TAMMANY IN ABSOLUTE CONTROL.
1815-1817
By 1815 Tammany Hall obtained control of the State, and in 1816
completely regained that of the city. The Common Council and its
dependent offices since 1809 had been more or less under Federalist
rule, and from the beginning of the century the city had had a
succession of Clintonite office-holders in those posts controlled by
the Council of Appointment.
At the close of the War of 1812 the population of the city approached
100,000, and there were 13,941 voters in all. The total expenses of
the municipality reached a little over a million dollars. The city had
but one public school, which was maintained by public subscription.
Water was supplied chiefly by the Manhattan Company, by means of bored
wooden logs laid underground from the reservoir in Chambers street. No
fire department was dreamed of, and every blaze had the city at its
mercy. The streets were uncleaned; only two or three thoroughfares were
fit for the passage of carriages, though until 1834 the law required
the inhabitants to clean the streets in front of their houses. Many
of those elaborate departments which we now associate with political
control were then either in an embryo state or not thought of.
The Aldermen were not overburdened with public anxieties. No salary
was attached to the office, yet none the less, it was sought
industriously. In early days it was regarded as a post of honor and
filled as such, but with the beginning of the century it was made a
means of profit. The professional politician of the type of to-day was
rare. The Aldermen had business, as a rule, upon which they depended
and to which they attended in the day, holding sessions of the board
sporadically at night. The only exception to this routine was when
the Alderman performed some judicial office. Under the law, as soon
as an Alderman entered office he became a judge of some of the most
important courts, being obliged to preside with the Mayor at the
trial of criminals. This system entailed upon the Aldermen the trial
of offenses against laws many of which they themselves made, and it
had an increasingly pernicious influence upon politics. Otherwise the
sole legal perquisites and compensation of the Aldermen consisted in
their power and custom of making appropriations, including those for
elaborate public dinners for themselves. It was commonly known that
they awarded contracts for city necessaries either to themselves or to
their relatives.
The backward state of the city, its filthy and neglected condition and
the chaotic state of public improvements and expenditures, excited
little public discussion. The Common Councils were composed of men of
inferior mind. It is told of one of them that hearing that the King of
France had taken umbrage he ran home post haste to get his atlas and
find out the location of that particular spot. In the exclusive charge
of such a body New York City would have struggled along but slowly had
it not been for the courage and genius of the man who at one stroke
started it on a dazzling career of prosperity. This was De Witt Clinton.
No sooner did a Republican Council of Appointment step into office,
early in 1815, than Tammany Hall pressed for the removal of Clinton
as Mayor and announced that John Ferguson, the Grand Sachem of the
Society, would have to be appointed in his place.[1] The Council, at
the head of which was Gov. Tompkins, wavered and delayed, Tompkins
not caring to offend the friends of Clinton by the latter’s summary
removal. At this the entire Tammany representation, which had gone
to Albany for the purpose, grew furious and threatened that not only
would they nominate no ticket the next Spring, but would see that none
of their friends should accept office under the Council, did it fail
to remove Clinton. This action implied the turning out of the Council
of Appointment at the next election. Yielding to these menaces, the
Council removed Clinton. Then by a compromise, Ferguson was made Mayor
until the National Government should appoint him Naval Officer when
Jacob Radcliff (Mayor 1810-1811) was to succeed him--an arrangement
which was carried out.[2]
The Wigwam was overjoyed at having struck down Clinton, and now
expected many years of supremacy. From youth Clinton’s sole occupation
had been politics. He had spent his yearly salaries and was deeply
in debt. His political aspirations seemed doomed. Stripped, as he
appeared, of a party or even a fraction of one, the Sachems felt sure
of his retirement to private life forever. In this belief they were as
much animated by personal as by political enmity. Clinton had sneered
at or ridiculed nearly all of them, and he spoke of them habitually in
withering terms.
