TILDEN CRUSHES TAMMANY
1871
While Conkling was disposing of Greeley and the Fenton organisation,
Samuel J. Tilden prepared to crush Tammany. Tweed had reason to fear
Tilden. In 1869 he accused the Ring of being "opposed to all good
government."[1326] Afterward, in 1870, the defeat of the Young
Democracy's charter added to his bitterness. On the evening of the day
on which that vote occurred, Tweed jeered Tilden as the latter passed
through the hotel corridor, while Tilden, trembling with suppressed
emotion, expressed the belief that the Boss would close his career in
jail or in exile.[1327] One wonders that Tilden, being a natural
detective, should have delayed strenuous action until the _Times'_
exposure, but when, at last, a knowledge of the colossal frauds
suddenly opened the way to successful battle, he seized the advantage
with the skill and persistency of a master.
[Footnote 1326: Paine, _Life of Nast_, p. 194.]
[Footnote 1327: This remark was addressed to Henry Richmond, whose
father, Dean Richmond, died in Tilden's home in Gramercy Park.
Richmond succeeded his father as State committeeman.]
In his crusade he did not unite with Republicans, for whom he had no
liking. He was not only an intense partisan, but he had a positive
genius for saying bitter things in the bitterest way. To him the
quarter of a century covered by Van Buren, Marcy, and Wright, shone as
an era of honour and truth, while the twenty-four years spanned by the
Republicans and the party from whence they sprung brought shame and
disgrace upon the State. "The Republicans made the morals of the
legislative bodies what they have recently become. When Seward and
Weed took the place of Wright, Marcy, and Flagg, public and official
morality fell in the twinkling of an eye. Even our city government,
until 1870, was exactly what a Republican legislature made it. The
league between corrupt Republicans and corrupt Democrats, which was
formed during Republican ascendency, proved too strong for honest men.
The charter of 1870 which I denounced in a public speech, had the
votes of nearly all the Republicans and Democrats."[1328] Still, he
admitted that Tammany was synonymous with Democracy, and that its
corruption, especially since its blighting influence had become so
notorious and oppressive, impeded and dishonoured the party. Under its
rule primaries had been absurdities and elections a farce. Without
being thoroughly reorganised, therefore, the party, in his opinion,
could not exist.[1329]
[Footnote 1328: Tilden's letter to the Democracy, dated September 11,
1871.--New York _Tribune_, September 22, 1871.]
[Footnote 1329: Tilden's interview.--_Ibid._, Sept 23.]
In this spirit Tilden entered upon the great work of his life. Two
classes of Democrats faced him--the more clamorous reformers and the
enemies of all reform. To the latter reorganisation seemed a reckless
step. It argued that the loss of the Tammany vote meant the
dissolution of the party, and that a great organisation ought not to
be destroyed for the wrong of a few individuals, since the party was
not responsible for them. Besides, the executive power of the State,
with its vast official patronage scattered throughout all the
counties, would oppose such a policy. On the other hand, the first
class, possessing little faith in the party's ability to purge itself,
threatened to turn reform into political revolution. It desired a new
party. Nevertheless, Tilden did not hesitate. He issued letters to
thousands of Democrats, declaring that "wherever the gangrene of
corruption has reached the Democratic party we must take a knife and
cut it out by the roots;"[1330] he counselled with Horatio Seymour and
Charles O'Conor; he originated the movement that ultimately sent a
reform delegation to the State convention; he consented to stand for
the Assembly; and finally, to secure the fruit of three months' work,
he raised one-half the funds expended by the Democratic reform
organisation.
[Footnote 1330: Tilden's letter, _Ibid._, Sept. 22.]
