Ward Bank for the defeat of William Leggett for the Democratic nomination for Congress, securing the nomination of Isaac L. Varian in his stead. A few months later the city was astounded to learn that since 1830 he had been systematically robbing the Government, through the manipulation of Custom House receipts, and that the total of his thefts amounted to nearly $1,250,000.[11] Fleeing to Europe, he wandered[124] aimlessly about[12] for many years.[13] The community was so impressed with the size of this defalcation that a verb, “to Swartwout,” was coined, remaining in general use for many years thereafter. A defaulter was generally spoken of as having “Swartwouted.”

A lesser figure in Tammany circles, though a person of considerable consequence, followed Swartwout in flight. This was William M. Price, at the time District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was discovered that he had defaulted to the Government in the sum of $75,000. Price, like so many other Tammany politicians of his time, had been mixed up with Seventh Ward Bank politics. During the latter part of his career he had been known as the personal representative in the city of President Van Buren.

During the following Spring, William Paxen Hallett, a member of the “Big Four” against whom the Equal Rights party had so energetically protested in 1836, was made the defendant in a civil suit involving grave fraud. As referee in a suit for damages of one John A. Manning against one Charles J. Morris, Hallett had wrongfully reported that only trifling judgments remained outstanding against Morris, and the court had accordingly given the latter a year’s time in which to make good a judgment for $3,496 rendered in favor of Manning. It appeared, however, in the proceedings before the Superior Court, May 20, 1839, that Hallett knew, or should have known, of a previous judgment against the defendant for $15,014.44 in favor of one Nathan Davis, who during the year of[125] grace seized upon all of Morris’s property, thus defrauding Manning. The testimony was so convincing that Hallett was forced to compromise the suit by paying the damages asked for. Through the influence of the organization, however, he escaped prosecution.

The “ring” of Police Justices had for several years been a crying scandal. Whig and Tammany magistrates were equally involved. Public clamor fixed upon John M. Bloodgood, despite his private charities, as the first victim. The Assistant Aldermen impeached him in January, 1839,[14] and submitted the case to the Court of Common Pleas, by whom he was tried.[15] Testimony was brought out tending to show that the Police Justices, by means of an understanding with policemen and jailers, extorted money from prisoners and shielded counterfeiters, thieves, street walkers and other malefactors from arrest or conviction. The charges were dismissed.[16] Stronger testimony of the same kind was brought out in May, 1840, on the trial of Police Justice Henry W. Merritt, and other testimony involved in the same way Special Justice Oliver M. Lowndes. The case, however, was dismissed.[17]

[126]

A strong public agitation had been waged for the reorganization of the criminal courts. The Weekly Herald of February 1, 1840, had made the statement that the farce of conducting the correctional machinery of the city involved a yearly sum of $1,360,564—this sum being the total of judges’, policemen’s and court attendants’ salaries (about $50,000), added to the blackmail exacted from offenders, and various “pickings and stealings.” The statement was an extravagant one; $700,000 would have been nearer the mark. But whatever the sum, the acquittal of the Police Justices by their fellows in judicial evil-doing indicated that the carnival was to continue. The Tammany leaders had been “out” for the two years 1837-38, and were now vigorously making hay while the sun shone, while such of their Whig contemporaries as still held office were vying with the chiefs in systematic and organized plundering.

The Manhattan Bank scandals were made public in February, 1840. This was the bank whose charter Aaron Burr had so ingeniously secured in 1799. It had been a Tammany institution from the beginning, and Tammany politicians had ruled its policies. It was now generally regarded as the leading financial institution in the city, rivaled only by the Bank of America. It carried $600,000 of Government funds on deposit, and, of course, a large city and State fund.

It was now shown that for years it had loaned large sums to Tammany leaders and to family connections of its directors and officials, and that it had spent other large sums for political purposes. The total of its worthless loans and political expenditures reached the enormous sum of $1,344,266.99. Cashier Campbell P. White, tried on the technical charge of stealing several of the bank’s books, was freed through the disagreement of the jury,[18] but on a second trial, charged with assaulting Jonathan Thompson,[127] a Tammany director of the bank who had criticized his management, he was fined $250 and imprisoned for fifteen days.[19] In the midst of the excitement Colin G. Newcomb, the teller, disappeared with $50,000. That the bank weathered the storm well-nigh reaches the dimensions of a miracle. Paulding, twice a Tammany Mayor; Bowne, another Tammany ex-Mayor; and Robert H. Morris, at that time Recorder, appeared as the defendant’s witnesses in the first trial. White was an influential Wigwam chief, and in 1832 had been elected to Congress on the Tammany ticket.

[128]

About the year 1840 the change in the personnel and the policy of the Wigwam became distinctly evident. After its absorption of the Equal Rights party, the organization had remained “purified” for a year or so, and then, as usual, had relapsed. But a new power and new ideas prevailed. No longer did the bankers and merchants who once held the Wigwam in their grasp, venture to meet in the secret chamber of the hall and order nominations, command policies or determine the punishment of refractory individuals. Tammany from this time forward began to be ruled from the bottom of the social stratum, instead of from the top.

Something had to be done to offset the disclosures of 1838-40. Accordingly, the policy of encouraging the foreigners, first rather mildly started in 1823, was now developed into a system. The Whigs antagonized the entrance of foreign-born citizens into politics, and the Native American party was organized expressly to bar them almost entirely from the enjoyment of political rights. The immigrant had no place to which to turn but Tammany Hall. In part to assure to itself this vote the organization opened a bureau, a modest beginning of what became a colossal department. An office was established in the Wigwam, to which specially paid agents or organization runners brought the immigrant, drilled into him the advantages of joining Tammany and furnished him with[129] the means and legal machinery needed to take out his naturalization papers. Between January 14 and April 1, 1840, 895 of these men were taken before Tammany Marine Court Judges and naturalized. Judges of other courts helped to swell the total. Nearly every one of these aliens became and remained an inveterate organization voter. Tammany took the immigrant in charge, cared for him, made him feel that he was a human being with distinct political rights, and converted him into a citizen. How sagacious this was, each year revealed. Immigration soon poured in heavily, and there came a time when the foreign vote outnumbered that of the native-born citizens.[1]

The Whigs were bewildered at this systematic gathering in of the naturalized citizens. After the election of April, 1840,[2] when Tammany reelected Varian Mayor and carried the Common Council, the Committee of Whig Young Men[3] issued a long address on the subject. After specifically charging that prisoners had been marched from their cells in the City Prison by their jailers to the polls to vote the Tammany ticket, the address declared that during the week previous to, and on election day, naturalization papers had been granted at the Marine Court on tickets from Tammany Hall, under circumstances of great abuse.

In the campaign of 1840 the so-called best elements of the town were for General Harrison. The Wigwam men had much at stake in Van Buren’s candidature and exerted themselves to reelect him. Tammany now elaborated its naturalization bureau. A committee sat daily at the Wigwam, assisting in the naturalization process, free of charge[130] to the applicant. The allegiance of foreign-born citizens was further assured by humoring their national pride in the holding of Irish, German and French meetings in the hall, where each nationality was addressed in its own language. The more influential foreigners were rewarded with places on the Assembly or local ticket, and to the lesser workers of foreign birth were given petty jobs in the department offices, or contract work.

The outcome was, that in the face of especially strong opposition Tammany harvested 982 plurality in the city for Van Buren, though the vote of the Western counties gave Harrison the electoral vote of the State. It was such instances as this—demonstrating its capacity of swaying New York City even if the rest of the State voted oppositely—that continued to give Tammany Hall a powerful hold on the Democratic party of the nation, notwithstanding the discredit that so often attached to Tammany men and measures.

Another example of the change in the personnel of Tammany was shown in the rise and progress of the “ward heeler” and his “gangs.” The “gangs” were not conspicuous in 1841, when the organization elected Robert H. Morris Mayor.[4] In April, 1842, when Morris was reelected,[5] the “gangs” were still modestly in the background. But in the Fall of that year they came forth in their might.

One of their leaders was “Mike” Walsh, who became a sort of example for the professional “ward heelers” that followed in his wake. Walsh had no claim at all on the ruling politicians at the Wigwam, and would have been unnoticed by them. But he was ambitious, did not lack ability of a certain kind, and had a retinue of devoted “plug-ugly” followers. He spoke with a homely eloquence,[131] which captivated the poor of his ward. The turbulent he won over with his fists. On November 1 the Tammany Nominating Committee reported to the great popular meeting. Walsh, with the express purpose of forcing his own nomination for the Assembly, went there with such a band of shouters and fighters as never before had been seen in the hall. His “shoulder-hitters”—men, as a rule, of formidable appearance—did such hearty execution and so overawed the men assembled there, that upon the question being put to a vote the general committee decided in his favor and placed his name on the regular ticket. While in the ensuing election he received not quite 3,000 votes to the nearly 20,000 cast for his opponent (the nominee first reported by the committee), he eventually was successful in his aim. Seeing how easy it was to force nominations at the Wigwam if backed by force, other men began to imitate him and get together “gangs” of their own.

This was the kind of men who, with their “gangs,” superseded the former Democratic ward committees, nearly every member of which kept a shop or earned his living in some legitimate calling. By helping one another in introducing “gangs” of repeaters from one ward to another at the primary elections, the “ward heelers” became the masters of the wards and were then graduated into leaders, whose support was sought by the most dignified and illustrious politicians.

In fact, the city was frequently in a state of turmoil. Since 1834 there had been half a dozen riots.[6] There were constant fights between rival volunteer engine companies, to which lawless and abandoned characters attached themselves. Engines were stolen, clubs, pipes, wrenches and other weapons were used, and the affrays generally closed[132] with stabbings and broken skulls.[7] There was no police force to speak of; even Mayor Morris, whom the “gangs” called “Bob” and tapped familiarly on the shoulder, described it as “lamentably defective.”[8] One out of every twenty-one white persons in the city could not read and write.[9] From so large a population of illiterates, the “ward heelers” easily recruited great numbers of followers. Morris allowed the “gangs” full sway, and was popular accordingly. Naturally, with this encouragement, the “gangs” grew and became ever bolder.

