A Primary Election at Peter Cooper’s Funny Little Grocery-Groggery, at the corner of the Bowery and Stuyversant Street, in 1820.
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE DAYLIGHT.
Peter—Well, Jack, where are all the boys you promised me?
Jack—They are asleep in the market.
Peter—Zounds! Jack! Arouse them, or we are lost.
Jack—They have one eye open, and the gilded stuff will soon open the other.
Peter—Jack, what do you mean? Have I not kept open house for three days and nights, and swilled yourself and comrades with liquor for a week, and haven’t you all been drunk at my expense for several days? By Jupiter! Jack! you won’t desert me, after drinking so much of my best rum, will you?
Jack—The boys won’t expose their eyes and nose, and teeth and skulls, and bellies to the sharp claws and big fists, and stones and clubs of your political adversaries, without some money in advance, to tickle the palms of the surgeon and nurses at the Hospital. For doctors and nurses won’t trust the poor, you know, and especially the boys who get their skulls cracked at the primary elections.
Peter—Well, Jack, tell the boys that I will fill them with good rum until the primary election is over, and then, if I am victorious in the Nominating Convention, I’ll reward them liberally with money.
Jack—(With his fingers whirling like a windmill over his nose)—The boys an’t so green as to trust the politicians until they have fought their bloody sieges, and elected them to offices where they can steal fortunes from the people, including many a chunk of choice grub from our own mouths. No, no, Peter. It won’t do. Down with the cash, and all will go well.
Peter—Have I not often got yourself and friends out of the Watch House?
Jack—And have we not long bought your grog, although you adulterated it more than other liquor dealers? And have we not fought your public battles, and exposed ourselves to imprisonment, and periled our lives to give you political influence to liberate us from the Watch House, when we got into a bad scrape on your account?
Peter—You lie, you thief and drunken vagabond, if you say I adulterated my liquor more than other rum sellers.
Jack—Have a care, Peter, have a care, for did I not catch you in the very act of pouring water by the pailfull into a rum hogshead last week, that was only about half full of spurious alcohol, when you began to adulterate it?
Peter—I was afraid the boys would drink so much, that they would not be sober enough to whip my political enemies to-day, if I did not adulterate my pure and strong rum, which came from Jamaica only last week.
Jack—That will do, Peter—that will do, for you always could tell a smoother and bigger lie than me, and I give it up.
Peter—Come, come, Jack—this won’t do. The sun will soon be climbing the eastern hills, and there’s no time to be lost. What’s to be done?
Jack—Fork over, Peter, and we’ll die, if necessary, in our effort to stuff the ballot boxes, and keep them stuffed all day, and drive your foes from the polls, and seize the boxes at sunset, and count the votes in favor of your delegates to the Convention.
Peter—Will you be true?
Jack—As money to the poor man.
Peter—Then awake the boys, and let them all come quickly, and get some stuff.
Jack (Scampers to the market)—Get up, you lazy drunken thieves, and run for your lives to Peter Cooper’s, and get some precious stuff. (They all spring from the butcher stalls, and run like bloodhounds for Peter’s groggery.)
Jack—Here we are, Peter.
Peter—So I perceive. (They all slyly smile and wink, and screw their expressive mouths.)
Jack—Shall I help the boys to some grog, Peter, while you are counting out our primary wages?
Peter—O yes, but don’t give them too stiff a horn, Jack, as I fear they will all get dead drunk before sundown, and then I’ll surely be defeated, as the hardest fighting will be after the poles are closed. So, boys, please drink moderately until the election is over, and fight like bull dogs till the result is declared, and then, if I am the conqueror, you can all get drunk on my toddy for a week or month.
Jack—That’s the talk. Them’s our views, an’t they, boys?
All (drinking)—Well—they are.
Peter—There, Jack, there’s your share, and now you divide the balance among your honest and noble companions.
Jack—Boys—do you hear the compliments of our candidate?
All—Well—we do, and he is a man of his word, and we’ll put him through.
Jack—(Putting all the money in his pocket)—Scissors! boys! Look down the Bowery! There come, on the full jump, about forty bullies with Ned, the murderer, at their head, screaming and beckoning his bloody gang to follow him.
Peter—O God! Stand by me, friends, or I’ll be murdered before the polls open. For Ned threatened to kill me yesterday, if I didn’t withdraw my name as a candidate. So, don’t let him and his desperate band murder me. For I’m sure they will, if you abandon me. O dear! Do stand by me, brave young gentlemen! Won’t you? Please do? (He begins to cry.)
Jack—Here they come, and they are armed with clubs, knives and pistols.
Peter—O Lordy! (And he crawls under the counter, and gets behind a rum cask, and is as quiet as a young rat.)
Ned (bursting through the door, and his cronies smashing the windows)—I understand you stuffed the ballot-box last night for Peter Cooper, and intend to carry the election to-day, by spurious ballots already deposited.
Jack—You are a liar. (They close, and Ned throws Jack, and mauls him awfully.)
Ned—Go in, boys, and give no quarter, and drag Peter Cooper from behind the rum cask, under the bar, and give him a dreadful flogging, for not withdrawing in favor of my candidate.
Peter—O spare me, Ned, spare me, and I’ll withdraw from the field.
Ned—Shut up, Snarlyow. Give it to him, boys, and knock his teeth down his throat, and make his nose as red as his crimes, and his eyes as black as his heart. Hit him again, and avenge his robbery of his poor old Aunt.
Peter—O spare me, kind gentlemen, and I’ll give you all the rum I’ve got in the bar, and down cellar, too.
