PART 3: THE HISTORY OF TAMMANY HALL

The History of Tammany Hall

CHAPTER V
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 invarigbly 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 partisans.  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 Radcliffs 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 [Sound familiar? DC]   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 hail 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 De Witt Clinton, the latter, lacking a political machine and basing his contest solely on a political idea — that of internal improvements — emerged triumphant.

CHAPTER VI
Clinton Maintains his Supremacy
1817-1820

WITH Gov. Clinton at the head of the Council of Appointment, Tammany men expected the force of his vengeance. They were not disappointed. He removed many of them for no other reason than that they belonged to the organization. Hoping to make terms with him, the Wigwam Assemblymen, early in 1818, presented to the Council of Appointment a petition praying for the removal of Mayor Radcliff and the appointment in his place of William Paulding, Jr. “Radcliff,” the paper read, “is an unfit person longer to fill that honorable and respectful office.”  Clinton smiled at this ambidexterity. It was rumored that he intended to award the honor to Cadwallader D. Colden, a Federalist supporter of the War of 1812, and one of the Federalists Tammany Hall had sent to the Assembly in 1817, as a means of breaking up that party. Colden now let it be understood that he sided with Clinton.

The whole Tammany delegation lived in a single house at Albany and met in a large room, No. 10, in Eagle Tavern. “This system of acting as a separate body,” admitted Tammany’s own organ,1 “was very injudicious to our city. It created suspicion and distrust among country members;  it looked like a separate interest;  a combination of a powerful delegation to frown down or over power the delegation of a smaller county.”  Colden did not join in these nightly meetings. One day he was coaxed in to take a glass of wine. To his surprise, upon opening the door of No. 10, he found the delegation in caucus. The meeting seemed to be waiting for him before transacting business. He had scarcely taken a seat, when one of the members arose, and in a long speech protested against any member of the city delegation accepting an office, and suggested that each member should pledge himself not to do so. Colden saw at once that the resolution was directed against himself. He exclaimed energetically against the trickery, declaring that he had not asked for the office of Mayor, but would accept it if offered. The meeting broke up;  Colden was appointed Mayor, and Tammany Hall from that time denounced him.

In Albany, Clinton was vigorously pushing forward the Erie Canal project; the Tammany men were as aggressively combating it.2  While Clinton was thus absorbed in this great public enterprise the Wigwam was enriching its leaders in manifold ways. An instance of this was the noted Barker episode. Jacob Barker was a Sachem, a leader of great influence in the political organization, and such a power in financial and business circles that at one time he defied the United States Bank. -He and Matthew L. Davis were Burr’s firmest friends to the hour of Burr’s death. Early in 1818 a bill prohibiting private banking, prepared at the instance of the incorporated banks, which sought a monopoly, passed the Senate; though as a special favor to Barker the Senate exempted from its provisions the latter’s Exchange Bank for three years. But Barker desired an indefinite lease. To create a show of public sentiment he had the hall packed with his friends and creatures on April 14, when resolutions were passed stating that the proposed bill would destroy all competition with the incorporated banks, “ benefit the rich, oppress the poor, extend the power of existing aristocracies, and terminate the banking transactions of an individual whose loans have been highly advantageous to many laborious and industrious mechanics and neighboring farmers.” The Legislature granted the privileges Barker asked. A few years later (1826) the sequel to this legislative favoritism appeared in the form of one of the most sensational trials witnessed in early New York.

The year 1818 saw Tammany Hall in the unusual position of advocating a protective tariff. The War of 1812 having injured domestic manufacturing, the demand for such a measure was general. Party asperity had softened, and Republicans, or Democrats — as they were coming to be known — and Federalists alike favored it. The society made the best of this popular wave. It issued an address, advising moderate protective duties on foreign goods. But New York then, and until after the Civil War, was a great shipbuilding center; and the shipbuilders and owners and the importing merchants soon influenced Tammany to revert to the stanch advocacy of free trade.

The almost complete extinction of national party lines under Monroe caused the disappearance of violent partisan recriminations and brought municipal affairs more to public attention. From 1817 onward public bodies agitated much more forcibly and persistently than before for the correction of certain local evils. Chief among these were the high taxes. In 1817 the city tax levy was $180,000;  in 1818 it rose to $250,000, “an enormous amount,” one newspaper said. Though the city received annually $200,000 in rents from houses and lots, for wharves, slips and piers, and also a considerable amount from fines, yet there was a constantly increasing deficit. The city expenses were thought to be too slight to devour the ordinary revenue. The Democratic, or Tammany, officials made attempts to explain that much of the debt was contracted under Federalist Common Councils, and said that sufficient money must be provided or “the poor would starve.”

