Gustavus Myers - The History of Tammany Hall

THE HISTORY OF
TAMMANY HALL

BY
GUSTAVUS MYERS
Author of A History of Public Franchises
in New York City, etc., etc.

SECOND EDITION
REVISED AND ENLARGED

Boni and Liveright's mark: two figures seated either side of a tree in a pot with BL on it

NEW YORK
BONI & LIVERIGHT, Inc.
1917

Copyright , 1917.
By Boni & Liveright, Inc.

In most mens minds a certain spell of wonder attaches to the career and character of the Tammany Society and Tammany Hall. The long continuance of this dual power; its control of the city, infrequently interrupted, throughout the century; the nature of its principles, the method of its practices and the character of its personnelall these combine to furnish a spectacle which exerts over the general mind a peculiar and strong fascination.

It was under the sway of this mood that I began the investigation which has resulted in this volume. I had no thought, on beginning, to carry the work so far: I sought merely to satisfy my curiosity regarding the more important particulars of Tammanys history. But I soon learned that what I sought was not easily to be obtained. The few narratives already published were generally found to be either extravagant panegyrics, printed under the patronage of the Tammany Society, or else partisan attacks, violent in style and untruthful in statement. Usually both were characterized by their paucity of real information no less than by the number of their palpable errors of fact.

Turning from these, I determined to find the facts for myself. My search led me first through the files of all the available newspapers from 1789 to the present time, and thencefor origins and contributory causesthrough publications as far back as 1788; thence through State and city histories, and a great number of biographies, sketches, essays, political pamphlets and broadsides. The fragmentary matter gleaned from these sources was found to be extremely valuable in helping to form the continuous thread of a narrative, and in determining contemporary spirit; but the statements and conclusions, particularly with regard to the character and conduct of public men, were generally contradictory and inconclusive. Realizing this, I began the last phase of my searcha task that has led me through numberless dreary pages of the Minutes and Documents of the Common Council (which for the years previous to 1881 exist only in manuscript), Journals and Documents of the Senate and Assembly, including the reports of various legislative committees; Congressional and Executive Records, Treasury Reports, Records of the Police, Common Pleas, Superior and Supreme Courts; Minutes of the Oyer and Terminer; Grand Jury Presentments, and Records of the Board of Supervisors. Finally, I have had the good fortune, in developing the story of the middle and later periods, of having secured many valuable interviews with a number of men who actively participated in the stirring events of thirty, forty and even fifty years ago.

The purpose to write a book became fixed as my search progressed. The work is finished, and the result is now to be given to the public. What I have sought to produce is a narrative historyplain, compact and impartial. I have sought to avoid an indulgence, on the one hand, in political speculation, and on the other, in moralizing platitudes. Such deductions and generalizations as from time to time I have made, seem to me necessary in elucidating the narrative; without them the story would prove to the reader a mere chronology of unrelated facts.

If my narrative furnishes a sad story for the leaders and chieftains of the Tammany Society and the Tammany Hall political organization, the fault is not mine, but that of a multitude of incontestible public records. It was in no partizan spirit that I began the work, and in none that I now conclude it. I have always been an independent in politics; and I have even voted, when there seemed to me ample reason for doing so, a Tammany ticket. I have tried to set down nothing in malice, nor with such exceptions as are obviously necessary with regard to living men, to extenuate anything whatever. Those who may be tempted to consider my work partial and partizan, on account of the showing that it makes of Tammany corruption and inefficiency, will do well to read carefully the pages relating to the Whigs and to some other opponents of Tammany Hall.

The records show that a succession of prominent Tammany leaders were involved in some theft or swindle, public or private. These peculations or frauds ranged, in point of time, from 1799 and 1805-6 to the later decades; in the matter of persons, from the founder of the Tammany Society to some of the subsequent bosses, and in gradation of amount, from the petty thousands taken by Mooney, Stagg and Page, in the first decade of the century, to the $1,220,000 taken by Swartwout in 1830-38 and the undetermined millions taken by Wood and Tweed in the fifties, sixties and first two years of the seventies. From nearly the beginning of its active political career, Tammany leaders, with generally brief interruptions, thus continued to abstract money from the city, the State and the nationthe interruptions to the practice generally coinciding with the periods when Tammany in those years was deprived of political power.

My search has shown me the absurdity of the pretense that any vital distinction exists between the Tammany Society and the Tammany Hall political organization. Tammany members industriously propagate this pretense, but it has neither a historic nor an actual basis. From 1805, the date of the apparent separation of the organization from the society, the Sachems of the latter have ruled the policies of the former. Repeatedly, as in 1828, 1838, 1853, and 1857, they have determined the regularity of contending factions in the organization, and have shut the hall to members of the faction against which they have decided. The Sachems have at all times been the leaders in the political body, and the control of the society in every year that Tammany has held control of the city, has determined the division of plunder for the ensuing year. The Tammany Society and the Tammany political organization constitute a dual powerbut, unlike Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, a duality working by identical means for an identical end.

The records show that Tammany was thus, from the beginning, an evil force in politics. Its characteristics were formed by its first great leader, Aaron Burr, and his chief lieutenant, Matthew L. Davis; and whatever is distinctive of Tammany methods and policies in 1900 is, for the most part, but the development of features initiated by these two men one hundred years ago. It is curious to recall, on looking back to the time when my researches began, the abundant evidences of misapprehension regarding Tammanys earlier history. No especial discredit attached to Tammany Hall before Tweeds time, wrote, in effect, Mr. E. L. Godkin in an essay published a few years ago. State Senator Fassett, in 1890, made a similar statement in his report on the investigation of conditions in New York City. Down to the time, he says, that the Tammany ring, under the leadership of William M. Tweed, took possession of the government of New York City the office [of Alderman] was held in credit and esteem. The exact reverse of both statements is true; and abundant proof of my contention, I believe, will be found in the pages of this book. Another instance may be giventhough the opinion expressed, instead of being founded upon misapprehension, may charitably be set down as one of misjudgment. I was a Sachem of Tammany, said a one-time noted politician recently, before the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents, in the days when it was