General disgust at the low character of politics was felt by the independents, who rightly held both Tammany and the Whigs responsible. During the time each party held power affairs had gone from bad to worse. A joint special committee of Aldermen, appointed under public pressure, reported, in 1842, that dishonest office-holders had recently robbed the city of little short of $100,000.[10] A street cleaning contract was awarded for $64,500 a year, for five years, when other responsible persons offered to take it for not quite $25,000 a year.[11] The fraudulent selling of city land to cover up the increasing debt was continued.[12] The city office-holders sold real estate for unpaid assessments, frequently without giving notice to the owner, and bought it in themselves and so “possessed themselves of estates.”[13] Heavy and oppressive assessments for improvements never actually made were laid on the taxpayers.[14] Hundreds of thousands of dollars were expended uselessly and extravagantly.[15] Mayor Morris complained that he had no power over expenditures; that he knew nothing of legislative action on public works until[133] the warrants for payment were sent to him.[16] In violation of the charter, the Aldermen participated in all the profitable “jobs.”[17]

Convicts were allowed to escape from Blackwell’s Island on condition that they voted as their keepers ordered them.[18] Prisoners whose terms had expired were kept at the public expense until election day, to get their votes. The inmates of the Almshouse and the Penitentiary were forced to manufacture articles for the use and profit of the officers of those departments. “It is a well-known fact to all who have been familiar with those establishments,” declared the Almshouse Commissioners, “that large quantities of cabinet furniture, clothing and sometimes elegant carriages, cut-glass decanters, punch-bowls, and other articles have been made at the expense of the city; and this has been carried on more or less for years.”[19] It was the custom of the officers “to expend large sums in sumptuous and costly dinners for the entertainment of partizans.” Persons confined in the City Prison were frequently swindled out of their money or effects by the officers, or by “shyster” lawyers, acting in connivance with the jailers; and to get a mere note or message delivered to friends they had to pay an exorbitant price.[20]

Despite the disclosures, Tammany again elected Morris, in April, 1843, by nearly 5,000 plurality, he receiving 24,395 votes to 19,516 for Robert Smith, the Whig candidate. The storm, however, was gathering, both in and out of Tammany. Inside the organization, charges were common of monstrous frauds in the primaries. Frauds against the Whigs were acceptable enough, but by Democrats against Democrats were intolerable. So pronounced was the outcry over these frauds that the Tammany General Committee, in the Fall of 1843, directed that in future[134] the ward meetings should be held on the same night and that only those whose names appeared on the poll lists should be allowed to vote.[21]

Outside criticism materialized in an independent reform movement. It found a rallying point in the Native American or American Republican party, which previously had polled about 9,000 votes. It resented the intrusion of foreigners into politics, large numbers of whom had secured office. It was partially industrial in its character and following; numbers of American workingmen believed that with 100,000 immigrants[22] pouring into this country every year they would soon have to be satisfied with a shilling or twenty cents a day for their labor, instead of $1.50 they were receiving. The native element also complained of the organization of the Irish into a distinct and separate element, with a high Roman Catholic prelate at its head, in order to get part of the public school funds. The discussion of the public school question only the more accentuated hatreds, bringing to the surface the most delicate questions touching the religious feelings and prejudices of the major part of the community.

Tammany nominated Jonathan I. Coddington for Mayor, and placed very few naturalized citizens on its ticket. The Native American candidate was James Harper, and the Whig, Morris Franklin.

Mayor Morris called a meeting in Tammany Hall at which resolutions were passed denouncing the Common Council for its corruption and its failure to carry out reform. The advocates of the new party declared that they were not to be deceived. Their campaign was carried on with vigor. Honest men generally were roused against both Tammany and the Whigs. Religious and racial vituperation were partially cast aside and forgotten for[135] the time when the reform men took hold of the movement; not wholly so, however, for we find one of the chief native orators declaring in a campaign speech that “the American Republicans will not be found with Roman Catholics in the same ranks.” This bigotry was overlooked, inasmuch as the Native Americans promised city reform, good police, reductions in taxes, clean streets and economical expenditure of the public money. The community was pervaded by a profound sense of the corruption and inefficiency of the old parties, and ordinary political lines were forgotten.

Tammany made desperate efforts to carry the election. On the preceding night, convicts in batches of twenty and thirty were taken from Blackwell’s Island to New York, where they were lodged, and the next day given Democratic ballots, free lunch and in some instances were employed to electioneer.[23]

The Native Americans won, however, the vote standing: Harper, 24,606; Coddington, 20,726; Franklin, 5,207.

The new administration was a distinct disappointment. Though it had a majority in the Common Council, it accomplished few or none of the reforms its supporters had promised. The scramble for office continued as before; municipal improvements progressed slowly, and though salaries and appropriations were cut to some extent, taxes and expenditures increased. A part of this increase was doubtless justified, but the people had been promised reduction, and they refused to take into account the fiscal needs of a rapidly growing city. The administration further weakened its hold by passing and enforcing stringent “blue laws.” Not only were the unfortunate women of the streets warred upon and quiet drinking places raided, but irritating measures, such as the prohibiting of fireworks on the Fourth of July and the driving of apple women and other vendors from the streets, were taken. The result was a public reaction.

[136]

Mayor Harper was a quaint character, and his odd rulings when presiding in Special Sessions were the talk of the town. If a shoemaker, for instance, was arraigned before him, he would say: “Well, we want shoemakers on the island, so we’ll send you up for three months, and be smart while you last, John, be smart.” Or, in the instance of a man who claimed to be “a sort of carpenter”: “Well, we’ll send you up for two months to round your apprenticeship, and the city will take care of your lodging and board, Matthew.”

In the reaction that set in, many voters swung back to Tammany on the general belief that it was no worse than the other parties. This change of sentiment put the organization in good form to carry the city for James K. Polk in November, 1844. A short time before this there had come into distinction one of the most effective auxiliaries of the Wigwam. This was the Empire Club,[24] of No. 28 Park Row. Its chief was Captain Isaiah Rynders, and its membership was made up of a choice variety of picked worthies who could argue a mooted point to a finish with knuckles. Rynders had a most varied career before entering New York politics. A gambler in New Orleans, he mixed in some bowie and pistol fights there in which he was cut severely on the head and elsewhere, and his hat was perforated by a bullet. On a Mississippi steamboat he drove O’Rourke, a pugilist, out of the saloon with a red-hot poker, after O’Rourke had lost at faro and had attempted to kill the winner. These were but a few of his many diversions. In Washington he was arrested with Breedlove and Jewell on suspicion of being connected with the theft of a large sum in Treasury notes, though no proof was found against him. He was a very considerable[137] power in the Wigwam for over twenty years, frequently officiating at meetings there. Chief among the club’s other members of like proclivities were such noted fighters and “unterrified Democrats” as “Country McCleester” (McClusky), “Bill” Ford, “Manny” Kelly, John Ling, “Mike” Phillips, “Bill” Miner, “Denny” McGuire, “Ike” Austin, “Tom” McGuire, “Tom” Freeman and “Dave” Scandlin. After the nomination of Henry Clay, “Johnny” Austin—a common report of the day had it—was offered the sum of $2,000 to bring himself and five of his associates—McClusky, Kelly, Ford, Scandlin and Phillips—into the Unionist Club (a Whig organization) with the hope that they could secure success to the Whigs in the city. Offices also were promised, but the offers were refused; whether because the Wigwam held forth greater inducements is not clear.

Aided by these worthies, and by the popular indignation against the reform administration, the Wigwam men grew confident. They were now heard boasting that they intended electing their entire ticket. There being no longer fear of the Registry law (which the Wigwam had recently influenced a friendly Legislature to repeal on the ground of its discriminative application to New York City alone), fraud was open and general. The vote on its face proved this; since, while New York City could claim a legitimate vote of only 45,000, the Polk electors were credited with 28,216, and the Clay electors with 26,870 votes. For James G. Birney, the Abolition candidate, but 118 votes were polled, or at least counted.

The Tammany General Committee, on January 13, 1845, passed resolutions favoring the annexation of Texas and calling a public meeting. With a view of glorifying John Tyler—to whom they owed their positions—and at the same time of winning the good will of the incoming administration, the Custom House officers tried to anticipate the committee’s action, but were not allowed to use the hall.[138] Resolved, at any rate, to control the meeting regularly called, they crowded two thousand of their creatures, under the leadership of Rynders, into the Wigwam. The meeting was soon one of uproar, turbulence and some fighting. Rynders had his resolutions adopted “amid yells, shouts, screams, oaths, cheers, blasphemy, hisses and an uproar never before known in the pandemonium of politics.” It was the generally expressed opinion that the time had come when the proceedings of a meeting at Tammany Hall were no longer to be considered as any certain indication of the opinions of the Democratic party; that a class of men who chose to organize themselves for the purpose, by being early on the ground, acting in concert and clamoring according to certain understood signals, could carry any set of resolutions they pleased, in the very teeth of the large majority of the Democratic party.

In the local campaign of 1845 Tammany acted sagaciously. It nominated William F. Havemeyer for Mayor, laying stress on the fact that he was a “native New Yorker.” The Native Americans renominated Harper, and the Whigs, Dudley Selden. The vote stood: Havemeyer, 24,183, Harper, 17,472; Selden, 7,082. Tammany secured a majority of 26 on joint ballot in the Common Council—the real power.

Mayor Havemeyer sincerely tried to effect reforms. In the beginning of his term he urged the fact that the Common Council united in itself nearly all the executive with all the legislative power, and declared that its main business was to collect and distribute, through the various forms of patronage, nearly a million and a half dollars a year.[25] His attacks upon the arbitrary powers and corrupt practises of the Common Council made so little impression upon that body that on May 13, the very first day of convening, the Aldermen, immediately after the reading of the Mayor’s message, removed not less than[139] seventy officials, from the heads of departments to Street Inspectors;[26] and on subsequent days the process was continued until every post was filled with a Tammany man.

But the effect upon the public mind was such that in 1846 a new charter was drafted and adopted, which deprived the Common Council of the power which it hitherto had enjoyed of appointing the heads of departments, and gave their election direct to the people.

Mayor Havemeyer not being pliable enough for the Wigwam leaders, they nominated and elected, in the Spring of 1846, Andrew H. Mickle, by a vote of 21,675, the Whigs receiving 15,111, and the Native Americans 8,301.[27] Mayor Mickle was regarded as “one of the people.” He was born in a shanty in the “bloody ould Sixth,” in the attic of which a dozen pigs made their habitation. Marrying the daughter of the owner of a large tobacco house, he later became its proprietor. He improved his opportunities, business and official, so well that he died worth over a million dollars.

[140]

Two factions had lately arisen in Tammany Hall—the “Barnburners” and the “Hunkers.” Differences in principle had at first caused the division, but it was characterized, nevertheless, by a lively race for office.

The “Barnburners” were the radical Democrats who believed, among other things that slavery should not be extended to free territory. The nickname was occasioned by the saying of a contractor, a few years before: “These men are incendiaries; they are mad; they are like the farmer, who, to get the rats out of his granary, sets fire to his own barn.”

The “Hunkers” were the office-holding conservatives, very unwilling to have anything disturb their repose, and above all, opposed to the agitation of the slavery question. Their influence was thrown wherever possible with the slaveholding States. The term “Hunkers” arose from their characteristic of striving to keep their offices to the exclusion of everybody else—“to get all they can and keep all they can get.”[1]

The quarrel was as sharply defined throughout the State as in New York City. Such men as Samuel J. Tilden, C. C. Cambreleng, William F. Havemeyer and Minthorne Tompkins were the local leaders of the “Barnburners”;[141] John McKeon, Lorenzo B. Shepard,[2] a brilliant young leader who was a noted orator at the early age of 19; Edward Strahan and Emanuel B. Hart were some of the chiefs of the “Hunkers.” This factional struggle, together with the dissatisfaction given by the city administration, weakened Tammany, whose nominee, in the Spring election of 1847, J. Sherman Brownell, was defeated by the Whig candidate, William V. Brady. The vote stood: Brady, 21,310; Brownell, 19,877; Ellis G. Drake (Independent), 2,078. This was the first time in nine years that the city had been carried by the Whigs proper, though they were aided somewhat by the Native Americans.