The Ring had not been an indifferent observer of these efforts. While
it cared little for the control of a State convention without a
governor to nominate, its continued existence absolutely depended upon
a majority in the Senate. Tweed planned to carry the five senatorial
districts in the city, and to re-elect if possible the eight
Republican senators whom he had used the year before.[1331] This would
insure him control. To achieve his purpose word was sent to Tilden
early in August that he could name the delegates to the State
convention and the candidates upon the State ticket if he would not
interfere with Tammany's legislative nominations. If Tilden had not
before distrusted Tweed, such a proposition must have aroused his
suspicion. But Tilden, conscious of the need of an anti-Tweed
legislature, had surmised the Ring's plan as early as Tweed devised
it, and he replied with firmness that everything beside the
legislative ticket was of minor importance to him. Similar
propositions, presented by powerful men from all parts of the State
with the plea that a compromise would "save the party," received the
same answer.[1332] Meanwhile, he laboured to shorten the life of the
Ring. To him Richard Connolly appealed for protection against Tweed's
treachery, and at Tilden's suggestion the comptroller turned over his
office to Andrew H. Green, thus assuring the protection of the records
which subsequently formed the basis of all civil and criminal actions.
Tilden's sagacity in procuring the opinion of Charles O'Conor also
secured the Mayor's acquiescence in Green's possession of the office,
while his patient investigation of the Broadway Bank accounts
discovered the judicial proofs that opened the prison doors.
[Footnote 1331: Tilden's Speech.--New York _Times_, November 3, 1871.]
[Footnote 1332: Tweed's Speech.--_Ibid._]
These were fatal blows to the Ring. The leading Democratic papers of
the interior, notably the Buffalo _Courier_ and Albany _Argus_, came
boldly out demanding the dismissal of the shameless robbers who were
disgracing the name and destroying the future of their party.
Moreover, Tilden, like an avenging angel, with all the skill and
knowledge of his kind, had united into one great reform party the four
Democratic organisations of the city, pledged to oppose Tammany.[1333]
This formidable combination, having complied with every requirement of
the State committee, selected delegates to the State convention. The
hearts of Tweed and his associates may well have sunk within them as
they studied this list. There were able lawyers like William E.
Curtis; powerful merchants like Havermeyer; influential editors like
Ottendorfer; solid business men like Schell; and determined members of
the Committee of Seventy like Roswell D. Hatch, who had been
conspicuous in tracking the thieves. But the name that must have shone
most formidably in the eyes of Tweed was that of Charles O'Conor. It
stood at the head of the list like a threatening cloud in the sky,
ready to bring ruin upon the Ring. The moral support of his great
legal fame, affirming the validity of Andrew H. Green's possession of
the comptroller's office, had intimidated O'Gorman, Tweed's
corporation counsel, and shattered the plot to forcibly eject Tilden's
faithful friend under colour of judicial process. Thus the reform
party seemed to be in the ascendant. With confidence Tilden expressed
the belief that the State convention would repudiate Tammany.[1334]
[Footnote 1333: The German Democratic General Committee, with 30,000
votes; the Democratic Union, with 27,000; the Ledwith party, with
10,000; and the Young Democracy, led by ex-Sheriff O'Brien. For five
years Mozart Hall, under Fernando Wood, had not placed a ticket in the
field.]
[Footnote 1334: Interview, New York _Tribune_, September 23, 1871.]
Although it had become well known that Tilden would not compromise,
Tweed lost none of his former prestige. His control of the State
convention which assembled at Rochester on October 4 (1871) seemed as
firm as on that day in 1870 when he renominated John T. Hoffman. It
was still the fashion to praise all he said and all he did. Before his
arrival the Reformers claimed a majority, but as the up-State
delegates crowded his rooms to bend the obsequious knee he reduced
these claims to a count, finding only forty-two disobedient members.
He was too tactful, however, to appear in the convention hall. His
duty was to give orders, and like a soldier he pitched his
headquarters near the scene of action, boasting that his friends were
everywhere ready for battle.
