Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics (49 page)

32.
New York Tribune
, March 2, 1850.

33.
New York Herald
, October 18, 1854;
New York Times
, February 18, 1855.

34.
New York Evening Post
, November 10, 1857.

35. Ibid., October 23, 1857;
New York Times
, October 10, 1857.

36. Wood was elected mayor in 1854, reelected in 1856, defeated in a special election in 1857, and elected again in 1859. He lost reelection in 1861 but was elected to Congress in 1862. For Wood’s estimate of his fortune, see Wood to James Buchanan, September 8, 1858, Buchanan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

37.
New York Times
, July 17, 1857.

38. Wood’s biographer, Jerome Mushkat, noted that Wood voted with pro-slavery forces on fifty-six roll-call votes in the House of Representatives in 1841, by far the most of any Northern member of Congress. See Mushkat,
Fernando Wood: A Political Biography
(Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1990), p. 15.

39.
New York Evening Post
, October 23, 1857;
Documents of the Board of Aldermen of the City of New York
, vol. 23, Mayor’s Message, July 7, 1856 (New York: Chas. W. Baker, 1856).

40.
Irish News
, November 14, 1857.

41.
New York Evening Post
,
New York Times
,
New York Sun
, October 23, 1857.

42.
New York Evening Post
, October 23, 1857; Amy Bridges,
A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 118; Anbinder,
Five Points
, p. 244.

43. Mushkat
, Fernando Wood
, pp. 78–79.

Four:
C
IVIL
W
AR

1. Chief Engineer’s Annual Report, 1850, published in the
New York Herald
, September 6, 1850. The annual report did not cover a calendar year, but rather late 1849 through late 1850.

2. Kenneth Ackerman,
Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), p. 63.

3. Tyler Anbinder,
Nativism and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850s
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 13.

4.
New York Times
, October 11, 1852.

5.
New York Tribune
, November 10, 1853.

6.
New York Times
, October 30, 1854. The
Times
reprinted Seymour’s letter, originally published in the Albany
Atlas
, noting that the letter was not dated but seemed to be written during the 1852 gubernatorial campaign.

7. For more on the role of saloons in nineteenth-century urban areas, see Jon M. Kingsdale, “The ‘Poor Man’s Club’: Social Functions of the Urban Working-Class Saloon,”
American Quarterly
, vol. 25, no. 4 (October 1973). See also Mark Edward Lender and James Kirby Martin,
Drinking in America: A History
(New York: The Free Press, 1982).

8. David G. Croly,
Seymour and Blair: Their Lives and Services
(New York: Richardson and Company, 1868), pp. 34–35.

9.
New York Times
, April 22, 1854.

10.
Freeman’s Journal,
July 1, 1854.

11. The figure is from Anbinder,
Nativism and Slavery
, p. 43.

12. Ibid., p. 107.

13.
Freeman’s Journal
, July 8, 1854;
Irish World
, August 12, 1871; June 6, 1874.

14. William M. Tweed to James J. Murphy, February 5, 1855, Tweed Papers, New-York Historical Society.

15. Tweed to Murphy, January 20 and February 5, 1855, Tweed Papers, New-York Historical Society.

16.
Congressional Globe
, 34th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 967–69.

17.
Speech by John Kelly in Reply to the Charges of Hon. Thomas R. Whitney against Catholicism
, delivered in the House, August 9,1855 (Washington: Union Office, 1856).

18. David Potter,
The Impending Crisis
(New York: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 252.

19.
Speech by John Kelly in Reply to the Charges of Hon. Thomas R. Whitney
.

20.
New York Tribune
, May 17, 1858.

21. Some scholars—including Ignatiev (cited above); David Roediger,
Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White
(New York: Basic Books, 2006); and Theodore W. Allen,
The Invention of the White Race: Racial Oppression and Society Control
(New York: Verso, 1994)—have theorized that the Irish sought to prove their whiteness in order to gain acceptance from the Anglo-Protestant mainstream. This is a curious divergence from modern scholarship, which tends to emphasize the ways in which oppressed groups retain their identity while resisting or negotiating with their would-be oppressors. The leading journalists, Protestant preachers, and elite reformers of the Gilded Age no doubt would have been amused to learn that the Irish desperately wished to cast aside their “otherness”—which included their Catholicism—in order to fit into mainstream New York society.

22. References to the Irish as slaves abound in O’Connell’s speeches. Just one example: In the introduction to a collection of his letters, O’Connell referred to Ireland as the “bond slave of Britain.” See O’Connell,
Letters to the Reformers of England on the Reform Bill for Ireland
(London: J. Ridgway, 1832), p. 8.

23. “Erin, Oh Erin,” and “The Minstrel Boy” by Thomas Moore, in Seamus Deane, ed
., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing
(Derry: Field Day Publications, 1991), pp. 1061, 1064.

24. Patricia Ferreira, “All But ‘A Black Skin and Wooly Hair’: Frederick Douglass’ Witness of the Irish Famine,”
American Studies International
, vol. 37, no. 2 (June 1999), pp. 78–80.

25. O’Ferrall,
Catholic Emancipation
, p. 50.

26.
Irish-American
, November 14, 1863; October 29, 1853.

27.
Irish World
, August 12, 1871.

28. Richard Shaw,
Dagger John
, p. 137;
Irish-American
, October 28, 1849.

29. Most Protestants, of course, were of English or Scottish background, while the Catholics were, by and large, the island’s native Gaelic population.

30.
Freeman’s Journal
, October 6, 1860.

31. Mushkat,
Tammany
, p. 334.

32. Mushkat,
Fernando Wood
, p. 136.

33.
New York Herald
, July 14, 1863.

34. This summary of the violence is based on reports in the
New York Times
on July 14, 15, and 16, 1863.

35. Iver Bernstein,
The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of Civil War
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 69.

