FERNANDO WOOD’S FIRST ADMINISTRATION
1854-1856
Though the City Reform party brought about some beneficial changes in
the system of city government, its Common Council did not meet public
expectations. The _Tribune_, the chief supporter of the party, admitted
this (May 3, 1854), declaring that much feeling was manifested over the
failure of the reformers to realize the public hopes, and attributing
the failure “to the power of those representing the great political
parties in the two boards to league together and sell out to each other
the interests of the city as partizan or personal considerations might
dictate.”
Accordingly, preparations were made to overthrow the new party.
Fernando Wood now secured the “Softshell” nomination for Mayor, by
packing the convention with his henchmen. The “Hardshells” held a
separate convention, which ended in a row, a part nominating Wood, and
the rest Augustus Schell.
Wood successfully intrigued to cause the Whigs to separate from the
City Reformers; and to further divide the opposition, Tammany nominated
sham reformers for the lesser city and State offices. The Whigs
nominated for Mayor, John J. Herrick; the City Reformers, Wilson G.
Hunt, and the Native Americans, or “Know-Nothings,” springing to life
again, put forward James W. Barker. Schell, Wood’s Tammany opponent,
withdrew in favor of Hunt.
The disreputable classes, believing that his success meant increased
prosperity to themselves, energetically supported Wood, and the
liquor-dealers formally commended him. In the city at this time were
about 10,000 shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits
and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning
primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating and
breaking up meetings. Most of these were Wood’s active allies.
He needed them all on election day. With every resource strained to
the utmost, he won by a close margin. He was credited with 19,993
votes; Barker with 18,553; Hunt, 15,386, and Herrick, 5,712. Tammany,
therefore, succeeded, though in a minority of over 17,000 votes.
Upon assuming office, Wood surprised his followers by announcing that
he would purge all offices of corruption and give good government. His
messages were filled with flattering promises and lofty sentiments.
At the outset he seemed disposed for good. He closed the saloons on
Sunday, suppressed brothels, gambling houses and rowdyism, had the
streets cleaned, and opened a complaint book. The religious part of the
community for a time believed in him. He assumed personal charge of the
police, and when a bill was introduced in the Legislature to strip him
of this power, the foremost citizens called a mass meeting to support
him.
The troubles between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells” continued
throughout the year 1855. When the latter held their county
ratification meeting in the Wigwam and the name of their nominee for
Street Commissioner was announced, the “Hardshells,” who had come
thither with a nominee of their own, raised an uproar, whereupon “the
factions on both sides went to work and pummeled each other pretty
soundly and highly satisfactorily to the lookers, for at least ten
minutes.”
The election of 1855 was of little consequence. All eyes were now
turned to the coming contest of 1856. Before the end of a year Wood
had begun to reveal his real nature. Many of the decent element that
had for a time believed in him began to turn against him. He had also
made himself unpopular with certain powerful Sachems by not giving
them either a share, or a large enough share, in the spoils. His
appointments were made wholly from a circle of personal friends who
were more attached to him than to the Tammany organization. Knowing
the folly of expecting a renomination from Tammany, as it was then
constituted, he set about obtaining it by trickery.
Inducing Wilson Small, a Custom House officer holding a seat in the
general committee, to resign, Wood had himself substituted. Then he
personally assumed control of the primary election inspectors in every
ward, so as to manipulate the election of convention delegates. He
caused the appointment of an executive committee, which was to have
the entire choice of inspectors in every instance in which the general
committee failed to agree. This new committee was composed mainly of
his friends, and he named himself chairman.
His henchmen incited divisions in such of the wards as were not under
the control of his inspectors, and the contests, upon being referred to
the “executive committee,” were of course decided in Wood’s favor. Thus
he appropriated a great majority of the delegates to the nominating
convention.
“It is well known,” wrote Peter B. Sweeny and J. Y. Savage, secretaries
of the Tammany General Committee, in a long statement denouncing Wood’s
thimble-rigging “that for many years this [primary] system has been
degenerating until it has become so corrupt as to be a mere machine in
the hands of unprincipled men, by which they foist themselves before
the people as the nominees of a party for office in defiance of public
sentiment.”[1] Sweeny and Savage charged further than when the primary
elections took place under this patent process for cheating the people,
the ballot boxes were stuffed and detachments of police were stationed
at every poll to aid Wood’s agents and bully his opponents. A sickening
mass of evidence of corruption was at hand, Sweeny and Savage recounted.
Wood was renominated by the city convention, and at an hour when most
of his opponents on the general committee were absent, he had that
body endorse his nomination by a vote of 56 to 26, nearly all of those
voting being office-holders by his grace.
He also arranged a reconciliation between the “Hardshells” and
“Softshells.” With a show of traditional Tammany custom, the “Softs”
marched in Indian file to the Stuyvesant Institute, the headquarters of
the “Hards,” and the reunited leaders marched back to Tammany Hall--in
pairs, arm-in-arm. The “Hardshell”-“Softshell” contention thus became a
thing of the past.
But Wood’s personal enemies in the Wigwam were not to be appeased,
and they nominated a candidate to oppose him--James S. Libby. Bitter
feelings were aroused. At the Wood ratification meeting in the
Wigwam, October 22, both Wood and Anti-Wood men crowded in, and then
ensued another of those clashes for which Tammany Hall had become so
celebrated. When John Kelly mentioned Wood’s name the Anti-Wood men
raised a din and smothered the speaker’s voice. The Wood men, growing
enraged, “pitched into the Anti-Woodites hot and heavy, and for a
time a scene of the wildest clamor ensued. A general fight took place
in front of the speaker’s stand and all round the room. Blows were
given and exchanged with great spirit, and not a few faces were badly
disfigured.” After a few planks had been plucked from the stand and
wielded with telling effect, the Wood men won. “The great body of
the Libbyites were kicked out of the room and down the stairs with a
velocity proportionate to the expelling force behind.”