“Barnburners” and “Hunkers” laid aside their differences momentarily when President Polk visited the city in June, 1847, one of his objects being to be initiated a member of the Tammany Society. On June 26 he was waited upon at the Astor House by a deputation of the society, headed by Elijah F. Purdy. Quite worn out after a torrid day of handshaking, Polk accompanied his escorts to the large room in the Wigwam, where members of the society were usually initiated. Later, the President emerged, looking happy at having availed himself of membership in a political society which could sway Presidential choices and elections and perhaps determine his own future political fate.

This incident past, the factions resumed their quarrel and warred so effectually that in the general election of November, 1847, the Whigs again won, by more than 3,000 votes. But Tammany, in its darkest moments, was fertile in expedients. It now arranged a great meeting for February 5, 1848, in commendation of the Mexican War. Sam Houston and General Foote made speeches,[142] and one of the Tammany orators assured the audience that though Tammany Hall “erred sometimes,” its “patriotic ardor was never cooled.” The success of this war brought thousands of voters back to the Democratic ranks in the city. Besides, “Barnburners” and “Hunkers” were tiring of defeat. Neither relished exile from office all the time. They agreed on the nomination of former Mayor Havemeyer, who personally was popular, though the Wigwam leaders had caused his administration to be discredited. Havemeyer was elected by the slender majority of 928 over the Whig candidate, Mayor Brady. The Native American party had now about gone out of existence.

But the factions soon disagreed again on national questions, and sent conflicting Tammany delegations to the national convention in Baltimore, in May, 1848. After tedious debate and much acrimony both were allowed a half vote to each delegate. When, however, it was seen that the “Barnburners” voted with some other States in support of the principle against the extension of slavery to free territory, a movement was started to reject them. The prospect of losing the all-important electoral vote of New York State was not pleasant to the convention. To avoid the arbitrary rejection of either faction the committee on credentials suggested a compromise by which it refused to open the discussion as to which faction ought to be accepted until both had pledged themselves to abide by the decision of the convention. Knowing that this would be pro-slavery, the “Barnburners” declared that “the Democracy of New York must be admitted unconditionally or not at all,” and withdrew. The “Hunkers” took the required pledge.

Arriving home, the “Barnburner” delegates issued an address saying that a faction existed among them whose object was the perpetuation and the extension of human servitude. Bold, unscrupulous and active, it wielded to a great degree the patronage of the Federal Government.[143] It addressed itself to the fears of some, to the cupidity of others. By these means it had got possession of the late national convention and had proclaimed a candidate for the Presidency—a man who obtained his nomination only as the price of the most abject subserviency to the slave power. The “Barnburners” then took steps to name candidates in opposition to Lewis Cass and Gen. W. O. Butler, the Baltimore nominees, who had been promptly approved by the “Hunker” element in the Wigwam. Calling Martin Van Buren from obscurity, they nominated him for President, anticipating the action of the Free Soil convention at Buffalo in August.

Throughout the slavery agitation up to the firing on Fort Sumter, the South had no firmer supporter than Tammany. In the hall Southern representatives spoke and spread broadcast their doctrines on every available occasion; however ultra those doctrines might be, the Wigwam audiences never missed applauding them enthusiastically.

The “Hunkers” immediately opened a series of Cass meetings. “All the South asks,” said Gen. Stevenson at one of them in Tammany Hall, on June 9, 1848, “is non-interference.” He was cheered wildly. As usual, the “regular” Democratic nominations were supported by the backbone of the Democracy in New York City—those who clung to the mere name and forms of the party as well as the active men who lived in office and luxuriated on the spoils. The “Barnburners,” otherwise now styled the Free Soilers, were quite as active as the “Hunkers,” and their defection on election day enabled Gen. Taylor to carry the city—the supposed Democratic stronghold—by 9,883 votes.

The dissensions in the Wigwam were as pronounced in the Spring of 1849—at least outwardly. The two factions held separate Mayoralty conventions on the same night. The “Barnburners” were naturally eager for Havemeyer, one of themselves, but he would not have[144] the honor. Hearing that the “Hunkers” were proposing Myndert Van Schaick, an extremely popular man, the “Barnburners” resolved to steal the “Hunkers’” thunder by nominating him themselves. This they accordingly did, and the bewildered public was treated to the spectacle of Van Schaick standing as the candidate of both the recriminating factions. There were not wanting those who professed to see in this action an agreement between the leaders on the matter of the local offices. The Whigs elected Caleb S. Woodhull by 4,121 plurality, and secured over two-thirds of the members of the Common Council. The Democrats of the “Old School,”—the unyielding “Hunkers”—would not vote for a candidate the Free Soilers approved of; they either did not vote at all or voted for Woodhull.

The “Barnburners,” practically driven out of Tammany Hall by the “Hunkers,” had been meeting elsewhere. Tiring of defeats, however, overtures for reunion were made during the Fall campaign. A fusion resulted, not only in the city but in other parts of the State, and candidates were agreed upon.[3] But no sooner had the reunion been declared than a number of irreconcilable “Hunkers” and certain other politicians—including Daniel E. Sickles, James T. Brady, “Mike” Walsh and John M. Bloodgood—formed a self-constituted “Democratic-Republican Executive Committee” to oppose the deal. On the day before election they sent out a circular denouncing the fusion, and declaring that though it promised much it was really only a means of engrafting upon Democratic time-honored principles a set of abolition[145] doctrines, “hostile to the peace and welfare of the Republic and repugnant to the sympathies and intelligence of the Democratic party.”[4]

This circular was misleading. Neither the “Barnburners” nor the “Hunkers” had imposed any sacrifice of principle upon the other. They merely agreed for the time being to suspend their differences in order to get a controlling influence over the disbursement of municipal finances. The opinion of each voter on the slavery question was left untouched.

The election was hotly contested, for by the new State constitution the selection of minor State offices had been taken from the Governor and Legislature and given to the people.[5] Owing to this defection of a strong Tammany group the Whigs carried the city. The excitement in the Wigwam, when the result became known, was intense. Four thousand Tammany men, looking either for office or party triumph, were in a frenzy. W. D. Wallach, a politician of some note, mounted the rostrum, and under the stimulus of disappointment, held forth in a long and remarkable harangue, to which his auditors listened in comparative silence, though the same utterances at another time might have provoked a riot in the Wigwam. Men of downright dishonesty, Wallach said, had crept into the organization by the aid of bullies and loafers. These men of late years had managed to wield great power at Tammany primary elections, where, as everybody knew, matters long had been arranged “upon the assumption that by a free application of money, violence and roguery, the people could and should be controlled.” What wonder was it, he asked, that thousands of quiet and respectable Democrats had ceased to bow to the authority of regular nominations, however[146] worthy the candidates, when they found more or less of the Tammany nominating committees returned in part notoriously by violence, if not by fraud?

The breach between the “Barnburners” and the extreme “Hunkers” was reopened and widened by this self-constituted committee’s action. It led to the formation of two bodies, each claiming to be the genuine general committee of Tammany Hall. One was led by Fernando Wood, who was suspected of being a “Hunker,” but was too much of a politician to be active against the “Barnburners.” This general committee was of a compromising disposition. In brief, it was composed mainly of what were known as political “trimmers”—men willing to make any sacrifices of principle for individual or party success. The other committee, of which Henry M. Western was the head, was composed of “Hunkers” and took up the interests of the self-formed “Democratic-Republican Executive Committee.” It was the first body in the North to call a meeting to denounce the Wilmot proviso. To all intents standing for principle, each committee sought the tremendous advantages of the possession of Tammany Hall and its political machinery. By being recognized as the “regular” general committee, its nominations would be “regular” and as such would command the votes of the great mass of Democrats. To obtain that recognition both committees realized the necessity of obtaining a majority of the Council of Sachems, which, in critical moments, had so thoroughly demonstrated its legal right to eject from the Wigwam any man or body of men it pleased.

The opening struggle between the factions for mastery took place at the annual election of the society on April 15, 1850. Each body made desperate efforts to elect its list of Sachems. The ticket in favor of a union of the factions and of reorganizing the “Wood committee” was headed by Elijah F. Purdy, then Grand Sachem, and contained the names of Isaac V. Fowler, John A.[147] Bogert, John J. Manning and others. Former Mayor Mickle, Charles O’Conor, Francis B. Cutting and M. M. Noah led the rival ticket.

The “Hunkers” brought to the polls many men, who, though still members of the society, long since had gone over to the Whigs and had lost the habit of attending the society’s meetings. These men claimed the right to vote, and it was unquestionably theirs. In law the Tammany Society was merely a charitable and benevolent corporation. No member in good standing could be debarred from voting. With cheerful alacrity these Whig members lent their aid in distracting the Democratic party into keeping up a double organization. Office-holders and other men openly attached to the Whig party voted.[6] When it seemed that most of the Purdy ticket was elected, the two “Hunker” inspectors suddenly found three more “Hunker” tickets in the ballot box. Previously this box had been examined, emptied and exposed publicly. These three ballots, if counted, would have elected one more Sachem of the “Hunker” stripe, giving that faction six of the thirteen Sachems—one short of a majority. The two “Barnburner” inspectors refused to count them. The result of the election being disputed, Purdy promptly took possession of the books and papers of the society.

As the best solution of the troubles, the Sachems, on April 26, determined to forbid both committees admittance to the Wigwam. The Sachems did not acknowledge accountability to any one for their actions, not even to the society which elected them.[7] Representing themselves as the supreme judges of which was the real Democratic General Committee or whether there was any,[8] the Sachems let it be understood that they would act as mediators. By a vote of 10 to 1,[9] they[148] “recommended”—an action equivalent to an arbitrary order—that the “Wood committee” provide for the election of delegates to a convention in Tammany Hall “to reorganize the New York City Democracy.” From the substance of the invitation sent out by the society to various conspicuous personages it was evident that, though the “Wood committee” had been favored, somehow a majority of the “Hunker,” or pro-slavery Sachems was installed.[10]

The plan of a convention was accepted by both factions. But by manipulating the primary elections for delegates Fernando Wood succeeded in filling the convention with his own creatures, allowing, for form’s sake, a sprinkling of opponents. Wood, whose aim was to get the nomination for Mayor, was the chief “trimmer,” though each side made concessions. Various equivocal resolutions touching the slavery question were adopted, and a new Tammany General Committee, comprising “Barnburners,” mild “Hunkers” and ultra-“Hunkers,” was formed.