At almost the identical time this plea was entered, E.C. Genet was laying before the Grand Jury a statement to this effect: that although it was known that the aggregate capital of the incorporated banks, insurance and commission companies in New York City, exclusive of one branch of the United States Bank, amounted in 1817 to about $22,000,000, in addition to the shares in those companies, yet the city and States taxes combined “on all that vast personal estate in New York City are only a paltry $97,000.”

The explanation of the blindness of the Wigwam officials to the escape of the rich from taxation is simple. The Tammany Hall of 1818 was not the Tammany Hall of 1800. In that interval the poor young men who once had to club together in order to vote had become directors in banking, insurance and various other corporations, which as members of the Legislature or as city officials they themselves had helped to form. Being such, they exerted all the influence of their political machinery to save their property from taxation. From about 1805 to 1837 Tammany Hall was ruled directly by about one-third bankers, one-third merchants and the remaining third politicians of various pursuits. The masses formed — except at rare times — the easily wielded body. The leaders safeguarded their own interests at every point, however they might profess at election times an abhorrence of the aristocracy;  and the Grand Jury being of them, ignored Genet’s complaint.

A new series of revelations concerning the conduct of Tammany chieftains was made public during 1817-18. Ruggles Hubbard, a one-time Sachem and at the time Sheriff of the county, absconded from the city August 15, 1817, leaving a gap in the treasury.3  John L. Broome, another Sachem, was shortly after removed from the office of City Clerk by the Council of Appointment for having neglected to take the necessary securities from Hubbard. John P. Haff, a one-time Grand Sachem and long a power in the organization, was removed by President Monroe on November 14, 1818, from the office of Surveyor of the Port, for corruption and general unfitness.4

But the most sensational of these exposures was that concerning the swindling of the Medical Science Lottery, by which Naphthali Judah5 and others profited handsomely. The testimony brought out before Mayor Colden, November 16, 1818, showed that a corrupt understanding existed between Judah and one of the lottery’s managers, by which the former was enabled to have a knowledge of the state of the wheel. Not less than $100,000 was drawn on the first day, of which Judah received a large share. Further affidavits were submitted tending to show a corrupt understanding between Judah and Alderman Isaac Denniston in the drawing of the Owego Lottery, by which Denniston won $35,000. John L. Broome was also implicated in the scandal, and Teunis Wortman, while not directly concerned in it, was considered involved by the public, and suffered a complete loss of popular favor,6 though retaining for some time a certain degree of influence in the society and organization.

Always as popular criticism began to assert itself, Tammany would make a sudden display of patriotism, accompanied by the pronouncement of high-sounding toasts and other exalted utterances. Such it did in 1817, when the society took part in the interment of the remains of Gen. Montgomery in St. Paul’s Church. And now the Sachems prepared to entertain Andrew Jackson at a banquet, and also indirectly signify that he was their choice for President. William Mooney, again elected Grand Sachem, sent to Gen. Jackson, under date of February 15, 1819, a grandiloquent letter of invitation which, referring to the battle of New Orleans, said in part:

“Columbia’s voice, in peals of iron thunder, proclaimed the dread fiat of that eventful morn !  Terra was drenched with human gore !  The perturbed elements were hushed !  Mars and Bellona retired from the ensanguined field ! and godlike Hera resumed her gentle reign.... We approbate your noble deeds and greet you hero. Scourge of British insolence, Spanish perfidy and Indian cruelty—these, sir, are the sentiments of the Sons of Liberty in New York who compose the National Institution of Tammany Society No. 1 of the United States. Here, sir, we guard the patriot flame —'preserved by concord’— its effulgence, in a blaze of glory, shall surround and accompany you to the temple of interminable fame and honor.”

Jackson accepted the invitation. Cadwallader D. Colden, who had been re-appointed Mayor a few days before, was asked to preside. When, on February 23, the banquet was held and Jackson was called for his toast, Colden arose, and to the consternation of the Tammany men proposed:  “De Witt Clinton, the Governor of the great and patriotic State of New York.”  This surprising move made it appear that Jackson favored the Clinton party. To counteract the impression, the General instantly left the room, “amidst reiterated applause's,” and a dead silence ensued for three minutes. This incident, it may well be believed, did not dampen the society’s enthusiasm for Jackson;  it continued to champion him ardently.

Colden was re-appointed Mayor for the third time in February, 1820. Municipal issues were dividing the public consideration with Tammany’s renewed efforts to overthrow Clinton. The report of the Common Council Finance Committee, January 10, 1820, showed that the city would soon be $1,300,000 in debt. An attempt was made to show how the money had been spent on the new City Hall and Bellevue Hospital, but it proved nothing. Although the law expressly prohibited Aldermen from being directly or indirectly interested in any contract or job, violations were common. It was alleged that streets were sunk, raised and sunk again, to enable the contractors to make large claims against the city. To soothe public clamor; the Aldermen made a show of reducing city expenses. The salary of Colden — he being a Clintonite — was reduced $2,500, and the pay of various other city officers was cut down. The salaries of the Wigwam men were not interfered with.

