BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (17 page)

“How is it done? We wish Mr. Tweed, or Mr. Sweeny, or some of their friends would tell us. The general public say there is foul play somewhere. They are under the impression that monstrous abuses of their funds, corrupt bargains with railroad sharpers, outrageous plots to swindle the general community, account for the vast fortunes heaped up by men who spring up like mushrooms.”

In the days following, Jennings would hit again and again. In his columns, Tweed soon became “King,” “Dictator,” blackmailer, and thief. Later, the
Times
would ask for information, for Connolly to open his books.

Imagine what they could do if they ever came across actual proof.

-------------------------

Samuel Tilden saw nothing to be embarrassed for after Rochester at first. His Democrats had held their annual convention there on September 20 with all the usual ceremony. Two thousands delegates and spectators had jammed Corinthian Hall, its podium decorated with red, white, and blue flags and banners. In some ways, the convention had been the party’s best in years: “Perfect Harmony and Splendid Enthusiasm,” the
New York World
had pronounced.
²³
Every vote had been unanimous. At its climax, when delegates chose John Hoffman as their candidate for another term as governor, “the whole convention rose and gave cheer after cheer, while simultaneously the salvos of the guns were heard from outside,” as one reporter described the scene. “A salute was fired from a full battery.”
²⁴

Afterwards, Democratic clubs sounded 100-gun salutes in small towns all across the state.

But Tilden had also seen a seamier side in Rochester and soon realized he’d have to pay a price: At every step, utterly in command, calling every shot, deciding every issue and every logistical detail, was the highly visible corpulent form of the Boss of Tammany.

Tweed. Ever since his victory that April on his new city charter, Tweed’s stature had soared, and with it, Tilden had seen ever more backhanded slaps. Late that April, when Tammany had held its annual election for Sachems in its opulent new meeting room, Tweed had humiliated Tilden in front of the whole tribe by placing Tilden’s name on a slate of malcontents—mostly O’Brien rebels—which Tweed then had his members promptly reject by an overwhelming vote of 242 to 23; Tilden had known nothing of it until reading it in the newspapers.
²⁵
And more: friends told Tilden that Tweed had threatened to Lieutenant Governor Allen Beach, one of Tilden’s upstate allies, that he planned to boot Tilden from the state party leadership at first opportunity.
²⁶

Now, in Rochester, Tilden saw Tweed throw his weight around again. Rather than complain, Tilden had bowed and played along. The night before the convention, Peter Sweeny had summoned him to his hotel room where Sweeny, “as a matter of form,” told him what Tammany’s decisions would be for the next day. Tilden swallowed it all. He even went along with helping Tweed in his vendetta against O’Brien’s Young Democrats—Tweed had been systematically purging them from Tammany and city offices since April—by now blocking a group of them from coming to lodge a protest on the convention floor. Shortly before the convention, the O’Brien friends had visited Tilden and asked him for tickets, hoping to win delegate seats through a formal credentials challenge. Tilden had put them off by saying the “arrangements” hadn’t been worked out yet. When they came back the next morning, Tilden told them the New York seats had already been given away to Tammany men; the best he could offer were passes to the gallery as “spectators.” The O’Brien-ites declined—“unless they could be admitted as contesting delegates he did not want the tickets,” one of them told a reporter.
²⁷
Rumor had it that Tilden’s own extra set of 500 tickets that he kept secretly hidden in his hotel room just for such emergencies had disappeared during the night, possibly stolen.
²⁸

When the convention opened the next morning, Tilden continued to play along: As state party chairman, he gaveled the hall to order, delivered a scholarly speech on world affairs—the growing threat of “centralization” in Europe—and supported each Tweed decision. When one sympathetic delegate rose to object to excluding the O’Brien Young Democrats, Tilden, standing on the podium, kept his mouth shut as the chair announced the absence of any contesting delegates and ruled the point out of order. Later in the day, Tilden watched from the podium as the convention delegates “called out” Tweed himself and insisted he give a speech: Tweed, shouting to be heard, “assured [the convention] that the City of New York would give from 55,000 to 65,000 majority for the ticket nominated here to-day.” The crowd cheered; everyone knew Tweed would deliver the goods.
²⁹

