WHIG FAILURE RESTORES TAMMANY TO POWER
1838-1840
The course of the Whig city administration served only to strengthen
Tammany and was responsible for the conviction, which later so often
prevailed, that if Tammany Hall was bad the Whigs were no better, and
were perhaps worse. At this time of general distress complaints were
numerous that the sum of $1,300,000 was exacted from the rentpayers in
a single year. In the early part of 1838 one-third of all the persons
in New York City who subsisted by manual labor was substantially or
wholly without employment.[1] Not less than 10,000 persons were in
utter poverty and had no other means of surviving the Winter than those
afforded by the charity of neighbors. The Almshouse and all charitable
institutions were full to overflowing; the usual agencies of charity
were exhausted or insufficient, and 10,000 sufferers were still uncared
for. The great panic of 1837 had cut down the city’s trade one-half.
Notwithstanding the fall of prices, the rents for tenements in New
York were greater than were paid in any other city or village upon
the globe.[2] So exorbitant were the demands of the landlords that
the tenants found it impossible to meet them. The landowners were the
backbone of the Whig party; it was not unnatural, therefore, that
their rapacity developed among the people at large a profound distrust
of Whig men and principles.
The Whig officials, so far as can be discovered, took no adequate steps
to relieve the widespread suffering. The Tammany ward committees, on
the other hand, were active in relief work. This was another of the
secrets of Tammany Hall’s usual success in holding the body of voters.
The Whigs made fine speeches over champagne banquets, but kept at a
distance from the poor, among whom the Wigwam workers mingled, and
distributed clothing, fuel and food and often money. The leaders set
the example. One of these was John M. Bloodgood,[3] who frequently went
among the charitable citizens, collecting, in a large basket, cakes,
pies, meat and other eatables, and distributing them among the needy.
In the Spring of 1838 Tammany nominated Isaac L. Varian for Mayor,
and the Whigs renominated Aaron Clark. The Whigs used the panic as an
example of the result of Democratic rule. Controlling the city, they
employed all its machinery to win. It was reasonably certain that they
did not stop at fraud. In some wards canvassing was delayed until
other wards were heard from. In still other wards the Whigs refused
to administer the oath to naturalized citizens. With all this they
obtained a plurality of only 519 out of 39,341 votes. Had it not been
for dissensions in the tumultuous Sixth Ward, Tammany would have won.
In the Fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and
indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were handed
to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two hundred roughs
were brought from Philadelphia, in different divisions, each man
receiving $22. Gen. Robert Swartwout, now a Whig, at the instance
of such men as Moses H. Grinnell, Robert C. Wetmore and Noah Cook,
former Wigwam lights, who left the Hall because the “destructionist”
Anti-Monopolists captured it, arranged for the trip of these fraudulent
voters. After having voted in as many wards as possible, each was to
receive the additional compensation of $5. They were also to pass
around spurious tickets purporting to be Democratic. The aggregate
Whig vote, it was approximated, was swelled through the operations of
this band by at least five to six hundred.[4] One repeater, Charles
Swint, voted in sixteen wards. Such inmates of the House of Detention
as could be persuaded or bullied into voting the Whig ticket were set
at large. Merritt, a police officer, was seen boldly leading a crowd
of them to the polls. Ex-convicts distributed Whig tickets and busily
electioneered. The cabins of all the vessels along the wharves were
ransacked, and every man, whether or not a citizen or resident of New
York, who could be wheedled into voting a Whig ballot, was rushed to
the polls and his vote was smuggled in. The Whigs were successful,
their candidate for Governor, William H. Seward, receiving 20,179
votes, to 19,377 for William L. Marcy.
Departing from its custom of seeking local victory on national issues,
Tammany, in April, 1839, issued an address expatiating on the increase
of the city expenses from a little over $1,000,000 in 1830 to above
$5,000,000 in 1838. Deducting about $1,500,000 for the Croton works,
there would still remain the enormous increase of $2,500,000. The
city population had not trebled in that time, nor had there been any
extraordinary cause for expenditure. Where had all this money gone?
Tammany further pointed out that, unlike the Whigs, it had never
stooped so low as to discharge the humble laborers in the public
service, when it (Tammany) held the Common Council. Nor had it ever
been so abject as to provide them with colored tickets, as the Whigs
had done, so that the laborers might be detected if they voted contrary
to their masters. Tammany further charged that the Whigs in the
previous election had taken the Almshouse paupers, with embossed satin
voting tickets in their hands, to the polls, and were planning to do it
again.