In his opening speech Tilden touched the Ring frauds with the delicacy
of a surgeon examining an abscess, and the faint response that greeted
his condemnation of corruption satisfied him that the convention did
not appreciate the danger of party blood-poisoning. The truth of this
diagnosis more fully appeared when Tammany, "in the interest of
harmony," waived its right to participate in the proceedings. The
whirlwind of applause which greeted this "unselfish act" had scarcely
subsided when a delegate from Kings county, acting for Tweed, moved
the previous question on a resolution reciting that hereafter, on the
call of the roll, the city of New York be omitted since it presented
no delegation bearing the prestige of regularity. This threw the
Reformers into an animated counsel. They knew of the proposed
withdrawal of Tammany, which seemed to them to smooth the way for the
acceptance of their credentials, but the resolution came with
startling suddenness. It narrowed the question of their admission to a
mere technicality and cut off debate. Tilden, appreciating the
ambuscade into which he had fallen, exhausted every expedient to
modify the parliamentary situation, knowing it to be in the power of
the convention to accept another delegation regardless of its
regularity, as the Republicans had done at Syracuse in the previous
week. But the delegates derisively laughed at his awkward predicament
as they adopted the resolution by a vote of 90 to 4.
By this act the convention clearly indicated its purpose to treat the
fraud issue as a local matter and to keep it out of the State
campaign. It intended to denounce the crime and the criminals, and to
allow no one to become a delegate who had aided or in anywise profited
by the conspiracy, but it would not recognise a delegation which
desired to reorganise the party in the metropolis by humiliating a
great association whose regularity had been accepted for many years,
and which had finally turned the State over to the Democracy. This
view had the support of every office-holder and of every appointee of
the Executive, whose great desire to "save the party" had its
inspiration in a greater desire to save themselves. On the other hand,
the minority argued that allowing Tammany voluntarily to withdraw from
the convention was equivalent to its endorsement, thus giving its
nominations regularity. This would compel the Democratic masses, in
order to participate in the primaries, to vote its ticket. Tilden
sought to avoid this regularity just as Conkling had destroyed the
Greeley committee, and if office-holders had supported him as they did
the Senator he must have won as easily.
The convention's treatment of Horatio Seymour also exhibited its
dislike of the reformer. Seymour came to the convention to be its
president, and upon his entrance to the hall had been hailed, amidst
tumultuous cheers, as "Our future president in 1872." While waiting
the conclusion of the preliminary proceedings he observed Francis
Kernan sitting outside the rail with the rejected Reformers.
Hesitatingly, and in the hope, he said, of arousing no unpleasant
discussion, he moved the admission of the veteran Democrat, whom he
described as grown gray in the party harness, and whose very presence
was a sufficient credential to his title to a seat. Kernan, being in
sympathy with Tilden, was _non persona grata_ to Tammany, and Seymour
had scarcely resumed his seat when the ubiquitous delegate from Kings,
with a flourish of rhetoric, promptly substituted another, who, he
alleged, was the regularly elected delegate as well as "the friend of
that great Democrat, John T. Hoffman." The convention, frantic with
delight at the mention of the Governor's name, saw the Oneidan grow
lividly pale with chagrin at this exhibition of Tammany's manners.
Seymour had lived long in years, in fame, and in the esteem of his
party. He could hardly have had any personal enemies. He possessed no
capricious dislikes, and his kindly heart, in spite of a stateliness
of bearing, won all the people who came near him. To be thus opposed
and bantered in a Democratic assembly was a deep humiliation, and
after expressing the hope that the Tammany man would fight for the
Democratic party as gallantly in future as he had fought against it in
the past, the illustrious statesman withdrew his motion. When, later,
his name was announced as presiding officer of the permanent
organisation, the convention discovered to its dismay that Seymour,
feigning sickness, had returned to Utica.[1335]
[Footnote 1335: "Governor Seymour was given to understand that he could
not be president of the convention unless he would forego his
philippic against the Tammany thieves. This he declined to do."--New
York _Times_ (editorial), October 9, 1871.]