As a final indignity, Tilden watched helplessly as the convention hall itself was terrorized that day by a band of about twenty bruisers, “roughs and thieves” according to the press, who’d arrived on a special overnight train from Manhattan. Somehow, each of the thugs had gotten a ticket to the convention hall—rumor had it that these were the tickets stolen from Tilden’s hotel room the night before. Tammany denied any connection to the intruders, but people began calling them “Tweed’s lambs” and whispered that Tweed had brought them along as extra muscle just in case O’Brien’s Young Democrats tried anything. Before the day was over, more than a dozen reports of pocket picking and fighting had reached local police, including one from the Mayor of Rochester. Sam Tilden himself, as he was leaving the podium after the convention’s final gavel, looked down to see one of the toughs sticking his hand into Tilden’s own pocket to steal his watch.

Outsiders gasped: “The audience was put to sleep at the outset by Tilden’s speech, and most of them did not wake again till the affair was all over,” the
New-York Times
reported.
³⁰
“Tammany is supreme. … Mr. Tweed nodded, and they obeyed…. Mr. Tweed lifted his little finger and promised a big majority—and that was the only speech that possessed significance .… All else was dry and barren.”
³¹

Tilden probably had enjoyed reading the
New-York Times
’ initial attacks on Tweed a few days earlier—perhaps seeing a helping hand in his quiet resistance to the Boss. He’d known George Jones for years, part of the small circle of New York elite gentlemen at the Union League and other clubs. But he just as probably jumped out of his chair on seeing the
Times’
next installment in its anti-Tammany tirade. Its title made the point perfectly: “Mr. Tilden as the Slave of the ‘Ring’”:
³²

“Mr. Samuel J. Tilden … is as much disgusted with the City Government as any of us, and probably knows more of its horrors than most of us…. He knows how they cheat, and lie, and steal, and he knows that they rely for the perpetuation of their power on the fidelity and exertions of jail-birds,—and on the perpetration of frauds, such as, until lately, only jail-birds were guilty of. We venture to assert that he is disgusted with these monstrous abuses; that he would not venture to defend the rule now exercised in this City by the Tammany General Committee in any private room…

Nevertheless, Mr. Tilden—such as we see and know of him, was one of the most prominent performers in the late farce at Rochester. He is Chairman of the State Committee … [but] is only a sham,… an ornamental subordinate, and that whatever he does has been done subject to the approbation of William M. Tweed. So far from being disgusted with his position, he seemed to delight in it….”

Tilden must have shuddered. He, Samuel Tilden, had a national reputation to protect. Within a few hours, Tilden, back in New York City, apparently raced across town to buttonhole Manton Marble, his Manhattan Club friend and publisher of the partisan-Democrat
New York World
. Marble gladly agreed to help; he’d happily respond for his friend. Newspaper wars made good business. The next morning, the
World
counter-punched with a column that Tilden may have written himself. Pointing to the
New-York Times’
own recent support of Boss Tweed’s charter and its praise of his appointment as commissioner of Public Works, it asked an obvious question: “Will the [
Times
] tell us what those officers [Tweed and company] have done [since April] to forfeit its confidence?” Then, menacingly, it suggested a sinister secret: “[The
Times
] dares not avow the real motive of its attacks,” it said. “Why does the journal so soon stultify itself? We could easily state the reason, and may do so at no distant day.”
³³

What dirty laundry had the
New York World
gathered in its files to fling against the
New-York Times
in the next round of the battle? Readers would have to buy tomorrow’s paper to find out.

If Tilden thought he’d escaped the storm, though, he was wrong. Not only did the
Times
hit back a few days later, but so did such elite New York friends as E.L. Godkin, publisher of
The Nation
. “We hope [Mr. Tilden] has a realizing sense of the company he keeps, when he opens conventions for Mr. Tweed, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Sweeny,” Godkin wrote in late September. These men were “wretched thieves and swindlers,” and Tilden was one of them.
³⁴

Sam Tilden, sitting in his Gramercy Park townhouse, recognized the obvious fact: So long as Tweed ruled the roost, he had no hope for a political future. Tweed would never let him become governor; he’d already given the job to Hoffman and probably promised it to Oakey Hall after that. If a seat opened up in the United States Senate, Tweed probably would give it to Peter Sweeny or perhaps take it himself. Meanwhile, Tilden’s reputation suffered. And if Tweed fell, he could bring the entire Party crashing down with him—including Tilden and his Swallowtails.

