FOOTNOTES

“free in reality when they dare not obey the first instinct of all animated beings; when our courts pronounce it criminal to exercisenature’s paramount law of self-preservation? Trades unions and mechanick societies are only self-protective against thecountless combinations of aristocracy; boards of bank and other chartered directories; boards of brokers; boards of trade and commerce; combinations of landlords; coal and wood dealers; monopolists and all those who grasp at everything and produce nothing. Ifall these combinationsare suffered to exist, why are trades unions and combinations of workingmen denounced? Should they not have an equal chance in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness? Should they not have an equal right with the other classes of society, in their person, in their property or labor, and in their management?”

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 thebanks 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, whichin 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 recentprofessionsof the Tammany corruptionists in advocating this repeal and in favoring some other fewminordemocratic 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, wereother 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 sufferingwas 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 andexcited 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.

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.

FOOTNOTES[1]The minutes of the Common Council covering these years show continuous records of petitions from imprisoned debtors, praying for fuel and the patching up of windows in the dead of Winter. Charitable societies were in existence to supply the jailed debtors with food.[2]This singular provision, by which non-residents were liable to imprisonment for debt, while the natives of the city were exempted, was erased in 1840.[3]Journal of the Senate and Assembly, 1805, pp. 351 and 399.[4]Ibid., 1812, p. 134.[5]Journal of the Senate and Assembly, 1812, pp. 259-60.[6]Stock given at par value meant an almost immediate rise in value to the legislator. Most stocks went upward from 10 to 15 per cent. on the passage of the charter, and in the case of the more profitable and exploitative corporations, far higher advances were scored in a short time.[7]Journal of the Senate, 1824, pp. 498-532.[8]Journal of the Senate, 1826, Vol. 6, Appendix B. A considerable part of the money and stock promised the members of the Legislature for their votes was withheld owing to the expected investigation.[9]Ibid.[10]Ibid.[11]Senate Documents, 1834, No. 47, andIbid., No. 94. Walter Bowne was the bank’s president.[12]Ibid., No. 94.[13]Ibid., No. 47.[14]Journal of the Senate, 1833, p. 396.[15]Documents of the Senate, 1834, No. 108.[16]Lee was the last Mayor elected by the Common Council (1833-34).[17]Lawrence had a curious habit of strolling the streets carrying his spectacles in his hand behind his back, and ogling all the pretty girls he met, a habit which was broken later when one winsome lass tangled him in a plot, much to his financial and mental distress.[18]The next day the Equal Rights men were dubbed “Locofocos,” a name afterward applied by the Whigs to the entire Democratic party.[19]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1836, Nos. 65 and 100.[20]Ibid., 1837, No. 48.[21]Ibid., 1837, No. 32.[22]Documents of the Senate, 1836, Vol. II, No. 94.[23]A short time before, at an Anti-Monopolist meeting, Chairman Job Haskell had represented that the Tammany Society—the secret body, responsible to no one and enforcing its demands through the Tammany Hall political organization—was to blame for the political corruption. Resolutions were then passed setting forth that whereas the self-constituted, self-perpetuating Tammany Society had assumed a dictatorial attitude and by usages made by itself endeavored to rule the people as with a rod of iron; and, as they (the Equal Rights men) believed the people were capable of managing their own affairs without the aid of said inquisitorial society, “that we deem the Tammany Society an excrescence upon the body politic and dangerous to its rights and liberties.”[24]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol XI, p. 16.[25]These resolutions were published officially in the New YorkEvening Post, June 8, 1836.[26]Cornelius W. Lawrence, the Tammany Mayor, became the bank’s first president.[27]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1837, No. 48.[28]Excepting some instances of private charity by Tammany leaders.[29]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1836, No. 80.[30]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1839, No. 29.[31]Ibid.[32]Documents of the Assembly, 1837, Nos. 198 and 327.

[1]The minutes of the Common Council covering these years show continuous records of petitions from imprisoned debtors, praying for fuel and the patching up of windows in the dead of Winter. Charitable societies were in existence to supply the jailed debtors with food.

[2]This singular provision, by which non-residents were liable to imprisonment for debt, while the natives of the city were exempted, was erased in 1840.

[3]Journal of the Senate and Assembly, 1805, pp. 351 and 399.

[4]Ibid., 1812, p. 134.