The “Barnburners” and “Hunkers” then agreed upon a coalition in State and city, uniting on Horatio Seymour for Governor. Despite the diplomacy of Wood, who had arranged this pact, an explosion was narrowly averted a few weeks later. Finding themselves in a majority at a slimly attended meeting of the general committee in the latter part of September, 1850, the uncompromising “Hunkers” denounced parleying with Free Soilers, and by a vote of 16 to 11 refused to sustain Seymour. As soon as their action became known there[149] was a burst of indignation. The threat was made that if the committee did not rescind it, the Council of Sachems, most of whom, it seems, Wood had won over to his plans, would turn it out of Tammany Hall. The members of the committee hastened to meet, the ultra-“Hunkers” were routed, and the State candidates strongly indorsed.

[150]

Under a new charter the Mayor’s term was extended to two years, and the time of election, with that of the other city officers, was changed to November. The latter change gave great satisfaction to the leaders, for it enabled them to trade votes. Trading grew to such an extent that charges became common of this or that nominee for President, Governor, State Senator and so on being “sold out” by the leaders to insure their own election.

The Tammany organization, too, had made a change. It had adopted the convention system of nominating. This new method was much more satisfactory to the leaders, because the election of delegates to the conventions could easily be controlled, and the risk of having prearranged nominations overruled by an influx of “gangs” into the great popular meeting was eliminated.

A show of opposition to the proposed program was, however, still necessary. The first general convention was held in October, 1850. Fernando Wood was the leading candidate for Mayor, and it was certain that he would be nominated. But the first ballot showed a half-dozen competitors. The second ballot, however, disclosed the real situation, and Wood was chosen by 29 votes, to 22 for John J. Cisco.

Wood was a remarkable man. As a tactician and organizer he was the superior both of his distant predecessor[151] Burr and of his successors Tweed and Sweeny. He was born in Philadelphia, in June, 1812, of Quaker parents. At the age of thirteen, he was earning $2 a week as a clerk. Later, he became a cigarmaker and tobacco dealer, and still later, a grocer. As a lad he was pugnacious; in a Harrisburg bar-room he once floored with a chair a State Senator who had attacked him. But he seems to have been amenable to good advice; for once when a Quaker reprimanded him for his excessive use of tobacco with the observation, “Friend, thee smokes a good deal,” he at once threw away his cigar, and gave up the habit.

Coming to New York, he engaged in several business enterprises, all the while taking a considerable interest in politics. He was elected to Congress in 1840, serving one term. Gradually he came to make politics his vocation. Political manipulation before his day was, at the best, clumsy and crude. Under his facile genius and painstaking care, it developed to the rank of an exact science. He devoted himself for years to ingratiating himself with the factors needed in carrying elections.[1] He curried favor with the petty criminals of the Five Points, the boisterous roughs of the river edge, and the swarms of immigrants, as well as with the peaceable and industrious mechanics and laborers; and he won a following even among the business men. All these he marshaled systematically in the Tammany organization. Politics was his science, and the “fixing” of primaries his specialty; in this he was perhaps without a peer.

His unscrupulousness was not confined to politics. During this brief campaign he was repeatedly charged with commercial frauds as well as with bribery and dishonest practises at the primaries. A year later he was shown to have been guilty before this time of having[152] defrauded a partner of $8,000, and he escaped conviction by the merest technicality.[2]

Political standards in the fifties were not high. But the rowdy character of a great part of Tammany’s membership, and the personal character of many of its nominees, particularly that of Wood, proved too much to bear, even for those days, and a strong revulsion followed. Former Mayors Havemeyer and Mickle; John McKeon, a leader of note, and other prominent Democrats revolted. The election resulted in a Whig victory, Ambrose C. Kingsland securing 22,546 votes to 17,973 for Wood. A great Democratic defection was shown by the fact that Horatio Seymour carried the city by only 705 plurality.

So general were the expressions of contempt for the character of the Wigwam that the Sachems resolved to invoke again the spirit of patriotism, and consequently fixed upon a revival of the old custom of Independence Day celebrations. In 1851 the ruling Council of Sachems was a mixture of compromise “Barnburners” and “Hunkers.” The committee of arrangements—Elijah F. Purdy, Daniel E. Delavan, Richard B. Connolly, Stephen C. Duryea and three others—sent invitations, filled with lofty and patriotic sentiments, to various national politicians. “Barnburners” also were invited, the conciliatory Sachems being sincerely tired of a warfare which threatened to exile them all from the sinecures of city and State offices.

The Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order, the[153] circular said, had originated “in a fraternity of patriots, solemnly consecrated to the independence, the popular liberty and the federal union of the country.” Tammany’s councils were “ever vigilant for the preservation of those great national treasures from the grasp alike of the treacherous and the open spoiler.” It had “enrolled in its brotherhood many of the most illustrious statesmen, patriots and heroes that had constellated the historic banners of the past and present age.… And it remained to the present hour,” the glowing lines read on, “instinct with its primitive spirit and true to the same sacred trust.”

The rhetoric delivered at the celebration was quite as pretentious and high-flown. But the phrases made no impression on the public mind. No impartial observer denied that the Wigwam’s moral prestige with the State and national party was for the time gone. Throughout the country the belief prevailed that the politicians of the metropolis deserved no respect, merit or consideration; and that they were purchasable and transferable like any stock in Wall street.

If before 1846 nominations were sold it was not an open transaction. Since then the practise of selling them had gradually grown, and now the bargaining was unconcealed. Upon the highest bidder the honors generally fell. Whigs and Tammany men were alike guilty. If one aspirant offered $1,000, another offered $2,000. But these sums were merely a beginning; committees would impress upon the candidate the fact that a campaign costs money; more of the “boys” would have to be “seen”; such and such a “ward heeler” needed “pacifying”; a band was a proper embellishment, with a parade to boot, and voters needed “persuading.” And at the last moment a dummy candidate would be brought forward as a man who had offered much more for the nomination. Then the bidder at $2,000 would have to pay the difference, and if the office sought was a profitable[154] one, the candidate would be a lucky man if he did not have to disgorge as much as $15,000 before securing the nomination. Some candidates were bled for as much as $20,000, and even this was a moderate sum compared to the prices which obtained a few years later.

The primaries were attended by “gangs” more rowdy and corrupt than ever; Whig ward committees often sold over to Tammany,[3] and Whig votes, bought or traded, swelled the ballot boxes at the Wigwam primaries. Nearly every saloon was the headquarters of a “gang” whose energies and votes could be bought. In Tammany Hall an independent Democrat dared not speak unless he had previously made terms with the controlling factions, according to a relatively fixed tariff of rates. The primaries of both parties had become so scandalously corrupt as to command no respect.

The discoveries of gold in California and Australia created in all classes a feverish desire for wealth. Vessel after vessel was arriving in the harbor with millions of dollars’ worth of gold dust. Newspapers and magazines were filled with glowing accounts of how poor men became rich in a dazzlingly short period. The desire for wealth became a mania, and seized upon all callings. The effect was a still further lowering of the public tone; standards were generally lost sight of, and all means of “getting ahead” came to be considered legitimate. Politicians, trafficking in nominations and political influence, found it a most auspicious time.

This condition was intensified by the influx of the hordes of immigrants driven by famine and oppression from Ireland, Germany and other European countries. From over 129,000 arriving at the port of New York in 1847, the number increased to 189,000 in 1848, 220,000 in 1849, 212,000 in 1850, 289,000 in 1851 and 300,000 in 1852. Some of these sought homes in other States,[155] but a large portion remained in the city. Though many of these were thrifty and honest, numbers were ignorant and vicious, and the pauper and criminal classes of the metropolis grew larger than ever. The sharper-witted among them soon mended their poverty by making a livelihood of politics. To them political rights meant the obtaining of money or the receiving of jobs under the city, State or national government, in return for the marshaling of voters at the polls. Regarding issues they bothered little, and knew less.

The effects of the Whig and Native American denunciation of the alien vote were now seen. The naturalized citizens almost invariably sided with Tammany Hall, although there were times when, by outbidding the Wigwam, the Whigs were enabled to use them in considerable numbers.

Despite an unusual degree of public condemnation, Tammany managed, by a temporary pacification of the factions and a general use of illegal votes, to carry the city in the Fall of 1851 by nearly 2,000 majority. But it could not hold the regular Democratic strength, for Wright, the candidate for Governor, received over 3,000 majority. Frauds were notorious. In one of the polling places of the Nineteenth Ward, the Wigwam’s candidates for Alderman and Assistant Alderman were counted in after a mob invaded it and forced the Whig inspectors to flee for their lives. When the votes for the Assembly ticket were counted 532 were announced, although there were only 503 names on the poll list. This was but an instance of the widespread repeating and violence.

With its large majority in the Common Council Tammany at first made a feint at curtailing city expenses. The taxpayers complained that the taxes were upwards of $3,500,000, for which there was little apparent benefit. The new Common Council made professions of giving a spotless administration; but before its term was over it had generally earned the expressive title of “the[156] Forty Thieves.”[4] This was the body that with lavish promises of reform replaced the Whig Common Council. William M. Tweed, an Alderman in the “Forty Thieves” Common Council, was busy in the Fall of this year indignantly defending, in speeches and public writings, the Aldermen from the numerous charges of corruption; but, as will be seen, these charges were by no means groundless.

Since the passings of the Equal Rights party, the mechanics and laborers had taken no concerted part in politics, not even as a faction. But at this period they were far from being lethargic. The recent discoveries of gold and silver had given a quickened pulse to business, enormously increasing the number of transactions and the aggregate of profits. The workers were determined to have their share of this prosperity, and acted accordingly. Old trade-unions were rapidly strengthened and new ones formed. More pay and shorter hours of work were demanded. Between the Spring of 1850 and the Spring of 1853 nearly every trade in the city engaged in one or more strikes, with almost invariable success.

Having now no sincere leaders to prompt them to concerted political action, the workers oscillated listlessly between the two parties. They had lost the tremendous influence secured in the thirties, and the business element had again become dominant. Legislature and Common Council vied with each other in granting exploitative charters, and the persons who secured these, generally by bribery, were considered the leaders of public opinion. Every company demanding special privileges of the State maintained its lobby at Albany. The City Council was more easily reached, and was generally dealt with personally. Fortunes were made by plundering the city and State, and while the conduct of the agents and actual performers in this wholesale brigandage—the lobbyists,[157] Legislators and Aldermen—was looked upon somewhat doubtfully, their employers stood before the world as the representatives of virtue and respectability. The one force which might have stood as a bulwark against this system of pillage had been so completely demoralized by its political experiences that it could now only look on and let matters drift as they would.

In the Baltimore Democratic convention the Wigwam was represented by so boisterous a delegation that its speakers were denied a hearing. Among the delegates were Capt. Rynders, “Mike” Walsh and a number of the same kind. Cass was their favorite, and they shouted for him lustily; but on attempting to speak for him they were invariably howled down, despite the fact that Cass had a majority of the convention almost to the end of the balloting.

The Wigwam, however, lost no time in indorsing the nomination of Franklin Pierce. In this ratification the “Barnburners” joined, ardently urging the election of candidates on a platform which held that Congress had no power under the Constitution “to interfere with the domestic institutions of the States”; which advocated compromise measures, the execution of the Fugitive Slave law, and which opposed all attempts to agitate the slavery question.

