The Epic of New York City (56 page)

When an overt fix was considered by the board, Tweed induced the two or three Republicans who declined to vote with him to refrain from voting at all. Then, if an indignant citizen howled about the haul, Tweed could cluck, “But, sir, there was only one vote cast against the measure!” Tweed served on the board thirteen years and was elected president four times. Whether president or not, he called the shots at board meetings, shifting from menacing bluster to silky smiles and noisily moving to suspend the rules or to adjourn, as the tactics of the day dictated.

While gathering the board into his smothering bear hug, Tweed also captured Tammany Hall. At first he was influential only in his own Seventh Ward. But his magnetism, quick-wittedness, and energy won the loyalty of some men ruling other wards. This made him a leader. Then he brought the other leaders under his power. This made him the boss.

Tammany Hall was a general term for two intertwining but separate entities maintained by the Democratic party in New York City. One body was the Tammany Society. This was a
social
organization, which consisted of clubs scattered throughout the city and catered to the needs of citizens at the grass-roots level. The other body was the New York County Democratic committee. This was a
political
organization, which exercised the real power. In theory, its governing body was a central committee, but this had so many members that it was cumbersome. In practice, the affairs of the central committee were directed by a small executive committee. Prominent in the executive committee were leaders of the Tammany Society, and this is how the two entities blended. Tweed took over Tammany Hall by being elected grand sachem of the Tammany Society and by gaining control of a majority of the executive committee of the New York County Democratic committee. Now he rode herd on the city's Democratic party and its primaries and its patronage.

Because New York was predominantly Democratic, whoever controlled
the Democratic party controlled the city. In 1868 there was only one Republican ward among the twenty-two wards of the city; therefore, whoever won the Democratic nomination for a given office was sure to be elected. And Boss Tweed dictated nominations. Then, come election day, Tweed's ward leaders hired bullies to intimidate Republican voters, drifters and crooks were bribed to vote several times each, Tweed judges naturalized thousands of aliens with the understanding they would vote Democratic, and Tweed's candidates won. Most of the voters were Irish or German and blindly followed Tweed because he had led the local fight against the Know-Nothings.

The power pattern would not have been effective if decent people had fought it from the start. But, apathetic about politics and zealous about making money, they abdicated their civic responsibilities. The Civil War had stimulated Northern industry. Manufacturing became more important than merchandising. As a result, merchant capitalism gave way to industrial capitalism. The war ushered in a wave of prosperity, and New Yorkers forgot public spirit in greed for profits. They speculated wildly in stocks, hoping to become rich overnight. In 1866 a New York weekly, called the
Round Table,
said, “A strange craziness is abroad in the land. Some mysterious spirit of evil has led our people into the blindest, wildest infatuation . . . wild and foolish speculation. . . . At least half the people are living beyond their means.”

According to a member of the Union League: “This decline in the public tone was not confined to the vulgar and ignorant. It affected all ranks and professions, perhaps most marked where it would naturally be least looked for and most abhorrent—in the clerical calling. . . .” Soon Henry Ward Beecher, perhaps the best-known minister in the land, was to be accused of adultery, and although the jury failed to reach an agreement, many people felt that he had been guilty of impropriety. The Union League member continued: “No doubt it (the decline in the public tone) affected injuriously many of the leaders of all parties and every school of politics; the senate, the bench, the bar, and the pulpit, as well as the ranks of trade and the directors of the banks, insurance companies, savings institutions, and even the boards of education.”

G. T. Strong sadly noted in his diary: “The city government is rotten to the core.”

Political corruption works two ways: Someone gives, and someone takes. Money-minded men were willing to pay bribes to power-minded
Boss Tweed. People were so busy piling up wealth that they didn't understand what was happening to the city until it was too late. For his part, Tweed gave generously to the poor, who jolly well knew that he was stealing from the rich but considered him a sort of Robin Hood. They thanked the Boss by maintaining him in power. As James Bryce observed: “The government of the rich by the manipulation of the votes of the poor is a new phenomenon in the world.” Just before Christmas one year, so the story goes, Police Justice Edward J. Shandley asked Boss Tweed for a donation for relief of the poor in the Seventh Ward. Tweed promptly wrote out a check for $5,000. When Shandley cried jestingly, “Oh, Boss, put another naught to it!” Tweed grinned, picked up his pen again, said, “Well, here goes!” and raised the $5,000 check to $50,000.