Tweed had to go. Someone had to take him down, but at the right time and in the right way, skillfully, with the proper hands on the weapon. Meanwhile, Tilden saw the Boss grow only more popular: Clubs in his honor popped up all over town.

At rallies and parades, his backers wore bright red shirts in honor of the Big Six Firemen who’d launched Tweed’s political career almost twenty years earlier. Tweed had become more than a political leader; he’d become a cult, and each day he gathered more converts.
³⁵

Tilden saw it all: For now, though, he could only wait.

CHAPTER 6

WHITEWASH

“ I have been about as much abused as any man in public life; but I have never yet been charged with being deficient in common sense.”

—Tweed, in a letter to police justice Edward Shandley, president of the Tweed Testimonial Association, declining the erection of a statue in his honor in New York City, March 13, 1871.

M
ILDLY startled”—that’s how a
New-York Times
historian described Tweed’s reaction to first seeing the newspaper’s attacks on him beginning in late September 1870.
¹
Most likely, it bothered him not at all. “King Tweed is our master, and men like Fisk, Jr. compose his Court.” Irritation aside, Tweed probably delighted reading such plaudits while sipping tea in his Fifth Avenue mansion or reposing at his Duane Street lair, sharing a laugh with friends. By ascribing him so much power, the
Times
was building him up more than knocking him down. “The firman [edict] of an Eastern potentate does not carry more authority with it than the orders of the lord paramount of New-York,” the
Time
s railed day after day.
²
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Tweed could have mumbled over his noontime glass of wine.

Tweed could dismiss the attacks themselves as vague and political, typical for Republican insults in an election campaign. Besides, he knew his core backers, immigrants and poor workingmen: few if any read the
New-York Times
. Many couldn’t read at all and those who did preferred friendly, Democratic-leaning papers like the
Sun
or the
Herald
—the city’s two largest in circulation—or the
Leader
. The
Times
was just one lonely voice, a grouchy, squeaky wheel. Certainly Tweed learned quickly from his friend Dick Connolly, the city comptroller, that the
Times
had an axe to grind: Connolly’s refusal to pay their $13,764 city advertising bill—sour grapes in anyone’s book.

He probably cringed at the
Times
’ personal slurs. “Mr. Tweed passes his Sundays drinking punch in a stable,” charged one
Times
piece, quoting an old
New York World
story from back during the Young Democrat revolt. “Mr. Tweed was worth less than nothing when he took to the trade of politics, for he was bankrupt [while now] he is rich enough to own a gorgeous home in town and a sumptuous seat in the country, a stud of horses, and a set of palatial stables.”
³
Other attacks read like back-handed compliments: “Tweed and Fisk are bold, out-spoken rogues, whose very audacity almost makes one admire them.”
⁴

Friends urged Tweed to fight back but he refused. Why give them attention? “No man can answer newspaper attacks and stop with the reply,” he told one friendly group that fall.
⁵
How had Tweed grown so rich, the
Times
asked? He had answers he could have given—such as pointing to his many business ties. Tweed held stock or directorships these days in a dozen profitable local firms: the New York Mutual Insurance Company, the New York Gas Light Company, the Guardian Savings Bank, the Bowling Green Railway Company, the National Broadway Bank, and the Third Avenue Railway Company, on top of his mainstays, the Erie Railway, the New-York Printing Company, the New York Transcript, and the Tenth National Bank—plus his multiple government salaries.
⁶
No law at the time stopped a public man from making money on the side: United States senators from Daniel Webster to Roscoe Conkling all had earned top-dollar legal fees while serving in office. And if Tweed had stepped on toes getting rich, he had good company: Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, and Daniel Drew—Wall Street’s richest players—all prided themselves as feared, ruthless manipulators ready to cut throats or corners.

