The Evening Post was quite likely right in its contention that a new and truly good Charter would even at this date have awakened a new interest in city affairs, and a spasm of reform; but a good Charter it was impossible to get. With his usual shrewdness, Tweed at once prepared to use the movement for a better form of city government to make his position secure.
When the legislative session of January, 1870, began—the first Legislature in twenty-four years to be controlled by the Democrats—it was generally agreed that the city would be given another Charter. The Tweed Ring was preparing one; the Young Democrats, an unsavory group who opposed Tweed on strictly selfish grounds, were preparing one; and the reform element represented by the Union League Club, the Evening Post, the Tribune, and the World, wanted one. “The true democratic doctrine of city government,” insisted the Post, “is that power ought to be simple, responsibility undivided and direct.” The proposed Charter of the anti-Ring Democrats, the so-called “huckleberry Charter” of the “hayloft-and-cheesepress” up-Staters, was defeated. Then, at the beginning of February, Tweed and Sweeney suddenly sprang their own instrument, and made it clear that they would push it rapidly through. It was patently vicious. As early as Feb. 3, the Evening Post attacked it sharply. It pointed out that it embodied none of that simplification of powers and responsibility which the Post had long advocated; that too many city departments would be governed by boards, not single heads; that the Common Council retained its executive functions; and that the four-year term which it gave the Mayor and his lieutenants was, under the circumstances, dangerous.
But four days later a far more powerful attack was published. The Evening Post would in any event have kept up its campaign with growing vigor, but it had found an unexpected helper and adviser in Samuel J. Tilden. Bryant later wrote:
It was in February of the year 1870 that Samuel J. Tilden came and desired an interview with the senior editor.... He seemed moved from his usual calm and quiet demeanour. His errand, he said, related to the Charter which Tweed and his creatures were trying to get enacted into law. If that should happen, it would give the city, with all the powers of its government, into the hands of men who felt no restraint of conscience and who would plunder it without stint. The city would be ruined, he said, if this Charter, conceived with a special design to make speculation easy, passed, and it was altogether important that the Evening Post should resist its passage with all the power of argument which it possessed, and prevent it if possible. He then, with his usual perspicacity, pointed out the contrivances for misusing the public funds which were embodied in the bill.... The Evening Post did not require Mr. Tilden’s exhortations to oppose the bill, but we proceeded, by the help of the additional light given us, to hold up the Charter to the severest censure.
The Post in a series of editorials absolutely riddled the Tweed Charter. It aimed its main fire, however, at the heart of the document—its creation of a Board of Special Audit with financial powers so huge that millions could be stolen by the mere nod of four or five men, and so well entrenched that only by new State legislation could these men be reached. This Board was to be composed of the Mayor, Controller, Chamberlain, and Presidents of the Supervisors and Aldermen, so that Tweed, Oakey Hall, and Connolly were certain of places on it. It would seem that those who ran might have read the perils concealed in the Tweed Charter; while the bribery employed to pass it was so colossal that it is hard to understand how it was even temporarily concealed. It is believed that a million was spent in corrupting legislators; the chairman of the conference committee on the Charter admitted later that he took $10,000; and it was shown that Tweed bought five Republican Senators for $40,000 each. Yet many of the best people of New York looked on complacently while the Republicans joined hands with the Democrats, and the Charter passed both houses by enormous majorities.
The Evening Post was powerfully aided in combating this iniquity by Manton Marble of the World and Dana of the Sun. The Tribune was upon the same side, though Greeley did not fail to indulge his unsurpassed faculty for wabbling; he went to Albany and said that if he could not get the Charter amended, he would take it as it was, while his journal continued attacking it. The Union League Club energetically opposed it. But the Citizens Association, under the universally esteemed Peter Cooper, was convinced that the Ring had become conservative, and would now stop stealing and take the side of the taxpayers. The Times, with similar blindness, hailed the passage of the Tweed Charter as a signal victory for reform, saying (April 6):
If it shall be put into operation by Mayor Hall, with that regard for the general welfare which we have reason to anticipate, we feel sure that our citizens will have reason to count yesterday’s work in the Legislature as most salutary and important.
And Tweed saw that Oakey Hall lost no time in appointing him head of the Department of Public Works, and otherwise putting it into operation.
Indeed, the Boss now stood at the apex of his career. One of his creatures, John T. Hoffman, was Governor, another was Mayor, and he, Hall, and Connolly formed a majority of the Board of Special Audit, with authority, as the Post said, “to do almost what they please.” Almost penniless ten years before, Tweed now had a fortune of more than $3,000,000, and his career had entered upon a period of dazzling splendor. He acquired a fine mansion at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street, and at his summer home at Greenwich, Conn., the very stalls of his horses were mahogany. He had flashing equipages and gave glittering dinners; he and his retainers fitted up the Americus Club, in Greenwich, where each member had a private room, in princely style; and when his daughter was married that summer her gown cost $4,000 and she received gifts worth $100,000. The voters most impressed by all this were the poor voters among whom in winter Tweed scattered gifts of coal, provisions, and money. The Ring did not forget its family connections. Not even President Grant, remarked the Post, had such a taste for nepotism. One of Tweed’s sons was Assistant District Attorney and another was Commissioner of Riverside Drive; while four of Sweeney’s relatives had fat places.
As Samuel J. Tilden later sarcastically noted, the Times was unlucky enough on May 5, 1870, to boast of “reforms made possible by the recent legislation at Albany.” That May 5 was the day on which the Board of Special Audit ordered payment of $6,312,500 on the Court House, ninety per cent. of it graft.