Ned—Close your jaws, Shylock. Your time is come. (Jack now rallies, and a bloody collision ensues, and two are stabbed, and one shot, and Peter is terribly beaten, and thrown into the cellar, but soon crawls up stairs, and Peter’s friends fly for their lives.)
Peter—(sitting on a rum cask, with his nostrils blocked with coagulated blood, and his face mashed to a jelly, and Ned and his bullies drinking, laughing, singing, and dancing)—O dear me, I wish somebody would come and relieve me from the clutches of these awful men.
Ned—(throwing a glass of rum in the face of Peter)—No impudence, Peter. Another insolent word, and I’ll skin you. (The Police now rush in, and, after a bloody struggle, arrest Ned and all his followers, and drag them to prison.)
(To be continued.)
Stephen H. Branch’s Alligator.
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 17, 1858.
STEPHEN H. BRANCH’S “ALLIGATOR” CAN BE obtained at all hours, at wholesale and retail, at No. 114 Nassau Street, (Second Story), near Ann Street, New York.
A Precious Fossil.
Mayor Tiemann’s trickery and treachery to
the Americans thoroughly exposed.
The following Card was placed in every house and store and workshop in 1843, by direction of Daniel F. Tiemann, and was published in all the newspapers of that memorable period:
“TO THE VOTERS IN THIS HOUSE.
The inclosed Ticket is presented by the American Republican Party, for your suffrage—it is composed exclusively of Americans who have withdrawn from the great contending parties of the day, for the sake of the country and its institutions; their character and standing in the community is well known to be unexceptionable and highly honorable; they have pledged themselves, if elected, to support and carry out the principles of this party, which are as follows, viz:—
1st. We maintain that the Naturalization Laws should be so altered as to require of all Foreigners who may hereafter arrive in this Country, a residence of twenty-one years, before granting them the privilege of the Elective Franchise; but at the same time, we distinctly declare, that it is not our intention to interfere with the vested rights of any citizen, or lay any obstruction in the way of Foreigners obtaining a livlihood or acquiring property in this country; but on the contrary, we would grant them the right to purchase, hold and transfer property, and to enjoy and participate in all the benefits of our country, (except that of voting and holding office,) as soon as they declare their intentions to become citizens.
2d. We advocate the repeal of the present Common School Law, and the re-establishment of the Law, known as the Public School Law.
3d. We maintain that the Bible, without note or comment, is not sectarian—that it is the fountain-head of morality and all good government, and should be used in our Public Schools as a reading Book.
4th. We are opposed to a union of Church and State in any and every form.
5th. We hold that native Americans, only, should be appointed to office, to legislate, administer, or execute the Laws of their own country.
These are our principles—if you like them, we ask your support for the enclosed Ticket. We believe the time has come when we may, with truth, exclaim, “Delay is dangerous.” The above principles aim at existing evils, which have grown to such enormity as to threaten seriously our dearest and most sacred rights. We have waited long and anxiously for some movement from among other parties to check these evils, and we have waited in vain. The only hope that remains, is for Americans to organize a new party, to combat and counteract them. This we have done. The Presidential question we have nothing to do with.—We invite you to our Standard: it is raised in the cause of Civil and Religious Liberty, and no true American can fight against it. It is the same Banner that was raised by Americans in ’76.
DANIEL F. TIEMANN, President.
J. B. Dennis, Secretary.
New York, November 1, 1843.”
This will do pretty well for a man whose father is a Holland Dutchman, and cannot now speak the American language so as to be easily understood,—who is appointing the ejected garroters of European Capitals, to the most lucrative and honorable positions, while poor and honest and intelligent Americans (for whom he professed such boundless love in 1843,) are haughtily denied the humblest appointments in his gift,—who has toiled with sleepless vigilance,—since his recent election as Mayor by the Americans,—to reinstate the odious George W. Matsell, and who has, after an arduous struggle, succeeded in effecting the reappointment of Captain Leonard, a Canadian, and of Captain Dowling, an Irishman, (both of whose naturalization papers I would like to see, or the man who has seen them,) who were smuggled back to their old quarters by Cooper, Gerard, Tiemann, Bowen, and Stranaham, to cut the throat of Seward, and to diffuse poison through the Police Department, and to re-create the perjured carcase of Matsell on the ruins of Tallmadge and Wm. Curtis Noyes, his noble son-in-law. Tiemann aspires to the honors of a Governor, and himself and his brother Edward Cooper, (the Street Commissioner, and the own son of Peter Cooper,) are appointing all the ruffians of both hemispheres to office, to effect the nomination and election of Tiemann as Governor of the Empire State. But Peter, and Daniel, and Edward will be foiled. No man can attain the distinguished honors of America, who prostitutes his own integrity and that of his fellow citizens, to effect his ungodly designs. Aaron Burr and other ambitious rogues tried that experiment, and they were resisted and foiled by the God who loves and protects our beloved America, and they went down to ignominious graves, whose ashes will be loathed and trampled by a thousand generations. Mayor Tiemann is a ninny and a hypocrite—has basely disowned his native Holland skies—has never been naturalized—bamboozled the Americans in 1843 and 1857—loves neither American nor foreigner, nor his God—but adores himself and Peter Cooper, and fears George W. Matsell and his Matron Mistress on Randall’s Island, whom he forced and nearly strangled, while he committed a deed of hell, in the violation of her person, for which, in any city of Europe, he would be dragged to a dungeon or the block, and perhaps torn to pieces in the market place, by the indignant and phrensied populace.