The election of November, 1852, was not only for President and Congressmen, but for a long list of officials, city and State. Each of the Wigwam factions began playing for advantage. On July 16 a portion of the general committee met, apparently to accept an invitation to attend the funeral of Henry Clay. The “Barnburners,” finding themselves in a majority, sprang a trick upon the “Hunkers” by adopting a plan of primary elections favorable to their side. Later the general committee, in full meeting, substituted another plan, and a great hubbub followed. A “committee of conciliation,” composed of members of both factions, was appointed.[158] When it met, on August 20, the halls, lobbies and entrances of Tammany Hall were filled with a vicious assortment of persons, chiefly inimical to the general committee. “The bar-room,” wrote a chronicler, “was the scene of several encounters and knockdowns. It was only necessary for a man to express himself strongly on any point, when down he went, by the hammer-fist of one of the fighting men.” Even members of the committee, while passing in and out of the room, were intimidated. Daniel E. Sickles was threatened with personal violence, and it might have gone hard with him had he not taken the precaution of arming himself with a bowie and revolver. Members’ lives were constantly threatened; the scenes of uproar and confusion were indescribable. Mr. Sickles, for his own safety, had to jump from a window to Frankfort street, and other members were forced to retreat through secret byways.[5] It was near day-break when the factions consented to leave the Wigwam.

The anxiety of each was explained by the proceedings at the primaries. The faction having a majority of the inspectors secured by far the greater number of votes, and consequently the delegates who had the power of making nominations. At the primaries of August, 1852, fraud and violence occurred at nearly every voting place. In some instances one faction took possession of the polls and prevented the other from voting; in others, both factions had control by turns, and fighting was desperate. One party ran away with a ballot box and carried it off to the police station. Many ballot boxes, it was alleged, were half filled with votes before the election was opened. Wards containing less than 1,000 legal Democratic voters yielded 2,000 votes, and a ticket which not a hundred voters of the ward had seen was elected by 600 or 700 majority. Whigs, boys and paupers[159] voted; the purchasable, who flocked to either party according to the price, came out in force, and ruffianism dominated the whole.

The police dared not interfere. Their appointment was made by the Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen, with the nominal consent of the Mayor, exclusively on political grounds and for one year. The policeman’s livelihood depended upon the whims of those most concerned in the ward turmoils. A hard lot was the policeman’s. On the one hand, public opinion demanded that he arrest offenders. On the other, most of the Aldermen had their “gangs” of lawbreakers at the polls, and to arrest one of these might mean his dismissal.[6] But this was not all. The politics of the Common Council changed frequently; and to insure himself his position the guardian of the peace must conduct himself according to the difficult mean of aiding his own party to victory and yet of giving no offense to the politicians of the other party. Hence, whenever a political disturbance took place the policeman instantly, it was a saying, became “deaf and blind, and generally invisible.”[7]

The necessity of uniting to displace the Whigs from the millions of city patronage and profit brought the factions to an understanding. Jacob A. Westervelt, a moderate “Hunker,” and a shipbuilder of wealth, who was considered the very essence of “respectability,” and a contrast to Wood, was nominated for Mayor. Tammany planned to have its candidates swept in on the Presidential current. National issues were made dominant, and the city responded by giving the Pierce[160] electors 11,159 plurality, and electing the whole organization ticket.[8] Fraud was common. No registry law was in force to hinder men from voting, as it was charged some did, as often as twenty times. On the other hand, 80,000 tickets purporting to be Democratic, intended for distribution by the Whigs, but not containing the name of a single Democrat, were seized at the post-office and carried in triumph to the Wigwam.

Tammany once more had full control of the city.

[161]

The “Barnburner”-“Hunker” factional fight was succeeded by that of the “Hardshells” and “Softshells.” How the ludicrous nicknames originated it is not possible to say. The “Softshells” were composed of a remnant of the “Barnburners”[1] and that part of the “Hunkers” who believed in a full union with the “Barnburners,” especially in the highly important matter of distributing offices. The “Hardshells” were the “Old Hunkers” who disavowed all connection with the “Barnburners,” or Free Soilers, except so far as to get their votes. This division also extended to other parts of the State, where perhaps real differences of political principle were responsible for it; but in the city the fundamental point of contention was the booty of office.

The “Hardshells” boasted in 1852 of a majority of the Tammany General Committee which met on December 2 to choose inspectors for the ward elections of delegates to the general committee for 1853. The control of these inspectors was the keynote of the situation, for they would return such delegates as they pleased. Angered at the appointment of “Hardshell” inspectors, the “Softshells” broke in the door of the committee room, assaulted the members of the committee with chairs,[162] fractured some heads and forced the “Hards” to flee for refuge to the Astor House.[2]

Agreeable to “usages,” the departing general committee instructed the delegates of its successor to assemble in Tammany Hall on January 13, 1853, to be installed as the general committee for the ensuing year. Until this installation, the committee of the last year remained in power. In the interval the Sachems, who, in the peculiar mix of politics, were for the most part “Softshells,” decided to take a hand in the game of getting control of the organization, and therefore called a meeting for the same night and at the same time.

The object of the old general committee was to allow only delegates whose seats were uncontested to vote on the organization, or the contest of seats, which would return a “Hardshell” committee. The Sachems, on the contrary, favored voting by those who had the indorsement of two of the three inspectors.

The “Hardshells” insisted that the Sachems had unwarrantably interfered; that this was the first time in the history of the society of any interference as to the manner of organizing the general committee; that the only power the Sachems had was to decide between contending parties for the use of the hall for political meetings, and that even then their power was doubtful.

The Grand Sachem ordered the doors of the meeting room locked till 7:30 o’clock, at which hour both factions streamed in. Soon there were two meetings in the same room, each with a chairman, and each vociferously trying to shout down the other. Neither accomplished anything, and both adjourned, and kept adjourning from day to day, awaiting positive action by the society.

The “Softshell” section of the general committee called a meeting for January 20, but it was prohibited by the Sachems. When doubt of their authority was[163] expressed, the Sachems produced a lease executed in 1842 to Howard, the lessee of the property, by the Tammany Society, in which he agreed that he would not lease, either directly or indirectly, the hall, or any part of the building, to any other political party (or parties) whatever, calling themselves committees, whose general political principles did not appear to him or the Sachems to be in accordance with the general political principles of the Democratic-Republican General Committee of New York City, of which Elijah F. Purdy was then chairman. Howard had also agreed that

Of the thirteen Sachems, eleven were “Softshells”—a predominance due to the activity of the “Barnburners.” The “Hardshells,” without doubt, were in a majority in the Tammany Society and in Tammany Hall, but they had taken no such pains as had their opponents to elect their men. The Sachems’ meeting on January 20, professedly to decide the merits of the contest, called for the ward representatives in turn. The “Hardshells” refused to answer or to acknowledge the Sachems’ authority to interfere with the primary elections of the people. The Sachems then named by resolution the general committee they favored, thus deciding in favor of the “Softshell” committee. There was no little suppressed excitement, since the members of the Tammany Society, it was naïvely told, though allowed to be present, were not allowed to speak.

Alderman Thomas J. Barr, a member of the Tammany[164] Society and chairman of the “Hardshell” committee, handed to the Sachems, on behalf of his associates, an energetic protest. Summarized, it read as follows:

In the bar-room many leaders of the excluded faction were assembled, surrounded by their fighting men. When the Sachems’ adverse decision was announced, their anger found vent in a sputter of oaths and threats, and the sum of $15,000 was subscribed on the spot for the building[165] of a rival Tammany Hall. It is almost needless to say that the rival hall was never built.

The Sachems later replied to the protest with the defense that their lease to Howard obliged them to act as they did. By that lease the succession of Elijah F. Purdy’s committee alone was at liberty to meet as a general committee in Tammany Hall; they (the Sachems) had not recognized Barr’s committee as such, and moreover did not admit the claim the “Hardshell” committee made of their right to hire a room separate from the majority in a building in which they had no property whatever. The Council of Sachems insisted that it had exercised the right of excluding so-called general committees before; that Tammany was a benevolent society, and that benevolent societies had the same right as others to determine who should occupy their property.

The “Hardshells” attempted to rout the “Softshells” at the regular meeting of the Tammany Society on February 12, but the Sachems’ action was confirmed by a vote of two hundred to less than a dozen. Each faction then strained to elect a majority of the Sachems at the annual election on April 18. Private circulars were distributed, that of the “Softshells” being signed by Isaac V. Fowler, Fernando Wood, Nelson J. Waterbury, John Cochrane and others. It breathed allegiance to the national and State administrations, the regular organization and to the Baltimore platform. The “Hardshell” circular had the signatures of Richard B. Connolly, Cornelius Bogardus, Jacob Brush and others styling themselves the “Old Line Democrats.”

The “Softshells” elected their ticket, and Isaac V. Fowler, afterward postmaster, was chosen Grand Sachem. This vote of a few score of private individuals decided the control of Tammany Hall and the lot of those who would share in the division of plunder for the next year.

“With the exception of some few quarrels,” one friendly account had it, “which fortunately did not result[166] in any personal damage to the disputants, the affair passed off very quietly. While the votes were counted upstairs some interesting scenes were presented in the bar-room, which was crowded with anxious expectants. Language of a rather exceptional character, such as ‘political thieves,’ ‘swindlers,’ etc., was employed unsparingly, but as the majority was peaceably inclined, there were no heads fractured.”

[167]

Now came an appalling series of disclosures regarding public officials. Acting on the affidavit of James E. Coulter, a lobbyist, charging that there was a private organization[1] in the Board of Aldermen formed to receive and distribute bribes, the Grand Jury, after investigation, handed down a presentment, on February 26, 1853, together with a vast mass of testimony.