Besides, to enlarge their power in the city they needed the Mayor’s
office. The Mayor had the right to appoint a Deputy Mayor from
among the Aldermen, the Deputy Mayor acting with full power in his
absence. The Mayor could convene the Common Council, and he appointed
and licensed marshals, porters, carriers, cartmen, carmen, cryers,
scullers and scavengers, and removed them at pleasure. He licensed
tavern-keepers and all who sold excisable liquors by retail. The Mayor,
the Deputy Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen were ex-officio Justices of
the Peace, and were empowered to hold Courts of General Sessions. The
Mayor, Recorder and Aldermen were also Justices of Oyer and Terminer;
and the Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Recorder could preside over the Court
of Common Pleas with or without the Aldermen. The gathering of all this
power into its own control gave further strength to Tammany Hall.
But the expressions of regret at Clinton’s removal were so spontaneous
and sincere that Tammany feigned participation in them and took the
utmost pains to represent the removal as only a political exigency. The
Common Council (which was now Federalist) passed, on March 21, 1815, a
vote of thanks to Clinton for his able administration.[3] Curiously,
the very Wigwam men who had made it their business to undertake the
tedious travel over bad roads to Albany to effect his removal (Aldermen
Smith, George Buckmaster, Mann and Burtis) voted loudest in favor of
the resolution.
Out of office, Clinton found time to agitate for the building of a
navigable canal between the great western lakes and the tide waters
of the Hudson. The idea of this enterprise was not original with him.
It had been suggested over thirty years before, but it was he who
carried it forward to success. The bigotry and animus with which it
was assailed were amazing. Tammany Hall frequently passed resolutions
denouncing the project as impracticable and chimerical, declaring that
the canal would make a ditch fit to bury its author in. At Albany the
Tammany representatives greeted the project with a burst of mockery,
and placed obstacle after obstacle in its path.
In the intervals of warring upon Clinton, Tammany was adroitly seizing
every post of vantage in the city. The Burr men ruled its councils and
directed the policy and nominations of the Republican, or, as it was
getting to be more generally known, the Democratic-Republican party.
Three men, in particular, were foremost as leaders--George Buckmaster,
a boat builder; Roger Strong and Benjamin Prince, a druggist and
physician. Teunis Wortman, one of the energetic leaders in 1807-10,
was now not quite so conspicuous. What the Wigwam lacked to make
its rule in the city complete was a majority in the Common Council.
The committees of the Council not only had the exclusive power of
expenditures, but they invariably refused an acceptable accounting.[4]
The Federalists, though vanishing as a party owing to their attitude
in the recent war, still managed, through local dissensions among the
Republicans, to retain control of the Common Council. The Federalists,
therefore, held the key to the purse. It had always been customary for
the Mayor to appoint the Common Council committees from the party which
happened to be dominant.
Established forms meant nothing to Mayor Radcliff and to Buckmaster[5]
and other Tammany Aldermen, who late in December, 1815, decided to turn
out the Federalist chairmen of committees and put Tammany men in their
places. Radcliff imprudently printed a handbill of officers he intended
appointing, copies of which he sent to his partizans. A copy fell into
a Federalist’s hands. At the next meeting, before the Mayor could get a
chance to act, the Federalist majority altered the rules so as to vest
in future the appointment of all committees in a majority of the board.
The Sachems were so enraged at Radcliff’s bungling that they declared
they would have him removed from office. About a year afterward they
carried out their threat.
In 1816 Tammany elected not only its Congress and Assembly ticket, but
a Common Council, by over 1000 majority out of 9000 votes. This victory
was the result of the wily policy of further disrupting the Federalist
party by nominating its most popular men. Walter Bowne, a late
Federalist, an enemy of Clinton and a man of standing in the community,
was one of those nominated by Tammany Hall for State Senator, and the
support of the wealthy was solicited by the selection of men of their
own class, such as Col. Rutgers, said to be the richest man in the
State.
Most of Tammany’s early members, certainly the leaders, were now rich
and had stepped into the upper middle class; but their wealth could
not quite secure them admittance to that stiff aristocracy above them,
which demanded something more of a passport than the possession of
money. Another body of members were the small tradesmen and the like,
to whom denunciations of the aristocracy were extremely palatable. A
third class, that of the mechanics and laborers, believed that Tammany
Hall exclusively represented them in its onslaughts on the aristocracy.