By January 1, 1869, Boss Tweed was lording it over both the city and the state. On that date his henchman, John T. Hoffman, was sworn in as governor. After he had been admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-one, Hoffman had worked his way up through New York City's Democratic ranks. Elected city recorder in 1860, he had been the youngest man ever to hold this position. Although he had not been completely enslaved by Tweed and opposed him on one notable occasion, Hoffman had become mayor of New York City on January 1, 1866, with Tweed's help. Frauds and thefts had flourished during his two-year term in this office, but Hoffman's name could not be connected with them. In 1868 Tweed had seen to it that Hoffman had been elected governor. Hoffman was tall, slender, and stately and had black eyes. A
Sun
reporter said that his black mustache made him look like “a Spanish grandee or a first-class German metaphysician.”

The same January 1, 1869, Abraham Oakey Hall took office as mayor of New York City. After he had been graduated from New York University, he had entered Harvard Law School but left it to go to New Orleans with his family. There he had become a newspaper reporter. He had abandoned this career, entered a New Orleans law office, and then come back to settle in New York City. In 1854 he had shown up in Albany as lobbyist for the Republican party. Hall detested Abraham Lincoln, and after the rail-splitter became President, Hall turned Democrat. Wholly an opportunist and once a fervent Know-Nothing, he switched sides again and became an apologist for the Catholic Church. He wooed local Germans and Irish so cloyingly that he became known as Von O'Hall. His more
popular nickname, though, was Elegant Oakey, for he dressed like a dandy. Hall's debonair appearance amused Tweed. However, the Boss had a sober appreciation of this brilliant eccentric who knew the law so well. Tweed made him mayor. Hoffman was legal and legislative adviser to the Tweed Ring. A small man with a heavy dark mustache and a scrubby black beard, he wore pince-nez on a black string.

Peter Barr Sweeny was city chamberlain. Next to Tweed, Sweeny was the most important member of the Tweed Ring. He was known as Brains or Bismarck. Sweeny had been born on Park Row, where his father had kept a saloon. He had been graduated from Columbia College, become an astute lawyer, been elected to the state senate, lobbied there for stagecoach companies, and been chosen district attorney here; but he had broken down during the trial of his first case and resigned in humiliation. A quiet reserved man, he was most effective in private offices and in political caucuses held behind closed doors. Well read, Sweeny knew about the fortunes amassed in the rebuilding of Paris under the direction of Baron Haussmann and understood how public improvements may be used for private profit. Despite his erudition and subdued nature, Sweeny became involved with a woman who worked in a Turkish bath and was said to have had a child by her. He was the Tweed Ring's silent adviser, and his principal job was to control the judiciary. Sweeny was of medium height and slight of build, with a low forehead, deep-set eyes, and black bristly hair and mustache.

Richard B. Connolly was city comptroller. He acted as financial adviser to the Tweed Ring. Born in Ireland, he had come to America as a young man, worked in Philadelphia as an auctioneer's clerk, and then moved to New York City. Here he had been appointed to the customhouse, switched to the job of discount clerk in the Bank of North America, and gained local political experience in Tweed's Seventh Ward. Connolly had served two terms as county clerk, twice been elected to the state senate, become general manager of the Central National bank, and had risen in Tammany Hall. A Uriah Heep in mannerisms, cringing in the presence of Boss Tweed, and tyrannical to his own underlings, Richard Connolly merited the nickname of Slippery Dick. His broad face was clean-shaven, and he brushed his hair forward from his ears.

Three judges rounded out the inner circle of the Tweed Ring:

George G. Barnard was presiding justice of the state supreme
court. For a while he posed as a reformer, but soon everyone understood that he was Tweed's vassal. Barnard was handsome of face and figure, overbearing, and insolent.