[5]Journal of the Senate and Assembly, 1812, pp. 259-60.

[6]Stock given at par value meant an almost immediate rise in value to the legislator. Most stocks went upward from 10 to 15 per cent. on the passage of the charter, and in the case of the more profitable and exploitative corporations, far higher advances were scored in a short time.

[7]Journal of the Senate, 1824, pp. 498-532.

[8]Journal of the Senate, 1826, Vol. 6, Appendix B. A considerable part of the money and stock promised the members of the Legislature for their votes was withheld owing to the expected investigation.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Ibid.

[11]Senate Documents, 1834, No. 47, andIbid., No. 94. Walter Bowne was the bank’s president.

[12]Ibid., No. 94.

[13]Ibid., No. 47.

[14]Journal of the Senate, 1833, p. 396.

[15]Documents of the Senate, 1834, No. 108.

[16]Lee was the last Mayor elected by the Common Council (1833-34).

[17]Lawrence had a curious habit of strolling the streets carrying his spectacles in his hand behind his back, and ogling all the pretty girls he met, a habit which was broken later when one winsome lass tangled him in a plot, much to his financial and mental distress.

[18]The next day the Equal Rights men were dubbed “Locofocos,” a name afterward applied by the Whigs to the entire Democratic party.

[19]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1836, Nos. 65 and 100.

[20]Ibid., 1837, No. 48.

[21]Ibid., 1837, No. 32.

[22]Documents of the Senate, 1836, Vol. II, No. 94.

[23]A short time before, at an Anti-Monopolist meeting, Chairman Job Haskell had represented that the Tammany Society—the secret body, responsible to no one and enforcing its demands through the Tammany Hall political organization—was to blame for the political corruption. Resolutions were then passed setting forth that whereas the self-constituted, self-perpetuating Tammany Society had assumed a dictatorial attitude and by usages made by itself endeavored to rule the people as with a rod of iron; and, as they (the Equal Rights men) believed the people were capable of managing their own affairs without the aid of said inquisitorial society, “that we deem the Tammany Society an excrescence upon the body politic and dangerous to its rights and liberties.”

[24]Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen, Vol XI, p. 16.

[25]These resolutions were published officially in the New YorkEvening Post, June 8, 1836.

[26]Cornelius W. Lawrence, the Tammany Mayor, became the bank’s first president.

[27]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1837, No. 48.

[28]Excepting some instances of private charity by Tammany leaders.

[29]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1836, No. 80.

[30]Documents of the Board of Aldermen, 1839, No. 29.

[31]Ibid.

[32]Documents of the Assembly, 1837, Nos. 198 and 327.

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.

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, andthe 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 generalcommittee. “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“Radicals” than it did at being abused in the days of Jefferson.

That foremost Equal Rights advocate, theEvening 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.

FOOTNOTES[1]It will be remembered that in 1828 the Sachems had bought back a lease on the building in order to shut out the Adams men. The lease had again been let, but under restrictions which left the Sachems the power to determine what faction should be entitled to the use of the hall.[2]These details are of the greatest importance as revealing the methods by which the society asserted its absolute ascendency over the organization. They proved the absurdity of the claim that the two bodies were distinct and separate from each other.[3]TheNew Yorker(magazine), January 13, 1838. This journal was edited and published by Horace Greeley.[4]January 11, 1838. The credit for this temporary purification must in considerable measure be given to theEvening Post’seditors, William Cullen Bryant and William Leggett.

[1]It will be remembered that in 1828 the Sachems had bought back a lease on the building in order to shut out the Adams men. The lease had again been let, but under restrictions which left the Sachems the power to determine what faction should be entitled to the use of the hall.

[2]These details are of the greatest importance as revealing the methods by which the society asserted its absolute ascendency over the organization. They proved the absurdity of the claim that the two bodies were distinct and separate from each other.

[3]TheNew Yorker(magazine), January 13, 1838. This journal was edited and published by Horace Greeley.

[4]January 11, 1838. The credit for this temporary purification must in considerable measure be given to theEvening Post’seditors, William Cullen Bryant and William Leggett.

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, thattheir 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 theinstance 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) heldthe 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 Clark20,005. 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,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 thecity, 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 wanderedaimlessly 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 ofgrace 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]

A strong public agitation had been waged for the reorganization of the criminal courts. TheWeekly Heraldof 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,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.

Back to Index Next