From the demands of these various interests arose the singular sight
of Tammany Hall winning the support of the rich by systematically
catering to them; of the middle class, which it reflected, and of the
poor, in whose interests it claimed to work. The spirit of the Tammany
Society was well illustrated in its odd address on public affairs in
1817, wherein it lamented the spread of the foreign game of billiards
among the aristocratic youth and the prevalence of vice among the
lower classes. Again, in May, 1817, the Tammany majority of the Common
Council, under pressure from the religious element, passed an ordinance
fining every person $5 who should hunt, shoot, fish, spar or play on
Sunday--a law which cut off from the poor their favorite pastimes.
Here, too, another of the secrets by which the organization was enabled
to thrive, should be mentioned. This was the “regularity” of its
nominations. Teunis Wortman, a few years before, had disclosed the
real substance of the principle of “regularity” when he wrote: “The
nominating power is an omnipotent one. Though it approaches us in the
humble attitude of the _recommendation_, its influence is irresistible.
Every year’s experience demonstrates that its recommendations are
commands. That instead of presenting a choice it deprives us of all
option.”[6] The plain meaning was that, regardless of the candidate’s
character, the mass of the party would vote for him once he happened
to be put forth on the “regular” ticket. Fully alive to the value of
this particular power, the Tammany Hall General Committee, successively
and unfailingly, would invite in its calls for all meetings “those
friendly to regular nominations.” Its answer to charges of dictatorship
was plain and direct. Discipline was necessary, its leaders said, to
prevent aristocrats from disrupting their party by inciting a variety
of nominations.
It was through this fertile agency that “bossism” became an easy
possibility. With the voters in such a receptive state of mind it
was not difficult to dictate nominations. The general committee was
composed of thirty members; its meetings were secret and attended
seldom by more than fourteen members. So, substantially, fourteen
men were acting for over five thousand Republican voters, and eight
members of the fourteen composed a majority. Yet the system had all the
pretense of being pure democracy; the wards were called upon at regular
intervals to elect delegates; the latter chose candidates or made party
rules; and the “great popular meeting” accepted or rejected nominees;
it all seemed to spring directly from the people.
This exquisitely working machine was in full order when the
organization secured a firm hold upon the city in 1816. The newly
elected Common Council removed every Federalist possible and put a
stanch Tammany man in his place. The Federalist Captains of Police
and the heads and subordinates of many departments whose appointments
and removal were vested in the Common Council were all ejected. This
frequent practice of changes in the police force, solely because of
political considerations, had a demoralizing effect upon the welfare of
the city.
Both parties were as responsible for this state of affairs as they were
for the increase in the city’s debt. To provide revenue the Aldermen
repeatedly caused to be sold ground owned by the municipality in the
heart of the city. This was one of their clumsy or fraudulent methods
of concealing the squandering of city funds, on what no one knew. They
were not ignorant that with the growth of the city the value of the
land would increase vastly. It was perhaps for this very reason they
sold it; for it was generally themselves or the Tammany leaders who
were the buyers. One sale was of land fronting Bowling Green, among the
purchasers being John Swartwout, Jacob Barker and John Sharpe. A hint
as to the fraudulent ways in which the Tammany leaders became rich is
furnished by a report made to the Common Council respecting land in
Hamilton Square, bought from the city by Jacob Barker, John S. Hunn and
others. The report stated that repeated applications for the payment
of principal and interest had been made without effect.[7]
By 1817 the Federalists in New York City were crushed, quite beyond
hope of resurrection as a winning party. The only remaining fear was
Clinton, whose political death the organization celebrated prematurely.
Public opinion was one factor Tammany had not conquered.
This inclined more and more daily to the support of Clinton.
Notwithstanding all the opposition which narrow-mindedness and hatred
could invent, Clinton’s grand project of the Erie Canal became
popular--distinctively so throughout the State, then so greatly
agricultural. On April 15, 1817, the bill pledging the State to the
building of the canal became a law, the Tammany delegation and all
their friends voting against it.