Albert Cardozo was a justice of the state supreme court. The only Jewish member of the Tweed Ring and of Portuguese extraction, Cardozo was learned and industrious but was such a scoundrel that he sold justice as a fishwife sells flounders. His son, Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, later redeemed the family name by serving honorably and wisely as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

John H. McCunn was a judge of the superior court. He had tried to nullify the federal Draft Act during the Draft Riots, and this had brought him to Tweed's attention. When Tweed barked, McCunn jumped through hoops.

Tweed himself was the Boss, the leader of Tammany Hall, the president of the county board of supervisors, the street commissioner, and a state senator. Through Hoffman, Hall, Sweeny, Connolly, Barnard, Cardozo, McCunn, and the 12,000 other persons who received patronage from him, he controlled the entire machinery of the city and state governments—executive, legislative, and judicial—with the sole exception of the court of appeals. He named the men he wanted elected to office—and they were elected. He spelled out the laws he wanted enacted—and they were enacted. Should an innocent dare to bring charges against Tweed or any of his underlings, the Boss lifted a finger, and one of his judges ruled in his favor. He controlled the city police, mostly Irish and Democrats, even paying the police commissioner out of his own pocket. He bought the silence of most newspapers by subsidizing them with unnecessary city advertising and by bribing editors and reporters. He emasculated the New York County Republican committee by buying off its members. He smothered reform movements in money. And by 1869 he was stealing more than $1,000,000 a month from the city treasury.

This still wasn't enough to satisfy him. Bloated with success and brazenly confident, Boss Tweed sometimes shut his bright-blue eyes and dreamed of taking over the United States of America. How? He planned to make John T. Hoffman the nation's President, raise A. Oakey Hall to the governorship of New York State, and himself become a U.S. Senator in order to work his black magic in the upper chamber of the Congress. Connolly would stay home and watch the store as city comptroller. Before he could launch this grandiose scheme, there was one thing Tweed had to do.

He wanted a new city charter. Powerful though he was, he had to tack indirectly toward his goals under the current charter. By streamlining legal technicalities, he would be able to work smoother and faster. For one thing, Tweed hated to ask the state legislature to pass city tax bills. He practically owned the legislature, true, but this cost him a lot of money in bribes. The state's lawmakers were paid only $300 a year, so they were always eager to milk money from anyone wanting legislation. They would introduce a bill striking at a large corporation—including a city, such as New York—and then wait to be paid to withdraw the obnoxious measure. No railroad ever got a favor without bribes. Bills were attacked and defended in terms of who paid how much to whom. These freebooters worked generally as individuals until Tweed became a state senator. Then he whipped them into a disciplined band, which rode roughshod over the few honest legislators. Handing out greenbacks like cabbage leaves, Boss Tweed was the man to whom every grasping lawmaker looked before voting on any bill.

Tweed paid about $1,000,000 in bribes to get his new city charter passed at Albany, but pass it did. On the afternoon of April 5, 1870, only two of the thirty-two members of the state senate voted against it. Governor Hoffman immediately signed the bill and then handed the pen to a beaming Tweed. That night the Boss held court, dispensing free champagne to all comers. He had explained to the businessmen of New York City that he sought municipal autonomy for their hometown. Peter Cooper and others, who should have known better, believed him. When Tweed returned from the state capital, he was greeted here like a conquering hero.

What did this Tweed charter do? Seemingly it gave control of the city back to the city at the expense of the state, which pleased the advocates of home rule. It increased the power of the mayor by granting him the right to appoint department heads and all other important city officers without anyone's approval. Before this, the governor had made many of these appointments. What's more, the mayor could now appoint his favorites for terms of four to eight years, thus assuring continuity of power regardless of reformers. Under the charter it was impossible to discharge department heads for incompetency or dishonesty, except by unanimous consent of the six judges of the court of common pleas. To Tweed, who had bribed a Republican to stay away from a meeting of the board of supervisors, this provision meant nothing; in a crisis one of the six judges would fail
to appear. The charter weakened the city council by forbidding it to regulate the affairs of any city department. It wrested control of Central Park from the original commissioners. It ended state supervision of city police.