At the end of the day's work it was plain that Tweed had controlled
the convention. The Reformers had been excluded, the committee on
contested seats had refused them a hearing, Seymour was driven home,
and a eulogy of Tammany's political services had been applauded to the
echo. The platform did, indeed, express indignation at the "corruption
and extravagance recently brought to light in the municipal affairs of
the city of New York," and condemned "as unworthy of countenance or
toleration all who are responsible," but the contrast between the acts
of the convention and the words of its platform made its professions
of indignation seem incongruous if not absolutely empty. When one
speaker, with rhetorical effect, pronounced the frauds in New York
"the mere dreams of Republican imagination" delegates sprang to their
feet amidst ringing cheers. In the joy of victory, Tweed, with
good-natured contempt, characterised Seymour, Tilden, and Kernan as
"three troublesome old fools."[1336]
[Footnote 1336: New York _Tribune_, October 6, 1871.]
After adjournment the Reformers made no concealment of their bitter
dissatisfaction. Oswald Ottendorfer, editor of the most powerful
German Democratic organ then in the State, threatened to issue an
address denouncing their betrayal, and William E. Curtis, referring to
the refusal of the credentials' committee, declared that a voice from
the Democratic masses of New York, seeking relief from a gang of
thieves, was stronger, higher, and more sublime than mere questions of
technicality. Under the spur of this threatened revolt, the
convention, when it reconvened the next day, listened to the
Reformers. Their recital was not a panegyric. Ottendorfer said that
the operation of the previous question exposed the party to the
suspicion that Tammany's seats would be open for their return after
the storm of indignation had subsided. O'Conor, in a letter, declared
that absolute freedom from all complicity in the great official crime
and an utter intolerance of all persons suspected of sympathy with it
must be maintained, otherwise its action would inflict a fatal wound
upon the party. Curtis characterised the question as one of life or
death to a great community weighed down by oppression and crime, and
maintained that the convention, if it sought to avoid its duty by the
subterfuge already enacted, would show both sympathy and complicity
with the oligarchy of terror and infamy. These statements did not
please the Ring men, who, with much noise, passed contemptuously out
of the hall.
Riotous interruption, however, did not begin until Tilden announced
that the real point of the controversy was to estop Tammany, after
nominating five senators and twenty-one assemblymen, from declaring
the Democratic masses out of the party because they refused to vote
for its candidates. The whip of party regularity was Tweed's last
reliance, and when Tilden proclaimed absolution to those who
disregarded it, the friends of Tammany drowned his words with loud
calls to order. The excitement threatened to become a riot, but
Tilden, caring as little for disapprobation as the son of Tisander in
the story told by Herodotus, calmly awaited silence. "I was stating,"
he continued, without the slightest tremor of a singularly unmusical
voice, "what I considered the objection to Tammany Hall, aside from
the cloud that now covers that concern, and I am free to avow before
this convention that I shall not vote for any one of Mr. Tweed's
members of the Legislature. And if that is to be regarded the regular
ticket, I will resign my place as chairman of the State committee and
help my people stem the tide of corruption. When I come to do my duty
as an elector, I shall cast my vote for honest men."[1337] Then, to
show his independence if not his contempt of the Tweed-bound body,
Tilden suddenly waived aside the question of the Reformers' admission
and moved to proceed to the nomination of a State ticket.[1338]
[Footnote 1337: New York _Tribune_, October 6, 1871.]
[Footnote 1338: Except the candidate for Secretary of State, the old
Tweed ticket was renominated as follows: Secretary of State, Diedrich
Willers, Seneca; Comptroller, Asher P. Nichols, Erie; Treasurer,
Wheeler H. Bristol, Tioga; Attorney-General, Marshall B. Champlain,
Allegany; Engineer, Van R. Richmond, Wayne; Canal Commissioner, George
W. Chapman; Prison Inspector, David B. McNeil, Cayuga.]
The convention was stunned. It became dizzy when he denied Tammany's
right to be regarded as the regular organisation, but his
proclamation, defiantly and clearly made, that hereafter he should
bolt its nominations even if the convention refused to impeach its
regularity, struck a trenchant blow that silenced rather than excited.