Gov. Tompkins becoming Vice-President, a special election to fill the
gubernatorial vacancy became necessary. A new and powerful junction
of Clinton’s old friends and the disunited Federalists joined in
nominating him to succeed Tompkins. This was bitter news to Tammany,
which made heroic efforts to defeat him, nominating as its candidate
Peter B. Porter, and sending tickets with his name into every county in
the State.
Inopportunely for the Wigwam, the resentment of the Irish broke out
against it at this time. Tammany’s long-continued refusal to give
the Irish proper representation among its nominations, either in the
society or for public office, irritated them greatly. On February 7,
a writer in a newspaper over the signature “Connal,” averred in an
open letter to Matthew L. Davis that on the evening of February 3,
the Tammany Society had considered a resolution for the adoption of
a new constitution, the object of which was to exclude foreigners
entirely from holding office in the society. This may not have been
strictly true, but the anti-foreign feeling in the organization was
unquestionably strong. The Irish had sought, some time before, to have
the organization nominate for Congress Thomas Addis Emmett, an Irish
orator and patriot and an ardent friend of Clinton. As Tammany Hall
since 1802 had not only invariably excommunicated all Clintonites,
but had broken up such Clinton meetings as were held, this demand was
refused without discussion. The Irish grew to regard Tammany Hall as
the home of bigotry; the Wigwam, in turn, was resolved not to alienate
the prejudiced native support by recognizing foreigners; furthermore,
the Irish were held to be Clintonites trying to get into Tammany Hall
and control it.
The long-smouldering enmity burst out on the night of April 24, 1817,
when the general committee was in session. Two hundred Irishmen,
assembled at Dooley’s Long Room, marched in rank to the Wigwam and
broke into the meeting room. The intention of their leaders was
to impress upon the committee the wisdom of nominating Emmett for
Congress, as well as other Irish Catholics on the Tammany ticket in
future, but the more fiery spirits at once started a fight. Eyes were
blackened, noses and heads battered freely. The invaders broke the
furniture, using it for weapons and shattering it maliciously; tore
down the fixtures and shivered the windows. Reinforcements arriving,
the intruders were driven out, but not before nearly all present had
been bruised and beaten.[8]
Clinton received an overwhelming majority for Governor, Porter
obtaining a ridiculously small vote in both New York City and the rest
of the State.[9] Thus in the feud between Tammany Hall and DeWitt
Clinton, the latter, lacking a political machine and basing his contest
solely on a political idea--that of internal improvements--emerged
triumphant.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Hammond, Vol. I, p. 399.
[2] Valentine in his _Manual of the Common Council of New York_, for
1842-44, p. 163, states that Ferguson held on to both offices until
President Monroe required him to say which office he preferred.
Ferguson soon after resigned the Mayoralty. He held the other post
until his death in 1832.
[3] _MS. Minutes of the Common Council_, Vol. 29, p. 150.
[4] As late as July 28, 1829, the Common Council refused such an
accounting. Charles King, a prominent citizen, memorialized the
Council, through Alderman Lozier, to furnish an itemized statement of
the expenditure of over half a million dollars for the previous fiscal
year. By a vote of 15 to 6 the Council refused to grant the request. A
public agitation on the question following, the board later rescinded
its action, and supplied the statement.
[5] Buckmaster had a record. On October 9, 1815, the Common Council
passed a secret resolution to sell $440,000 of United States bonds
it held at 97--the stock being then under par. About $30,000 worth
was disposed of at that figure, when the officials found that not a
dollar’s worth more could be sold. Investigation followed. Gould Hoyt
proved that Buckmaster had disclosed the secret to certain Wall street
men, who, taking advantage of the city’s plight, forced the sale of the
stock at 95. Buckmaster was chairman of the general committee in 1815
and at other times, and chairman of the nominating committee in 1820.
[6] _New York Public Advertiser_, April 13, 1809. This journal was
secretly supported for a time by the funds of the Tammany Society.
[7] _MS. Minutes of the Common Council_, Vol. 18, p. 359.
[8] _The National Advocate_, May 10, asserted that the Irish entered
Tammany Hall, shouting “Down with the Natives!” but the assertion was
denied.
[9] Clinton’s vote was nearly 44,000; Porter’s not quite 1,400.