Tammany made good use of this charge. But the practise was not
exclusively a Whig industry. In those years both Democrats and Whigs,
according to which held power, forced Almshouse paupers to vote. For
a fortnight before the election the paupers were put in training. On
the morning of election they were disguised with new clothing, so that
the public might not see their gray uniforms. They were given tickets
to vote “and tickets for grog, silver coin and also good advice as to
their conduct at the polls.” Then they were carried to the polls in
stages, with an officer on each step to see that none escaped. Many
would return to the Almshouse drunk and with torn clothing, or after
having exchanged their new garments for liquor.[5] There were usually
about 300 paupers. In the Fall and Winter of 1838 a quarter of the
population was relieved at the Almshouse.
Clark and Varian were both renominated for Mayor in the Spring of 1839.
Preparations for fraud on a large scale were made by both parties. The
newspapers supporting Varian admitted that Tammany thought proper to
follow the Whigs’ example, and to counteract its effects, by colonizing
the doubtful wards with Democratic voters. On both sides repeating was
general. An Albany police officer named Coulson brought twenty-three
persons, one of whom was only seventeen years old, to New York City,
where they voted the Whig ticket in the different wards. For this they
received $5 in advance, and $1 a day.
Of the 41,113 votes Varian[6] received 21,072, and Clark 20,005. The
Wigwam secured a majority of 12 in the Common Council.
Fearing that Tammany in power would use the administration machinery
in elections even more than had the Whigs, the latter now made a great
outcry for a registry law,[7] proclaiming it the only fraud preventive.
The sudden conversion of the Whig leaders to civic purity called forth
derision. But the people at large, the non-politicians, ashamed of such
barefaced frauds in their city, took up the agitation. The Registry
bill was introduced in the Legislature in May, 1839. It provided for
the registration of voters in New York City, and made fraudulent voting
a felony, with severe penalties.
After the frauds of 1834 the Wigwam leaders had given out that they
would take serious steps to obtain from the Legislature a law causing
voters to be registered, but had done nothing. They now opened a
campaign against the Whig bill. In the Spring of 1840 the ward
committees declared against it on the pretext that it interfered with
constitutional rights; that it was an insidious attempt to take from
the poor man either his right of suffrage or to make the exercise of
that right so inconvenient as practically to debar him from voting.
The Common Council, on March 16, 1840, denounced the proposed law as
inquisitorial, tyrannical and disfranchising in its effect, as well
as unjust, because they (the Aldermen) “know of no sin which she (New
York City) has committed to make her worthy of the signal reproach now
sought to be cast upon her.”[8] A few days later the Common Council
on joint ballot delivered itself of a solemn protest against the
constitutionality of the Registry bill, and on the night of March 24
an assemblage in the Wigwam did likewise. It was in this year that the
full account of the Whig frauds of 1838 was made public. Commenting
upon this, the Tammany Nominating Committee, with characteristic
naïveté, said in its address: “It is with shame that we record these
dark transactions and proclaim them to the people. We would, if we
could, blot out their existence, for it brings disgrace on our whole
country and will make the enemies of civil freedom laugh with joy.”
The Registry bill became a law, but Tammany continued to protest
against it. When, in 1841, the Legislature increased the penalties
for its violation, Acting Mayor Elijah F. Purdy commented upon it
severely.[9]
The able, sincere and high-minded William Leggett, the guiding spirit
of the Equal Rights party, died on May 29, 1839, not quite forty years
old. The Tammany Young Men’s General Committee eulogized his virtues
and talents, proclaimed him amongst the purest of politicians and
announced the purpose of raising a monument to his memory. Of this
committee, curious to relate, the chairman was Fernando Wood and the
secretary Richard B. Connolly--two men who became known for anything
but devotion to the virtues they here exalted.
Leggett, some years before this, had become a radical Abolitionist. By
this time the anti-slavery movement in the city and State had grown to
considerable proportions, though as yet it had exercised but little
influence on politics. Several riots had taken place in the streets of
the city, two rather serious ones happening on July 9 and 10, 1834,
and June 21, 1835, and Lewis Tappan, an anti-slavery propagandist, had
been mobbed. The local movement gradually acquired new adherents, and
constantly increased its propaganda. At this period, however, it was
more in the nature of a growing moral force.
During this period another great series of disclosures regarding
Tammany chieftains was made public. Samuel Swartwout, whom Jackson
had made Collector of the Port shortly after coming into office in
1829, fled from the city late in 1838. He had long been a power in the
organization. His name had been mentioned unpleasantly when he, with
M. M. Noah and Henry Ogden,[10] contrived by means of their official
positions to get $10,000 reward for the recovery of the jewels stolen
from the Prince of Orange, though the recovery had been made by others.