As for corruption, why should Tweed be embarrassed? He knew the
Times
had not a scrap of evidence on his “percentages” from the Tax Levy or other thefts; he knew his bookkeepers hid the trail well. But even if
The Times
did, what of it? New York had been corrupt for generations. At the height of Civil War as Union boys were dying on Virginia battlefields, Tweed had seen “respectable” city merchants scramble like pigs at feeding to sell the army shoddy uniforms, defective weapons, and diseased food for exorbitant profits.
^F
OOTNOTE
With post-war prosperity came even more corruption and it was President Ulysses Grant in Washington—a Republican—who wore the darkest black eye. Scandal had hit Grant’s presidency in its very first year, 1869, with the Black Friday gold corner; Congressional hearings had revealed bribes from speculators Jay Gould and Jim Fisk reaching senior officials including the president’s own brother-in-law and sister. Graft among Reconstruction carpetbaggers in the South, land speculators in the West, whiskey rings, postal rings, Indian supply rings, and railroad rings all festered like boils waiting to explode during the next few years.

If Tweed and his Tammany crowd had taken their share when opportunity knocked, why should they be scapegoats? In their own eyes, they doubtless saw themselves at least as giving something back: a voice for the poor and immigrants, improvements to the city, and jobs for their friends.

Pressed to justify its charges, the
Times
virtually admitted in late September it had no direct case against Tweed. “Why Attack Mr. Tweed?” it explained in an editorial, “We single out Mr. Tweed for the present, because he is the prime mover in the audacious faction which are now trying hard to ruin this City, and are making their own fortunes in the process. One at a time is a very good rule. ‘After the master, the valets’… We look upon Mr. Tweed as the incarnation of all the vice in the City Government.”
⁸

Tweed boasted of being a take-charge man: “I am always in the habit of going to the front, and not in the habit of putting dummies forward,” he’d blurted out earlier that year while confronting political enemies in Albany.
⁹
Now, seeing himself smeared, Tweed saw opportunity, a chance to consolidate power and silence his critics once and for all. An important election was coming up in 1870; his two leading protégés, Governor John Hoffman and Mayor Oakey Hall, both would stand for reelection in November. A big win for Hoffman could set the stage for Hoffman’s run at the White House in 1872, catapulting Tweed to the national stage. He could defeat his attackers where it counted most, at the ballot box.

Already by mid-October, the
Times
attacks had produced a backlash among New York’s working poor: Tweed’s supporters throughout the city had rallied to him. Late that month, Republicans handed him another weapon: Fearing Tammany would use its now-famous repeaters and crooked counters to cheat them out of a fair vote, they’d appealed to President Grant’s White House in Washington, D.C. They pointed to Tammany’s control of the police and sheriff’s office and recent evidence that the city had added more than 1,300 names to its payroll in September—“ruffians” to use on Election Day.
¹⁰
Grant agreed to intervene; on October 25 he ordered thousands of federal troops to march on Gotham: the Eighth U.S. Infantry to occupy harbor forts and two warships, the U.S.S.
Guerriere
and the U.S.S.
Narragansett
, to drop anchor in the rivers. He also ordered General Shaler, commander of the state militia, to prepare his soldiers to support U.S. marshals at the ballot box.

Gunboat politics! cried Democrats. Radical intimidation! Washington was treating New York no better than defeated Southern confederate cities like Richmond or New Orleans. No self-respecting New Yorker could tolerate the insult.