The City Reform party was far from being satisfied with Wood’s
administration. In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that by the
time of his second year in office the blackness of his administration
exceeded anything known before. Seasoned men fancied they knew
something of corruption, extravagance and malfeasance in the City Hall,
but by 1856 they better understood the growth of these under a reckless
and unprincipled Mayor.
The saloon power had grown until it controlled the politics of the
city. In every groggery could be found a crowd of loafers and bruisers
who could always be relied upon to pack a primary or insure or defeat
the election of certain nominees. In these saloons the ward politicians
held their meetings, and the keepers were ready at all times to
furnish persons to parade, carrying partizan banners they could not
read, or to cheer at mass meetings at the drop of a handkerchief. The
saloon-keepers also furnished cheap illegal voters, ballot-box stuffers
and thoroughbred “shoulder-hitters,” to intimidate peaceable citizens,
or as a last resort, to smash the ballot boxes.
The saloon-keepers were largely above the law. A disingenuous bill,
passed in 1855, ordered the saloons to be closed on Sunday, but made
no provision for enforcement. They were accordingly kept open, likely
enough through assurances from Wood that the owners would not be
molested. Their support of the Mayor was well-nigh unanimous.
It was the domination of politics by this element that caused great
irritation and disgust. But the opposition to Wood was hopelessly
divided. It had to contend, moreover, with the adverse factor of the
introduction into the campaign of national issues. The fear of the
new Republican party was sure to bring out a heavy vote for Buchanan
and Breckinridge, and on the strength of this wave Tammany reasonably
expected to be again swept into power.
The City Reformers had greatly declined in numbers, but they again
came forward for the contest, nominating Judge James R. Whiting.[2]
The Native American party, still maintaining its bitterness against
the control of politics by foreigners, chose Isaac O. Barker, and the
Whigs, Anthony J. Bleecker, making, with Wood and Libby, five Mayoralty
candidates.
Though backed by the dregs of the city on the one hand, Wood did not
neglect to secure some “respectability” on the other. During the
campaign he received a testimonial signed by some of the leading
bankers and merchants, praising him and his administration and
expressing the hope of his reelection. Nearly all of the signers, it
was afterwards disclosed, profited by Wood’s placing of city funds or
buying of city goods.
Wood sought to force every man on the police force to subscribe to his
election fund, one policeman, who refused to contribute, being kept on
duty twenty-four hours at a stretch. From this source alone he gathered
in from $8,500 to $10,000.
On election day the scum of the town shouted, repeated and bruised for
Wood. Candidates were traded openly, and bribing was unconcealed.[3]
The majority of the policemen were off on furlough, given by the
Mayor as head of the Police Department, assisting actively for his
reelection. At the polling places, so terrific was the competition for
the millions of city plunder, that the Wood and Anti-Wood men fought
savagely. In the Sixth Ward the Wood partizans, upon being attacked,
retreated for the while, and coming back, armed with brickbats,
clubs, axes and pistols, set upon and routed their foes. The police
meanwhile calmly looked on, until the riot was at its height, when
they made a show of concern by firing fifteen or more shots, all of
which fortunately went astray. The Wood partizans then broke the ballot
boxes to pieces and carried off the fragments for kindling wood. In the
Seventeenth Ward the Anti-Wood men destroyed some of the Wood boxes;
and in the First, and most of the other wards, the day was enlivened
with assaults, riots and stabbings.
The count of the vote gave Wood, 34,860; Barker, 25,209; Bleecker,
9,654; Libby, 4,764, and Whiting, 3,646. The Buchanan electors carried
the city with 41,913 votes; Fillmore, the American candidate, and
Fremont, Republican, were allowed respectively 19,924 and 17,771 votes.
Tammany Hall obtained a serviceable majority in the Common Council.
The Republicans maintained that 10,000 fraudulent Democratic votes
were cast in New York City and Brooklyn, and credited Wood with
having profited by the most of those cast in this city. It was not an
unreasonable contention, in view of the enormous increase over the vote
of two years before.
A few days after the election a meeting in Tammany Hall, called to
celebrate Buchanan’s triumph, resolved that next to the success of
Buchanan and Breckinridge, “the brightest and most signal achievement
of the Democratic party, at this election, was the triumphant election
of Fernando Wood!”
FOOTNOTES
[1] This statement was published officially in the New York newspapers,
September 27, 1856.
[2] Whiting, according to the testimony of James Perkins, before the
Senate Investigating Committee in 1833, had been the chief lobbyist in
the task of securing the notorious Seventh Ward Bank charter in 1831.
It is a striking commentary on political standards of the day that
unrebutted charges of such a nature formed no bar to the advancement of
a politician to such distinctions as those of Judge, District Attorney
and reform candidate for Mayor.
[3] Josiah Quincy related, in a lecture in Boston, that while in New
York City on this election day, he saw $25 given for a single vote
for a member of Congress. Upon expressing his surprise, Quincy was
told that this man could afford to pay it. If reelected, it would be a
money-making operation. He had received $30,000 at the last session for
“getting a bill through,” and at that rate could afford to pay a good
price.