“It was clearly shown,” stated the presentment, “that enormous sums of money have been expended for and towards the procurement of railroad grants in the city, and that towards the decision and procurement of the Eighth Avenue Railroad grant a sum so large that would startle the most credulous was expended; but in consequence of the voluntary absence of important witnesses, the Grand Jury was left without direct testimony of the particular recipients of the different amounts.”[2]

Solomon Kipp, one of the grantees of the Eighth and Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises, admitted frequently to a member of the Grand Jury that he had expended, in 1851, upwards of $50,000 in getting them. Five grantees of the Third Avenue Railroad franchise swore that upwards of $30,000 was paid for it in 1852 in bribes to both boards.[3] Of this sum Alderman Tweed received[168] $3,000. Chief among those who bribed the Aldermen were Elijah F. Purdy (one of the line of Grand Sachems) and Myndert Van Schaick, who only a few years before had been the Tammany candidate for Mayor. A franchise for a surface railroad on Broadway, with scarcely any provision for compensation and with permission to charge a five-cent fare, was given to Jacob Sharp, over five profitable bids from responsible persons. One applicant, Thomas E. Davies, had offered to give the city one cent for every fare charged. In another application, Davies, D. H. Haight and others had offered $100,000 a year and the payment of a license fee of $1,000 on each car (the prevailing fee being $20) for a ten-years’ grant, on the agreement to charge a five-cent fare. There were two other offers equally favorable.[4] When Mayor Kingsland had vetoed the bill[5] the Aldermen had repassed it, notwithstanding an injunction forbidding them to do so.[6]

Dr. William Cockroft had to pay, among other sums, $500 to Assistant Alderman Wesley Smith to get favorable action on his application for a lease of the Catherine Street Ferry. After the passage of the grant, Smith demanded $3,000 more, which Cockroft refused to pay.[7] Burtis Skidmore, a coal dealer, testified that in the Fall of 1851 James B. Taylor informed him that he had been an applicant for a ferry across the East River to Greenpoint, and that “he bribed members of the Common Council for the purpose of obtaining said grant, and that other applicants for the same ferry gave[169] a larger bribe than he did, and obtained the grant, and that all members of the Common Council whom he had bribed returned to him the money he had paid them, with the exception of Alderman Wood, who kept the money from both parties.”[8]

John Morrell swore that one of the applicants for the lease of the ferry to Williamsburg applied to some of the Aldermen and was told that it would cost about $5,000 “to get the grant through.” But a Mr. Hicks, another applicant, was so eager to “get it through” that he gave more than $20,000.[9]

The lease of the Wall Street Ferry was similarly disposed of. Silas C. Herring testified that he with others was told he could secure it by paying a certain Alderman $5,000. Herring declined. James B. Taylor was another applicant, in 1852. He was informed that it would cost him $15,000. He offered $10,000, but on the same night “Jake” Sharp offered $20,000 and got the grant. Taylor also testified that he additionally applied for the Grand Street Ferry lease. Other parties, however, paid more bribe money and obtained it, whereat one Alderman said that “it was the damnedest fight that was ever had in the Common Council; it cost them [Taylor’s rivals] from $20,000 to $25,000.”[10]

The Aldermen extorted money in every possible way. In defiance of the Mayor’s veto they gave a $600,000 contract for the “Russ” street pavement, afterward found to be worthless, and which had to be replaced at additional cost. Russ had offered one Assistant Alderman $1,000 to help carry his election the next Fall if he voted favorably.[11] Exorbitant prices were paid for land on Ward’s Island, several Aldermen and officials receiving for their influence and votes bribes of $10,000, and others even larger sums.[12] The Common Council sold to Reuben Lovejoy the Gansevoort Market property for[170] $160,000 in the face of other bids of $225,000 and $300,000. Lovejoy, who, it was disclosed, was merely a dummy for James B. Taylor and others, testified “that it would cost from $40,000 to $75,000 to get this operation—the purchase of the Gansevoort property—through the city government.”[13]

A coal merchant had to pay money for a favorable vote on his application for a lease of the Jefferson Market property, and another merchant testified to having paid one Assistant Alderman about $1,700 to get a pier lease.[14] The Aldermen demanded and received bribes not only for passing measures but for suppressing them, and even invented many “strikes,” as instanced by the case of Alderman Smith, who agreed for $250 to silence a resolution to reduce the Coroners’ fees.[15] They demanded a share of every contract made by any city official, threatening, if it were not given, to stop his supplies and have his accounts investigated.[16] If a contractor or lessee refused to meet a “request,” the Aldermen retaliated by imposing burdens upon him and reporting hostile resolutions.[17]

Applicants for the police force paid the Police Captains $40, and more to the Aldermen who appointed them. One man was reappointed Police Captain by Alderman Thomas J. Barr for $200, and another, assistant Captain for $100.[18]

Every city department was corrupt. It was found that one hundred and sixty-three conveyances were deeded[171] to the Chief of Police, George W. Matsell, and his partner, Capt. Norris, in about a year.[19] Matsell was mentioned also as receiving money from about one hundred men who patronized the odious Madame Restell’s establishment in Greenwich street.[20] Both the police and Aldermen collected money from saloons, though the Aldermen obtained the larger share, as they had the power of granting licenses.

Within three or four years William B. Reynolds received over $200,000 from the city, under a five-years’ contract for removing dead animals, offal and bones, though at the time the contract was made other persons had offered to remove them free of expense, and one had even offered to pay the city $50,000 a year for the exclusive privilege.[21] It was owing to Controller Flagg’s action that a contract to index certain city records at a cost of between $200,000 and $300,000, despite the offer of a well-known publisher to do it for $59,000, was canceled.[22] Flimsy tenement houses, causing later much fatality and disaster, were built in haste, there being no supervisory authority over their erection.[23] The lighting of the city was insufficient, thousands of oil lamps still being used, and these, according to an old custom, not being lighted on moonlit nights.[24]

Both Tammany and Whig Aldermen and officials were implicated in these disclosures. Such was the system of city government that, though twenty-nine Aldermen were at one time under judgment of contempt of court, and a part of the same number under indictment for bribery, yet under the law they continued acting as Judges in the criminal courts. According to Judge Vanderpoel, bribery was considered a joke.

A new reform movement sprang up, which quickly developed[172] into the City Reform party. The reformers proposed, as a first step, to amend the charter. The granting of leases for more than ten years was to be prohibited, and the highest bidder was to get them. A two-thirds vote was to be required to pass a bill over the Mayor’s veto. Work to be done and supplies furnished costing more than $250 were to be arranged for on contract to the lowest bidder. Any person guilty of bribery, directly or indirectly, was to be sentenced, upon conviction, to not above ten years in prison and fined not over $5,000, or both. The right to sit as Judges of the criminal courts was to be taken away from the Aldermen, as was also the power of appointing policemen. The Board of Assistant Aldermen was to be abolished, and a Board of Councilmen, consisting of sixty members, was to be instituted in its place, the collective title of the two boards to be “the Common Council.” The Aldermen were to be elected for two years (as determined in the charter of 1849) and the Councilmen for one year. An efficient auditing of accounts and claims against the city was called for, and only the more popular branch of the Common Council was to originate appropriations of money.

Tammany had grown suddenly virtuous again, and responding to the public clamor over the disclosures, had declared its devotion to pure government. At a “reform” meeting of the Young Men’s Union Club, John Cochrane, one of Wood’s lieutenants, who later announced that he would vote “for the devil incarnate if nominated by Tammany Hall,” declared: “Reform is at home in Tammany Hall. Its birthplace is Tammany Hall.” The purification movement advanced so unmistakably that Tammany approved the amendments, and the legislative bill embodying some of them was supported by the Tammany delegation in the Senate and Assembly.

The bill passed, and upon being submitted to the people[173] of the city, in June, 1853, was adopted by the significant vote of 36,000 to 3,000.

One of the benefits due to the City Reform party was the reorganization (1853) of the police under a separate department. The police were compelled to wear a uniform against which there had been bitter prejudice,[25] and the term of appointment was made dependent upon good behavior.

Fortunately for the City Reform party, the division between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells” extending throughout the State caused the nomination of separate Democratic tickets in the Fall of 1853. There seemed less than ever any vital difference between the professed principles of the two. Under the name of “National Democrats” the “Hardshells” met in City Hall Park on September 26, and resolved:

The City Reform party nominated acceptable Whigs and Democrats pledged to reform, and obtained a decisive majority in the next Common Council.

[174]

Though the City Reform party brought about some beneficial changes in the system of city government, its Common Council did not meet public expectations. The Tribune, the chief supporter of the party, admitted this (May 3, 1854), declaring that much feeling was manifested over the failure of the reformers to realize the public hopes, and attributing the failure “to the power of those representing the great political parties in the two boards to league together and sell out to each other the interests of the city as partizan or personal considerations might dictate.”

Accordingly, preparations were made to overthrow the new party. Fernando Wood now secured the “Softshell” nomination for Mayor, by packing the convention with his henchmen. The “Hardshells” held a separate convention, which ended in a row, a part nominating Wood, and the rest Augustus Schell.

Wood successfully intrigued to cause the Whigs to separate from the City Reformers; and to further divide the opposition, Tammany nominated sham reformers for the lesser city and State offices. The Whigs nominated for Mayor, John J. Herrick; the City Reformers, Wilson G. Hunt, and the Native Americans, or “Know-Nothings,” springing to life again, put forward James W. Barker. Schell, Wood’s Tammany opponent, withdrew in favor of Hunt.

The disreputable classes, believing that his success[175] meant increased prosperity to themselves, energetically supported Wood, and the liquor-dealers formally commended him. In the city at this time were about 10,000 shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating and breaking up meetings. Most of these were Wood’s active allies.

He needed them all on election day. With every resource strained to the utmost, he won by a close margin. He was credited with 19,993 votes; Barker with 18,553; Hunt, 15,386, and Herrick, 5,712. Tammany, therefore, succeeded, though in a minority of over 17,000 votes.

Upon assuming office, Wood surprised his followers by announcing that he would purge all offices of corruption and give good government. His messages were filled with flattering promises and lofty sentiments. At the outset he seemed disposed for good. He closed the saloons on Sunday, suppressed brothels, gambling houses and rowdyism, had the streets cleaned, and opened a complaint book. The religious part of the community for a time believed in him. He assumed personal charge of the police, and when a bill was introduced in the Legislature to strip him of this power, the foremost citizens called a mass meeting to support him.

The troubles between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells” continued throughout the year 1855. When the latter held their county ratification meeting in the Wigwam and the name of their nominee for Street Commissioner was announced, the “Hardshells,” who had come thither with a nominee of their own, raised an uproar, whereupon “the factions on both sides went to work and pummeled each other pretty soundly and highly satisfactorily to the lookers, for at least ten minutes.”

The election of 1855 was of little consequence. All eyes were now turned to the coming contest of 1856. Before the end of a year Wood had begun to reveal his[176] real nature. Many of the decent element that had for a time believed in him began to turn against him. He had also made himself unpopular with certain powerful Sachems by not giving them either a share, or a large enough share, in the spoils. His appointments were made wholly from a circle of personal friends who were more attached to him than to the Tammany organization. Knowing the folly of expecting a renomination from Tammany, as it was then constituted, he set about obtaining it by trickery.

Inducing Wilson Small, a Custom House officer holding a seat in the general committee, to resign, Wood had himself substituted. Then he personally assumed control of the primary election inspectors in every ward, so as to manipulate the election of convention delegates. He caused the appointment of an executive committee, which was to have the entire choice of inspectors in every instance in which the general committee failed to agree. This new committee was composed mainly of his friends, and he named himself chairman.

His henchmen incited divisions in such of the wards as were not under the control of his inspectors, and the contests, upon being referred to the “executive committee,” were of course decided in Wood’s favor. Thus he appropriated a great majority of the delegates to the nominating convention.

“It is well known,” wrote Peter B. Sweeny and J. Y. Savage, secretaries of the Tammany General Committee, in a long statement denouncing Wood’s thimble-rigging “that for many years this [primary] system has been degenerating until it has become so corrupt as to be a mere machine in the hands of unprincipled men, by which they foist themselves before the people as the nominees of a party for office in defiance of public sentiment.”[1] Sweeny and Savage charged further than when the[177] primary elections took place under this patent process for cheating the people, the ballot boxes were stuffed and detachments of police were stationed at every poll to aid Wood’s agents and bully his opponents. A sickening mass of evidence of corruption was at hand, Sweeny and Savage recounted.