Finally, late that month, the
Times
too made a mistake; it lodged a specific charge giving Tweed something solid to knock down. “Where is Connolly’s Report?” the
Times
demanded on October 21. “The Comptroller, Mr. Richard Connolly by name, alias ‘Slippery Dick,’” had failed to issue his annual financial statement, it claimed. Something must be rotten in those books—specifically involving city bonds. He “
dare
not publish any statement of accounts.
There is an immense deficiency in his department—amounting, it is reported, to between four and five millions of dollars
, every dollar of which belongs to the public,” the
Times
warned.
¹¹
“[W]e charge them [Tweed, Connolly, and Sweeny] with intentionally keeping the public in ignorance of the amount of City revenue bonds issued” and manipulating them “much as James Fisk, Jr. treats Erie stock
^F
OOTNOTE
…. In other words, in this matter of City bonds, the ‘Ring’ are acting dishonestly. Twist the words as much as you please, and the gravity of the charge is unaltered.”
¹²

Truth or not didn’t matter. The law required the city to publish a full fiscal report in newspapers two months before each election and Connolly had ignored the rule, but that was beside the point. If he and Tweed could humiliate the
Times
on this concrete charge, they could blunt its entire campaign. They talked it over and quickly decided what to do: If the
Times
wanted the city’s books examined, then so be it, they’d give them what they wanted. But rather than let the
Times
, a biased partisan, examine them, they’d pick their own judges: a special committee of six eminently respectable citizens, bluebloods with impeccable reputations, to study the records and make a report.

Within barely two days of the
Times’
attack, Connolly announced a new Committee of Investigation, its members comprising a virtual “Who’s Who” of the city’s financial elite. As chairman, he named John Jacob Astor III, grandson and heir of the legendary fur trader who became New York’s largest landowner and died in 1848 the richest man in America. Next came Moses Taylor, ship-owner, importer, president of City Bank, director of the city’s gas light system, partner of Cyrus Field in the transatlantic cable, and owner of a $40 million fortune. Taylor also had been part of an underwriting consortium that sold city bonds overseas. After Taylor came Marshall O. Roberts, steamship magnate, part owner of the
New York Sun
and leader of the West Side Association whose Fifth Avenue mansion housed an art collection alone worth over $750,000. The three other members, George K. Sistaire, Edward Schell, and E.D. Brown, each had sterling business credentials, paid heavy taxes, and boasted financial expertise.

As Connolly organized the new committee, Tweed attacked publicly. A week before Election Day, Tammany held its usual pre-election rally that, this year, ballooned into a dazzling spectacle. A crowd estimated at between 40,000 and 100,000 people ignored a driving rain to jam the streets around Tammany Hall and shout their affection for the Boss—a remarkable turnout. They arrived dramatically: tens of thousands marched in formation from rallying points in each of the city’s 22 wards, “mile after mile of men” flooding the streets carrying lighted torches in their hands, singing, chanting, and laughing while converging on Union Square at 14th Street which itself was transformed into a fantasy of light and sound, a vast landscape of banners, fireworks, and gas jets matched by the deafening roar of cheering voices, brass bands, and exploding roman candles. Swarms of people wore bright red shirts, symbols of the “Big Six” Americus volunteer fire company that had launched Tweed’s career. Local clubs carried silk banners with names sewn in bright colored letters, red, green, purple, and orange: the “Young Men’s William M. Tweed Club”, the “Seventh Ward William M. Tweed Association,” the “Fifteenth Ward William M. Tweed Club,” along with banners for “Democratic Repeaters” and a large streamer reading: “John T. Hoffman: For Governor, 1870; For President, 1872.”

On the platform, faces shining in the bright calcium light, stood Democratic leaders of every faction. Tweed’s red-bearded head towered over the other celebrities: August Belmont of the national committee, 1864 presidential nominee General George B. McClellan, former governor Horatio Seymour, and even Sam Tilden keeping to himself in a corner. Weeks of
New-York Times
attacks, gunboat interference, and the hint of a national ticket had produced stunning unity among Democrats. Tweed took the podium and looked out over a sea of torch-lit faces cheering back at him. “I need not say that we are pleased to see so many of you here tonight,” he roared, shouting to be heard, “who think with us the time has arrived at length when the great City of New-York must … struggle for the overthrow of that despotic sway under which we have groaned for the past eleven years.” They cheered again, then sang, then shouted. Tweed gave them defiance as thousands strained to hear through the rain and noise. Then he appealed to their intelligence. Tweed had a message tonight: discipline. He’d reached a watershed moment. He knew this time his machine could win a clean, fair contest by a landslide that would silence critics for years to come.