Such courage, displayed at such a critical moment, was sublime. An
organised revolt against an association which had for years been
accepted as regular by State conventions meant the sacrifice of a
majority and an invitation to certain defeat, yet he hurled the words
of defiance into the face of the convention with the energy of the Old
Guard when called upon to surrender at Waterloo. The course taken by
Tilden on this memorable occasion made his own career, and also a new
career for his party. From that hour he became the real leader of the
Democracy. Although more than a twelvemonth must pass before his voice
gave the word of command, his genius as a born master was recognised.
The attitude of the Reformers strengthened the Republicans, whose
distractions must otherwise have compassed their defeat. Murphyism and
Tweedism resembled each other so much that a contest against either
presented a well-defined issue of political morality. The greater
importance of the Tammany frauds, however, obscured all other issues.
To preserve their organisation in the up-State counties the Democrats
made creditable local nominations and professed support of the State
ticket, but in the city the entire voting population, irrespective of
former party alignments, divided into Tammany and anti-Tammany
factions. As the crusade progressed the details of the great crime,
becoming better understood, made Tammany's position intolerable. Every
respectable journal opposed it and every organisation crucified it. In
a double-page cartoon, startling in its conception and splendidly
picturesque, Nast represented the Tammany tiger, with glaring eyes and
distended jaws, tearing the vitals from the crushed and robbed city,
while Tweed and his associates sat enthroned.[1339] "Let's stop those
damned pictures," proposed Tweed when he saw it. "I don't care so much
what the papers write about me--my constituents can't read; but they
can see pictures."[1340]
[Footnote 1339: _Harper's Weekly_, November 4, 1871.]
[Footnote 1340: Paine, _Life of Nast_, p. 179.]
On October 26 all doubt as to the result of the election was
dissipated. Until then belief in Tweed's direct profit in the Ring's
overcharges was based upon presumption. No intelligent man having an
accurate knowledge of the facts could doubt his guilt, since every
circumstance plainly pointed to it, but judicial proof did not exist
until furnished by the investigation of the Broadway Bank, which
Tilden personally conducted. His analysis of this information
disclosed the fact that two-thirds of the money paid under the
sanction of the Board of Audit had passed into the possession of
public officials and their accomplices, some of it being actually
traced into Tweed's pocket, and upon this evidence, verified by
Tilden's affidavit, the Attorney-General based an action on which a
warrant issued for Tweed's arrest. This announcement flashed over the
State eleven days before the election. It was a powerful campaign
document. People had not realised what an avenging hand pursued
Tammany, but they now understood that Tweed was a common thief, and
that Tilden, by reducing strong suspicion to a mathematical certainty,
had closed the mouths of eulogists and apologists.
The result of the election carried dismay and confusion to Tammany.
Its register, its judges, its aldermen, a majority of its assistant
aldermen, fourteen of its twenty-one assemblymen, and four of its five
senators were defeated, while Tweed's majority fell from 22,000 in
1869 to 10,000. As expected the Republicans reaped the benefit of the
anti-Tammany vote, carrying the State by 18,000 majority and the
Legislature by 79 on joint ballot.[1341] To obliterate Tweedism, Tilden
had overthrown his party, but he had not fallen, Samson-like, under the
ruin.
[Footnote 1341: Scribner, 387,107; Willers, 368,204. Legislature:
Senate, 24 Republicans, 8 Democrats. Assembly, 97 Republicans, 31
Democrats.--New York _Tribune_, November 27, 1871.
Compared with the returns for 1870, the Democratic vote, outside of
New York and the six counties in its immediate vicinity, fell off
24,167, while the Republican vote fell off 9,235. In New York and
adjoining counties the Republican vote increased 30,338.--_Ibid._
In New York City the majority for the Democratic candidate for
secretary of state was 29,189, while the majority for the Republican
or Union Reform candidate for register was 28,117.--_Ibid._]