Wood was renominated by the city convention, and at an hour when most of his opponents on the general committee were absent, he had that body endorse his nomination by a vote of 56 to 26, nearly all of those voting being office-holders by his grace.

He also arranged a reconciliation between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells.” With a show of traditional Tammany custom, the “Softs” marched in Indian file to the Stuyvesant Institute, the headquarters of the “Hards,” and the reunited leaders marched back to Tammany Hall—in pairs, arm-in-arm. The “Hardshell”-“Softshell” contention thus became a thing of the past.

But Wood’s personal enemies in the Wigwam were not to be appeased, and they nominated a candidate to oppose him—James S. Libby. Bitter feelings were aroused. At the Wood ratification meeting in the Wigwam, October 22, both Wood and Anti-Wood men crowded in, and then ensued another of those clashes for which Tammany Hall had become so celebrated. When John Kelly mentioned Wood’s name the Anti-Wood men raised a din and smothered the speaker’s voice. The Wood men, growing enraged, “pitched into the Anti-Woodites hot and heavy, and for a time a scene of the wildest clamor ensued. A general fight took place in front of the speaker’s stand and all round the room. Blows were given and exchanged with great spirit, and not a few faces were badly disfigured.” After a few planks had been plucked from the stand and wielded with telling effect, the Wood men won. “The great body of the Libbyites were kicked out of the room and down the stairs with a velocity proportionate to the expelling force behind.”

[178]

The City Reform party was far from being satisfied with Wood’s administration. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that by the time of his second year in office the blackness of his administration exceeded anything known before. Seasoned men fancied they knew something of corruption, extravagance and malfeasance in the City Hall, but by 1856 they better understood the growth of these under a reckless and unprincipled Mayor.

The saloon power had grown until it controlled the politics of the city. In every groggery could be found a crowd of loafers and bruisers who could always be relied upon to pack a primary or insure or defeat the election of certain nominees. In these saloons the ward politicians held their meetings, and the keepers were ready at all times to furnish persons to parade, carrying partizan banners they could not read, or to cheer at mass meetings at the drop of a handkerchief. The saloon-keepers also furnished cheap illegal voters, ballot-box stuffers and thoroughbred “shoulder-hitters,” to intimidate peaceable citizens, or as a last resort, to smash the ballot boxes.

The saloon-keepers were largely above the law. A disingenuous bill, passed in 1855, ordered the saloons to be closed on Sunday, but made no provision for enforcement. They were accordingly kept open, likely enough through assurances from Wood that the owners would not be molested. Their support of the Mayor was well-nigh unanimous.

It was the domination of politics by this element that caused great irritation and disgust. But the opposition to Wood was hopelessly divided. It had to contend, moreover, with the adverse factor of the introduction into the campaign of national issues. The fear of the new Republican party was sure to bring out a heavy vote for Buchanan and Breckinridge, and on the strength of this wave Tammany reasonably expected to be again swept into power.

The City Reformers had greatly declined in numbers,[179] but they again came forward for the contest, nominating Judge James R. Whiting.[2] The Native American party, still maintaining its bitterness against the control of politics by foreigners, chose Isaac O. Barker, and the Whigs, Anthony J. Bleecker, making, with Wood and Libby, five Mayoralty candidates.

Though backed by the dregs of the city on the one hand, Wood did not neglect to secure some “respectability” on the other. During the campaign he received a testimonial signed by some of the leading bankers and merchants, praising him and his administration and expressing the hope of his reelection. Nearly all of the signers, it was afterwards disclosed, profited by Wood’s placing of city funds or buying of city goods.

Wood sought to force every man on the police force to subscribe to his election fund, one policeman, who refused to contribute, being kept on duty twenty-four hours at a stretch. From this source alone he gathered in from $8,500 to $10,000.

On election day the scum of the town shouted, repeated and bruised for Wood. Candidates were traded openly, and bribing was unconcealed.[3] The majority of the policemen were off on furlough, given by the Mayor as head of the Police Department, assisting actively for his reelection. At the polling places, so terrific was the competition for the millions of city plunder, that the Wood[180] and Anti-Wood men fought savagely. In the Sixth Ward the Wood partizans, upon being attacked, retreated for the while, and coming back, armed with brickbats, clubs, axes and pistols, set upon and routed their foes. The police meanwhile calmly looked on, until the riot was at its height, when they made a show of concern by firing fifteen or more shots, all of which fortunately went astray. The Wood partizans then broke the ballot boxes to pieces and carried off the fragments for kindling wood. In the Seventeenth Ward the Anti-Wood men destroyed some of the Wood boxes; and in the First, and most of the other wards, the day was enlivened with assaults, riots and stabbings.

The count of the vote gave Wood, 34,860; Barker, 25,209; Bleecker, 9,654; Libby, 4,764, and Whiting, 3,646. The Buchanan electors carried the city with 41,913 votes; Fillmore, the American candidate, and Fremont, Republican, were allowed respectively 19,924 and 17,771 votes. Tammany Hall obtained a serviceable majority in the Common Council.

The Republicans maintained that 10,000 fraudulent Democratic votes were cast in New York City and Brooklyn, and credited Wood with having profited by the most of those cast in this city. It was not an unreasonable contention, in view of the enormous increase over the vote of two years before.

A few days after the election a meeting in Tammany Hall, called to celebrate Buchanan’s triumph, resolved that next to the success of Buchanan and Breckinridge, “the brightest and most signal achievement of the Democratic party, at this election, was the triumphant election of Fernando Wood!”

[181]

Under Wood’s second administration city affairs went from bad to worse. The departments reeked with frauds. The city paid Robert W. Lowber $196,000 for a lot officially declared to be worth only $60,000 and to two-thirds of which, it was proved, Lowber had no title. Controller Flagg charged that both the Mayor and the Common Council were parties to it.[1] Fraudulent computations and illegitimate contracts were covered by false entries.[2] Amounts on the ledger were revised so as to steal considerable sums from the city outright.[3] To Bartlett Smith had been awarded a contract for grading certain streets. Before beginning work, however, the Legislature created Central Park out of that very territory.[4] Smith demanded $80,000 from the city “for trouble in arranging to do the grading”—a[182] claim the Common Council allowed, but Flagg refused to pay.

It was generally charged that Wood sold the office of Street Commissioner to the notorious Charles Devlin[5] for $50,000 cash, with certain reservations as to the patronage and profits. Devlin recouped himself; for an investigation revealed that he spent half a million dollars on contracts of which he was either the real contractor or surety, and on which he made the prices 75 per cent higher than they ought to have been.[6] Of how much the city was plundered it was impossible to find out, since no reliable accounts of expenditures were kept in the Finance Department.[7] Not a few officials, relinquishing offices paying about $2,500 a year, retired loaded with riches and surrounded by friends whom they had enriched. Wood himself was now reputed to be worth $400,000.

Even the Judiciary was held in general contempt. The Lowber fraud (see previous page) was promptly excused and the defendant exonerated by the courts. In November, 1855, a City Judge was tried for corruption in having entered a nolle prosequi in a certain case. The verdict was “not guilty,” with this remarkable addition: “And the jury are unanimously of opinion that in the entry of the nolle prosequi by the City Judge he has been guilty of irregularity, and it is the unanimous recommendation of the jury that Judge —— resign.” He resigned.[8] In December, 1855, during a trial for murder in the Supreme Court, counsel for the defendant exclaimed: “I know the jury have too much intelligence[183] to pay any regard to the assumptions of the Court.”[9] A man was killed at a prize fight. The Coroner, after stating the evidence at the inquest, concluded: “If the persons implicated are tried before our Court of Sessions they will have reason to congratulate themselves, as it is a difficult matter in this city to convict a person charged with any other crime than theft.”[10] In January, 1856, the seat of one of the Judges of the Supreme Court was contested by two candidates, both claiming to have been elected by popular vote. Both asserted the right to sit; in opposition to the opinions of the Judges sitting, one of the contestants took and kept his seat by pure “nerve.”[11]

A new city charter, adopted in 1857, changed the date of municipal elections to the first Tuesday in December, and provided for an election for Mayor and Common Council in December, 1857. The change was aimed partly at Wood. He had probably expected severe opposition of some kind, for he had early begun planning for the continued control of the Tammany General Committee, so as to secure a renomination.

In the primary elections, late in 1856, for delegates to this committee for 1857, a majority favorable to Wood had been elected, after violence and ballot-box stuffing in every ward. The Wood men took possession of the Wigwam and elected Wilson Small chairman. The rival party met in another place and organized a general committee. Each put forward the claim of “regularity.”

As the “usages” of the party required that the “regular” committee should have legal possession of Tammany Hall, it was necessary to determine which that committee was. Then the Sachems stepped in. Seven of them—a majority of one—were Wood’s personal enemies. By a vote of seven to five the Sachems concluded to order the election of a new general committee, which[184] was to have all known Democrats enrolled into associations.

“Tammany Society,” said the “seven Sachems’” report,

At the society’s annual election, on May 20, the Isaac V. Fowler, or “reform” ticket, had the names of some men of note—Samuel J. Tilden, Elijah F. Purdy, Peter B. Sweeny, Edward Cooper, William H. Cornell, John McKeon and Emanuel B. Hart—while Wood’s candidates were inferior hack politicians and nonentities. The “seven Sachems” had previously managed to get into the Wigwam unobserved by the Wood men, and had rapidly elected nearly sixty new members, all their own partizans, to the society.[12] These voted at the election, enabling Wood’s opponents to beat him by a majority of sixty.[13] Then the “seven Sachems” turned Wood and his men out of the Wigwam.

In a public address, the Wood men thereupon declared the society an irresponsible body of less than four hundred members, one-third of whom held no communication with the Democratic party, and that of its thirteen Sachems seven were “Libby bolters.” “What, then, is the issue?” asked the address. “Shall the Sachems rule[185] the people; or shall the people rule themselves? Shall the Sachems of this close corporation, to procure offices for themselves and friends, be permitted, unrebuked by the people, to exercise this omnipotent, dictatorial, supervisory power over the great Democratic party, its organization and interests, to rule out or rule in your general committees whenever it suit their caprice or selfish purposes?”