36. Hughes to Seward, July 19, 1863, Hughes Papers, Roll 2, Archives of the Archdiocese of New York.

37.
Irish World
, May 5, 1871.

38. Ackerman,
Boss Tweed
, p. 63.

39. See Tweed to Tilden, December 30 and October 8, 1868, Samuel Tilden Papers, Box 25, New York Public Library.

40. Myers,
The History of Tammany Hall
, p. 279.

Five:
A T
AMMANY
R
IOT

1. For details of the exiles’ journey and entrance into New York Harbor, see John Devoy,
Recollections of an Irish Rebel
(New York: Charles Young, 1929), pp. 329–31, and Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa,
Rossa’s Recollections
(New York: Mariners Harbor, 1894), as well as accounts in the
Irish World
, January 22, 1871, and the
New York Herald
, January 21, 1871. See also Devoy’s journal in John Devoy Papers, MS 18,004, National Library of Ireland, Dublin.

2.
Gaelic American
, March 7, 1925.

3.
New York Times
, February 9, 1871.

4. Ibid., November 6, 1856.

5.
Irish World
, October 3, 1874.

6. Figures from Ackerman,
Boss Tweed
, p. 87.

7.
New York Times
, April 14, 1871.

8. Ibid., June 20, 1871.

9. Ibid., July 8, 1871.

10. Celebrations of July 12 continue in Northern Ireland today, although tensions have been reduced since the beginning of the Irish peace process in the 1990s.

11.
New York Tribune
, July 14, 1870; see also the
Tribune
and
Times
coverages of the riot, July 14, 15;
Irish-American
, July 23, 1870.

12. See the letters pages in the
New York Herald
, the
New York Times
, and the
New York Sun
, July 12 and 13, 1871. See also Michael A. Gordon,
The Orange Riots:
Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009), pp. 79–82.

13.
New York Herald
, July 11, 1871.

14.
New York Tribune
, July 12, 1871.

15.
New York Times,
July 11, 1871;
New York Tribune,
July 11, 1871.

16.
New York Tribune
, July 12, 1871.

17. Ibid.

18.
New York Sun
, July 13, 1871.

19. Gordon,
The Orange Riots
, p. 113.

20.
Irish World
, July 22, 1871.

21. Gordon,
The Orange Riots
, p. 164;
New York Sun
, July 14, 1871;
Harper’s Weekly
, July 29, 1871.

22.
New York Tribune
, July 16, 1871;
New York Herald
, July 16, 1871; Gordon,
The Orange Riots
, p. 159.

23. See a postmortem tribute to Plunkitt in the
New York Times
, November 20, 1924. The
Times
was skeptical of Plunkitt’s account, for he also claimed that Mayor Hall ordered him to take charge of the volatile situation before it exploded into violence. Plunkitt was a twenty-nine-year-old alderman at the time. For “The Church of Aggression,” see
New York Times
, March 10, 1871.

24. Ibid., July 22–29, 1871. See also Ackerman,
Boss Tweed
, p. 170. Ironically, the so-called Tweed Courthouse remains in use in the twenty-first century, serving as headquarters of the city Department of Education as of 2011.

25.
The Nation
, August 24, 1871; September 7, 1871.

26.
New York Times
, September 25, 1871.

27.
Harper’s Weekly
, September 30, 1871.

28.
New York Times
, September 26, 1871.

29. Ibid., November 9, 1871.

Six:
T
AMMANY’S
I
RISH
R
ECONSTRUCTION

1.
New York Tribune
, November 4, 1877.

2. Andrew D. White, “The Government of American Cities,”
Forum
(December 1890), p. 214. The article was later retitled “City Affairs Are Not Political.”

3. Francis S. Barry,
The Scandal of Reform: The Grand Failures of New York’s Political Crusaders and the Death of Nonpartisanship
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), p. 34; White, “The Government of American Cities,” p. 215.

4.
New York Times
, December 26, 1874.

5. See, for example, a cartoon entitled “The Catholics Are Coming” in
Puck
, October 27, 1880. For a full treatment of
Puck
’s importance in Gilded Age New York, see Samuel J. Thomas, “Mugwump Cartoonists, the Papacy, and Tammany Hall in America’s Gilded Age,” in
Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation
, vol. 14, no. 2 (Summer 2004).

6. Daniel Cassidy
, How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads
(Petrolia, CA: CounterPunch Books, 2007), p. 174.

7. For a breakdown of Manhattan’s Assembly districts in 1880, see Enumeration Districts of the 1st Supervisors District of New York, accessible at www.bklyn-genealogy-info.com/Ward/1880NYC.1.html.

8. Riordon,
Plunkitt of Tammany Hall
, pp. 92–93.

9.
New York Times
, November 2, 1872.

10.
Irish World
, November 16, 1872;
New York Times
, November 7, 1872.

11. John Kelly to unnamed recipient, November 20, 1875; Samuel Tilden to John Kelly, August 1873 (undated), Samuel Tilden Papers, Box 15, New York Public Library.

12.
New York Times
, October 7, 1874.

13. Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1025.

14.
New York Times
, September 23, 1874.

15. Ibid., November 7, 1874.

16. Telegram from Kelly to Tilden, May 24, 1875, Samuel Tilden Papers, Box 15, New York Public Library; undated telegram, Kelly to James Fox, Samuel Tilden Papers, Box 15, New York Public Library. Kelly also opposed construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (after first supporting the plan), beginning in 1878. He believed it was too costly and would help Brooklyn more than New York.

17. Alexander C. Flick,
Samuel Jones Tilden: A Study in Political Sagacity
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939), p. 262.

18.
New York Times
, February 23, 1875.

19. Michael McGerr,
The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 46.