And in 1833 he had threatened, as Collector of the Port, to remove the
Custom House uptown because the merchants would not lend him more than
$7,000 on the strength of some worthless “Jersey meadows.” Three years
later he was connected with the unsavory Harlem Railroad stock corner
and the manipulation of the funds of the Commercial Bank. Early in 1838
he joined forces with the notorious politicians of the Seventh Ward
Bank for the defeat of William Leggett for the Democratic nomination
for Congress, securing the nomination of Isaac L. Varian in his
stead. A few months later the city was astounded to learn that since
1830 he had been systematically robbing the Government, through the
manipulation of Custom House receipts, and that the total of his thefts
amounted to nearly $1,250,000.[11] Fleeing to Europe, he wandered
aimlessly about[12] for many years.[13] The community was so impressed
with the size of this defalcation that a verb, “to Swartwout,” was
coined, remaining in general use for many years thereafter. A defaulter
was generally spoken of as having “Swartwouted.”
A lesser figure in Tammany circles, though a person of considerable
consequence, followed Swartwout in flight. This was William M. Price,
at the time District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It
was discovered that he had defaulted to the Government in the sum of
$75,000. Price, like so many other Tammany politicians of his time, had
been mixed up with Seventh Ward Bank politics. During the latter part
of his career he had been known as the personal representative in the
city of President Van Buren.
During the following Spring, William Paxen Hallett, a member of the
“Big Four” against whom the Equal Rights party had so energetically
protested in 1836, was made the defendant in a civil suit involving
grave fraud. As referee in a suit for damages of one John A. Manning
against one Charles J. Morris, Hallett had wrongfully reported that
only trifling judgments remained outstanding against Morris, and the
court had accordingly given the latter a year’s time in which to make
good a judgment for $3,496 rendered in favor of Manning. It appeared,
however, in the proceedings before the Superior Court, May 20, 1839,
that Hallett knew, or should have known, of a previous judgment
against the defendant for $15,014.44 in favor of one Nathan Davis, who
during the year of grace seized upon all of Morris’s property, thus
defrauding Manning. The testimony was so convincing that Hallett was
forced to compromise the suit by paying the damages asked for. Through
the influence of the organization, however, he escaped prosecution.
The “ring” of Police Justices had for several years been a crying
scandal. Whig and Tammany magistrates were equally involved. Public
clamor fixed upon John M. Bloodgood, despite his private charities,
as the first victim. The Assistant Aldermen impeached him in January,
1839,[14] and submitted the case to the Court of Common Pleas, by
whom he was tried.[15] Testimony was brought out tending to show that
the Police Justices, by means of an understanding with policemen and
jailers, extorted money from prisoners and shielded counterfeiters,
thieves, street walkers and other malefactors from arrest or
conviction. The charges were dismissed.[16] Stronger testimony of the
same kind was brought out in May, 1840, on the trial of Police Justice
Henry W. Merritt, and other testimony involved in the same way Special
Justice Oliver M. Lowndes. The case, however, was dismissed.[17]
A strong public agitation had been waged for the reorganization of the
criminal courts. The _Weekly Herald_ of February 1, 1840, had made the
statement that the farce of conducting the correctional machinery of
the city involved a yearly sum of $1,360,564--this sum being the total
of judges’, policemen’s and court attendants’ salaries (about $50,000),
added to the blackmail exacted from offenders, and various “pickings
and stealings.” The statement was an extravagant one; $700,000 would
have been nearer the mark. But whatever the sum, the acquittal of the
Police Justices by their fellows in judicial evil-doing indicated that
the carnival was to continue. The Tammany leaders had been “out” for
the two years 1837-38, and were now vigorously making hay while the sun
shone, while such of their Whig contemporaries as still held office
were vying with the chiefs in systematic and organized plundering.
The Manhattan Bank scandals were made public in February, 1840. This
was the bank whose charter Aaron Burr had so ingeniously secured in
1799. It had been a Tammany institution from the beginning, and Tammany
politicians had ruled its policies. It was now generally regarded as
the leading financial institution in the city, rivaled only by the Bank
of America. It carried $600,000 of Government funds on deposit, and, of
course, a large city and State fund.
It was now shown that for years it had loaned large sums to Tammany
leaders and to family connections of its directors and officials, and
that it had spent other large sums for political purposes. The total
of its worthless loans and political expenditures reached the enormous
sum of $1,344,266.99. Cashier Campbell P. White, tried on the technical
charge of stealing several of the bank’s books, was freed through the
disagreement of the jury,[18] but on a second trial, charged with
assaulting Jonathan Thompson, a Tammany director of the bank who had
criticized his management, he was fined $250 and imprisoned for fifteen
days.[19] In the midst of the excitement Colin G. Newcomb, the teller,
disappeared with $50,000. That the bank weathered the storm well-nigh
reaches the dimensions of a miracle. Paulding, twice a Tammany Mayor;
Bowne, another Tammany ex-Mayor; and Robert H. Morris, at that time
Recorder, appeared as the defendant’s witnesses in the first trial.