The wholesome criticism of municipal affairs was soon obscured again by the reviving tumult of the contest between Tammany and Clinton. The Governor stood for re-election against Daniel D. Tompkins in April, 1820. Tompkins had long been the idol of the Tammany men and for a time was one of the society’s Sachems. In 1818 he had been practically charged with being a public defaulter. State Controller Archibald M’Intyre submitted to the Legislature a mass of his vouchers, public and private (for the time Tompkins was Governor), which showed a balance against him of $197,297.64. In this balance, however, was included the sum of $142,763.60 which was not allowed to Tompkins’s credit because the vouchers were insufficient. Allowing Tompkins this amount, the balance against him was $54,533.44. Tompkins, on the other hand, claimed the State owed him $120,000. His partisans in the Senate in 1819 passed a bill to reimburse him, but it was voted down in the Assembly.7

The statements of both sides during the campaign of 1820 were filled with epithets and strings of accusations. Tammany contrasted Clinton’s alleged going over to the British with Tompkins’s patriotism in the War of 1812. Party lines were broken down, and Federalists and Tammany men acted together, as they had done the year before (1819), when their Legislative ticket won over the Clintonites by 2,500 majority. The Clintonites were tauntingly invited to visit the Wigwam, because in that “stronghold of Democracy would be found no 'Swiss’ Federalism, no British partisans, no opponents of the late war, no bribers or bribed for bank charters, no trimming politicians, no lobby members or legislative brokers.”  In Tammany Hall they would see a body of independent yeomen, of steady and unerring Republicans and men who rallied around their country in the hour of danger.8

While Clinton’s adherents in New York City on election day were inactive, his opponents, ever on the lookout, carried the city by 675 majority. The popularity of the Erie Canal, however, which was fast nearing completion, carried the rest of the State for Clinton.9  “Heads up! tails down,” shouted the exuberant, successful Clintonites some days after, pointing to the disappointed, discomfited Bucktails. For Tammany had been so sure of Tompkins’s election that it had procured, at considerable expense, a painting of him which was to be exhibited in the hall when the news of his election should arrive. By way of consolation the Sachems drank to this toast at their anniversary on May 12:

“De Witt Clinton, our lean Governor —
———May he never get fat,
While he wears two faces under one hat.”

......................... 

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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 commitee 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 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.

1 National Advocate, October 7, 1822. A circumstantial account of the meeting referred to on the following page appears in this issue. The paper was edited and owned by M.M. Noah, who became Grand Sachem in 1824.

2 Hammond, Vol. I, p. 450.

3 In what year Hubbard was Sachem is uncertain. His name is included in Horton’s list. He was one of the chiefs in the nominating committee from 1815 to 1817. It is worthy of note that only a short time before his flight a committee of the Common Council had examined his accounts and approved them as correct.

4 That Haff was removed is certain, though the author has been unable to find a record of the fact in the available papers of the Treasury Department. The Tammany organ, the National Advocate, November 19, 1818, commented as follows:  “The rumors which, for several days past, have been afloat and which we treated as idle and interested, are confirmed — Captain Haff has been removed from office.”  Many evidences of public gratification were shown. In one instance, eighty citizens dragged a field piece from the Arsenal to the Battery and fired a salute.

5 Naphthali Judah had been Sachem of the Maryland tribe in 1808, and continued for some time to be a leader in the party’s councils. He was again elected a Sachem in 1819.

6 How deeply the people of New York were concerned in lotteries may be gathered from the fact that in 1826 there were 190 lottery offices legalized by statute in New York City. A saying obtained that “one-half the citizens got their living by affording the opportunity of gambling to the rest.”  Many State institutions were in part supported from the proceeds of the lotteries. These swindles, therefore, became a matter for legislative investigation. A great number of pages of the Journal of the Assembly for 1819 are taken up with the testimony.

7 Journal of the Assembly, 1819, pp. 292-45, and Ibid., pp. 1046-53. Tompkins, now Vice President, made this race for “vindication.”  It is altogether likely that this particular charge against Tompkins was made for political effect in a campaign in which each side sought to blacken the other by fierce personal attacks.

8 National Advocate, March 29, 1820.

9 Tammany charged that in the construction of the Erie Canal, land had been cut up in slips to make additional voters for Clinton and cited the county of Genesee, which, though polling but 750 freehold votes in 1815, gave nearly 5,000 votes in this election.