The control of the police force was considered as necessary as ever to success at the election. The changes of 1853, from which much was hoped, had proved of little benefit. The force was in a chaotic state. Political and pecuniary reasons alone guided the appointment of policemen. No record of merit was kept; there was no systematic instruction of policemen in their duties except as to drill. Some Captains wore uniforms, others refused. When an applicant appointed to the force was tested for qualifications in reading, a large newspaper was given to him, and he was told to read the title. Murder abounded, and the city was full of escaped convicts.[14] One of the most important provisions of a special act of 1857 was the transfer of the police from city control to that of the State. Unwilling to surrender so effective a hold, Wood resisted the Legislature’s action. For a time there were two police departments—the Metropolitan force, under the State Commissioners, and the municipal police, under the Mayor—each contending for supremacy. One day a part of the two forces came into collision in the City Hall, and twelve men were wounded. It was found necessary to summon the militia to quell the disturbances, and Wood was arrested. Finding resistance useless, he submitted grudgingly to the new order.[15]

The police being so disorganized, the criminal classes[186] ran the town. Chief among Wood’s supporters were the “Dead Rabbits” or “Black Birds,”—a lawless “gang” who overawed certain portions of the city and who had a rival in the “Bowery Boys,” whose sole profession seems to have been to pack primaries, break ballot boxes and fight the “Dead Rabbits.” On July 4, 1857, the “Dead Rabbits,” presumably having nothing else to do, attacked a body of police in Jackson street. A band of “Bowery Boys” hurried to the front, and a pitched street battle ensued, pistols and muskets being procured from neighboring places. Barricades were thrown up in the most approved Parisian style. The result was the killing of ten and the wounding of eighty persons, some of whom were innocent bystanders. This was the most deadly of the numerous collisions of these “gangs.” As they had a powerful political influence, the police did not molest them.[16]

As a member of the Metropolitan Police Commission, Mayor Wood about this time was instrumental in giving out a contract for 4,000 glass ballot boxes, at $15 apiece. It was disclosed in James Horner’s affidavit before Judge Davis, in the Supreme Court, in November of this year, that the city needed no more than 1,200 of the boxes; that Wood’s brother had secured the 4,000 boxes at a cost of less than $5 apiece and that the Mayor was to share in the $40,000 of expected profits.

Wood neglected no means of ingratiating himself with the masses. The panic of 1857 suddenly deprived over 30,000 mechanics and laborers in the city of employment. Wood proposed the employment of the idle on public works, and the buying by the city of 50,000 barrels of flour and an equal amount of other provisions to be disposed of to the needy at cost.[17] The Common Council failed to see the value of this plan, but did appropriate a sum for public works in Central Park, the better share of[187] which went to contractors and petty politicians. To win the good will of the Roman Catholics, becoming more and more a power, the Common Council gave over to the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum a perpetual lease of the entire plot from Fifth to Fourth avenue, Fifty-first to Fifty-second street, at a rental of $1 a year.[18]

So resourceful was Wood and so remarkable his political ingenuity that though he and his general committee were driven out by the Tammany Society, he nevertheless brought things about so that the Democratic convention in Tammany Hall, on October 15, renominated him for Mayor, by 75 votes to 12. The Tammany General Committee thereupon openly repudiated him, and the curious complication was presented of a candidate who was the Tammany “regular” nominee, yet opposed by both the society and the general committee.

Instantly a determined citizen’s movement to defeat him sprang up. The city taxes had nearly doubled in the three years of Wood’s administration and were now over $8,000,000, of which over $5,000,000 had already been signed away in contracts or spent in advance of collection. Yet the Common Council had recently resolved to spend the exorbitant sum of $5,000,000 on a new City Hall. The Mayor vetoed the resolution only when the most intense public opposition was manifested.

A committee of citizens, representative of the Republicans, Democrats and Native Americans, nominated Daniel F. Tiemann, a paint dealer, and a member of Tammany Hall, but who was an Alderman and as Governor of the Almshouse had made a good record.

To Wood’s support there concentrated the preponderance of the foreign born, the native rowdies and the usual mass blinded into voting for the “regular” ticket. The gamblers, brothel-keepers, immigrant runners and swindlers of every kind bought and cheated for him in the belief[188] that the reformers would drive them from the city. Wood had taken the precaution to manufacture thousands of voters. From the Wigwam, where the Wood partizans backed up their right to meet with fists, drummers-up were sent to bring in prospective citizens. Upon promising faithfully to vote the Tammany ticket, a card, valued at fifty cents, was furnished gratuitously to each. It was addressed to a Judge who owed his election to Tammany, and read:

From 3,000 to 4,000 voters, it was estimated, were turned out by this process.

The sentiment of certain politicians may be taken from John Cochrane’s[20] remark that “he would vote for the devil incarnate if nominated by Tammany Hall.” Meanwhile they took care to make out Wood to be a much-abused man. At the ratification meeting in Tammany Hall, on November 23, long resolutions were passed, fulsomely flattering Wood and asking voters to remember that if Wood was assailed, so Jefferson, Jackson and Daniel Webster were pursued to their graves by harpies. The voters were asked not to be deceived by the abuse of the graceless, godless characters and disappointed demagogues.

[189]

Wood and his partizans strained every nerve for success. But it was a futile effort. The opposition won, Tiemann receiving 43,216 votes, to 40,889 for Wood. His large vote, however, showed the dangerous strength of the worst classes of the city, and boded ill for the years to come.

The opposition of the Tammany Society and the general committee having been responsible for his defeat, Wood made renewed efforts to regain sway over both. On their part, elated at his supposed downfall, the Anti-Wood members of the general committee decided to expel Daniel E. Sickles and C. Godfrey Gunther, two of his supporters, and met for that purpose in the Wigwam on December 9, 1857.

Wood’s followers thought proper to impress upon the general committee a sense of their strength. Accordingly, their fighting men were present in full force, awaiting an opportunity to mingle in the proceedings. The probability of a violent row increasing momentarily, the Metropolitan police were summoned to Tammany Hall. For a time they kept the hostiles within bounds; but the bar was well patronized, and large delegations of the “Dead Rabbits” and “shoulder-hitters” from the wards were flowing in constantly.

At 9 o’clock a desperate fight was begun in the center of the bar-room, amid intense excitement. By using their clubs unsparingly, the forty policemen succeeded in separating the combatants, though not before a young man, Cornelius Woods, had been shot in the shoulder with a slug. Unwilling to draw upon themselves the resentment of the influential ward politicians, the police made no arrests. The meeting broke up without definite action being taken in the matter of expelling the two supporters of Wood.

The first and chief point in the struggle for the control of the organization was, as usual, the control of the Tammany Society. Both factions were alive to this necessity.[190] On April 13, 1858, 150 members of the society met at the Westchester House, Bowery and Broome streets, where it was announced that 212 members were pledged to vote for Anti-Wood Sachems. Some of these members were seeking the ascendency for their own benefit, while others were not active in politics at all, but had become disgusted with Wood’s methods and men. At the election, six days later, the Anti-Wood ticket, headed by Isaac V. Fowler and Nelson J. Waterbury, won by a majority of nearly 100, 378 members voting. More than twenty members who had not been at an election of the society for twenty years or more, and a large number who had eschewed voting for ten years, hastened, some from distances, to deposit their votes. Three came from Hudson, a number from Albany, two from Washington, and one from Cincinnati.

The result was Wood’s forced withdrawal from the organization. He immediately started a Democratic organization opposed to Tammany and upon the same lines. It was known generally as “Mozart Hall,” from the name of the assembly room in which it met. Wood denounced Tammany, declaring that its nominees were chosen by five members of the Tammany Society, in a parlor, and ferociously expressed his determination to wage war upon the society as long as he lived until (this reservation was added) “it opened its doors.”

Each hall, as a matter of political business, made the most virtuous and the strongest claims of being the true Democratic organization. Each execrated the other and announced itself as the sole, valiant, sincere upholder of Democracy.

Wood’s enemies made haste to guarantee their ascendency when, on December 28, the Sachems ordered elections for the committees to be held on December 30, thus giving but one day’s notice of the event. Moreover, they forced upon all persons accepting membership in the committees, a pledge that in case of their election they would support[191] the Tammany organization and all nominations made under its authority, and disclaim allegiance to any other organization, party or clique.

The election of delegates to the various nominating conventions, in the Fall of 1858, was attended by the customary disorder. Wood’s partizans were everywhere inciting trouble. At O’Connell’s Hall, on Mulberry street, a crowd, seeing that the result was unfavorable to their side, split the ballot boxes and threw them into the street. The “Dead Rabbits,” scenting trouble, appeared hastily, and a fight ensued on Hester street, in which two of them were shot.

This municipal election was the first in which the Democratic voters of Irish nativity or lineage insisted on a full share of the best places on the party’s ticket. Previously they had seldom been allowed any local office above Coroner. Their dominance on the Tammany ticket again roused the “Know-Nothing” sentiment, and a combination of Native Americans, Republicans and independents resulted. The combination secured 16 of the 24 Councilmen.

The politicians were now confronted with a registry act, which omitted the blunder of that of 1840 in applying only to New York City. This measure became a law in 1859, despite the stubborn opposition of Tammany, some of whose leaders, Isaac V. Fowler and others, issued an address asking Democrats to arise and defeat it. Failing to defeat it, they resolved to circumvent it by means of the Board of Supervisors, which was required to appoint the registry clerks. This body was by law divided equally as to politics, the Legislature calculating that this would insure fair dealing. But by the purchase of the vote of one of the Republican Supervisors for $2,500,[21] the[192] Tammany members were enabled not only to redistrict the city to their own advantage, but to appoint trusted tools as registrars. For appearances’ sake they allowed a Republican registry clerk here and there. Of 609 registrars appointed, the Republicans secured about 75; and of the whole 609, 68 were liquor-sellers, 92 were petty office-holders, 34 were supposed gamblers, and 50 of the names were not in the city directory. The Tammany leaders held daily private caucuses, and made a list of henchmen with extreme care, in order to exclude Wood from any influence with the registry clerks. William M. Tweed, a member of the board, generally named the men, and Elijah F. Purdy boasted that Tammany demanded the appointment of none but Democrats, and that they (the Tammany Supervisors) meant to sustain their party at any and all hazards. Having the registry clerks, Tammany Hall could revel in false registry and repeating. Good citizens, dejected at the outlook, were sure of a repetition of the frauds of former years.

Seeking to satisfy all parties, Mayor Tiemann failed to satisfy any. He was accused of using the official patronage for the advantage of Tammany Hall, in the hope of getting a renomination from it in 1859. He and his chief office-holders appointed to the office the most notorious fighting men and ruffians in the city. The Tammany leaders did not favor him, possibly because they thought William F. Havemeyer a man of more weight, popularity and respectability.

Accordingly they nominated the latter. Wood had himself nominated by Mozart Hall, and the Republicans chose George P. Opdyke, a millionaire. In this triangular contest the Tammany men felt that the force of Havemeyer’s good record would put them in power. Singularly, however, with all its manipulation of the registry lists, and the excellent character of its nominee, Tammany lost.[193] The Irish voters sided almost solidly with Wood, and the lowest classes of the city, fearing the election of a man so distasteful to them as Havemeyer or Opdyke, used all their effectiveness for Wood, who received 29,940 votes, against 26,913 for Havemeyer, and 21,417 for Opdyke.

It was conceded that much of the worst part of Tammany’s strength had gone over to Wood. This fact was suggestive, to a degree, of Wood’s assurance, considering the declaration in his letter of acceptance of the nomination that he favored “excluding the bullies and rowdies from public employment and of dealing summarily with that class of outlaws.”

Although Tammany had nominated a good man, for the sake of sliding into power upon the strength of his reputation, its lesser candidates were generally incompetent or of bad character; half a dozen of its nominees for Councilmen were under indictment for various crimes.