White was an influential Wigwam chief, and in 1832 had been elected to
Congress on the Tammany ticket.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The _New Yorker_, January 20, 1838.
[2] _Ibid._, February 17, 1838. James Parton, in his biography of
Horace Greeley, attributes the latter’s conversion and life-long
devotion to Socialist principles in large part to the frightful
sufferings which he witnessed in New York City, in the Winter of 1838.
[3] Bloodgood was the son of Abraham Bloodgood, one of the earliest
Tammany politicians. The son likewise achieved considerable influence
in the organization. He was for a long time a Police Justice. He will
be met with again toward the end of this chapter.
[4] Confession of Hart Marks, one of the leaders, before Justice
Lowndes in the lower Police Court, November 6, 1838, and of Jonathan D.
Stevenson and others in the Recorder’s Court, October 20, 1840.
[5] _Documents of the Board of Aldermen_, 1844-45, XI, No. 51.
[6] Varian was a rugged, popular, but not over-educated man. Sir
Charles Lyell, the noted British geologist, once asked him questions
as to the formation of Manhattan Island. Varian said he had dug a well
on his farm at Murray Hill and after going through “a stratagem of
sand and a stratagem of clay they struck a stratagem of red rock.” At
another time, while reading a New York newspaper at the Stanwix House
in Albany, Varian remarked to Walter Bowne, then Mayor, that they had a
new Street Inspector in New York City. “Indeed! who is he?” “A perfect
stranger,” replied Varian; and he read from the paper: “‘Last evening
the wind suddenly changed to the north, and this morning, thanks to Old
Boreas, our streets are in a passable condition.’ Old Boreas,” said
Varian, reflectively, “I thought I knew every Democrat in New York, but
I never heard of him.”
[7] In 1834 the Board of Assistant Aldermen had passed a resolution in
favor of the registry of voters, and the Native American Association,
early in 1838, had petitioned the Legislature similarly. The Whigs
seized hold of the movement as political capital for themselves.
[8] _Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XVIII, pp. 404-5.
[9] _Ibid._, Vol. XX, pp. 229-30.
[10] Ogden was a Tammany politician of considerable importance. At the
time of Swartwout’s flight he was the Cashier of the Custom House, a
post which he had held for several years. He was also a director of the
Seventh Ward Bank.
[11] The exact amount was $1,222,705.69. _House Executive Document, No.
13, Twenty-fifth Congress, Third Session_; also _House Report, No. 313_.
[12] A pathetic tale is told of an American meeting Swartwout in
Algiers, several years after this episode, and of the defaulter crying
like a child over his enforced exile from the land of his birth.
[13] Jesse Hoyt, another Sachem, succeeded Swartwout as Collector of
the Port. Hoyt was charged, about this time, with having defaulted in
the sum of $30,000 in dealings with certain Wall street brokers. The
Superior Court Judgment Roll for 1839-40 records two judgments against
him, secured by Effingham H. Warner, one for $10,000 and one for
$5,747.72. Both judgments were satisfied within a few years after his
assumption of the Collectorship of the Port.
[14] See “Articles of Impeachment,” _Journal and Documents of the Board
of Assistant Aldermen_, 1839, Vol. XIII, No. 12 and No. 25.
[15] _Court Minutes, New York Common Pleas_, record of February 19 and
20, 1839. (These records are neither paged nor indexed.) The Common
Pleas of this time was popularly known as the Mayor’s Court; and the
Judges were the Mayor, Recorder and certain Aldermen. The later Court
of Common Pleas was not established until 1856.
[16] A curious reason for the dismissal was given in the decision of
the Judges. It was that the charges had not been individually sworn to.
It appeared, therefore, that the Board of Assistant Aldermen, acting in
its official capacity in formulating impeachment proceedings, was not a
recognizable party before the Court of Common Pleas.
[17] _Journal and Documents of the Board of Assistant Aldermen_,
1839-40, Vol. XV, No. 71. The reason for dismissing these charges was
identical with that given in the case of Bloodgood. A statement of the
case is given in the report of District Attorney James R. Whiting to
the Board of Aldermen during this year. See _Proceedings of the Board
of Aldermen_, 1840, Vol. XIX, pp. 135-37. The Common Pleas volume for
1840 is missing from its place in the County Court Building.
[18] _Session Minutes_, 1840.
[19] _Ibid._