The Evening Post: A Century of Journalism

by Allan Nevins

But such barefaced looting of the city as had now been carried on for years could not be continued without arousing public anger, and the storm soon burst. The share of graft which the Ring exacted from public contractors had already been shoved up to 85 per cent. The frauds perpetrated in the city election of May 17, 1870, were so flagrant that observers gasped. A suspicion that the city’s debts were rising by leaps and bounds grew into conviction. The Evening Post and Tribune continued their warnings and attacks, and early in the fall the Times fully joined them.

How long these assaults would have continued essentially futile, had it not been for a dramatic episode, it is hard to say. This episode grew out of the fact that the Ring, being greedy, made enemies in its own camp. One of the chief was James O’Brien, who was sheriff 1867–70, and had a large personal following. O’Brien distributed his money lavishly while he held office, and retired from a post worth $100,000 a year as poor as when he entered it. To recompense himself, he presented a claim for $200,000 to the Board of Special Audit, and this body, which did not fear him now that he was out of office, rejected it. Tweed knew that it was a mistake, but was overruled. It happened that in December, 1870, the County Auditor, a loyal servant to Tweed, was fatally injured in a sleigh accident, and as a result of some transfers which followed, one of O’Brien’s friends obtained a position in the County Bookkeeper’s office. There he discovered the bogus accounts used in stealing millions during the erection of the Courthouse, and placed transcripts of them in O’Brien’s hands. In vengeful spirit, the ex-sheriff in the early summer of 1871 brought them to the office of the latest recruit to the anti-Tweed ranks, the Times, and the Times made admirable use of them.

It would be pleasant for historians of journalism to record that one of the great New York newspapers itself conducted an investigation into Tweed’s looting of the city and fully exposed him. If any managing editor could claim the credit which has to be given an overturned sleigh and a jealous ex-sheriff, he would be immortal. Why, when the Evening Post and Tribune had been attacking the régime of graft for years, did they not cut into the tumor? We may lay part of the blame on journalistic timidity, and the lack at that time of a tradition of investigative enterprise in journalism; but the chief answer lies in the care with which the Ring guarded its secrets. It had seemed for a moment the previous fall to invite inquiry. Connolly, with a parade of injured virtue, asked six eminent business men—William B. Astor, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and others—to inspect his books, and these six, who commanded public confidence, had reported on Nov. 1 “that the financial affairs of the city, under the charge of the Controller, are administered in a correct and faithful manner.” But the Ring’s real misdeeds were kept under cover.

The vigor with which the Post attacked the Ring slackened during the early months of 1871. Bryant was engrossed in his translations from Homer. Nordhoff quarreled with Isaac Henderson over what the latter thought the undue violence of his denunciation of Tweed, was offered a long vacation with pay on the understanding that he should look for another place, and resigned the managing editorship to Charlton Lewis, who for a time was more cautious of utterance. But by the 1st of July we find the Evening Post as vehement as ever.

It was particularly aroused against the Ring by the bloody Orange Riot of July 12, 1871, one of the most disgraceful of the city’s outbreaks. The previous year an unprovoked attack had been made upon an Orange picnic at Elm Park by some Irish Catholics who broke down the fence, assailed men, women, and children with revolvers and stones, killed three outright, wounded eleven mortally, and seriously injured forty or fifty. The Orangemen in 1871 prepared to celebrate Boyne Day by a parade, as they had a perfect right to do, and by July 10 it was rumored that the hooligans meant to attack them again. That day the Post published a warning editorial, saying the city authorities must prepare to quell the mob “by the quickest means.” But Mayor Hall and Superintendent of Police Kelso issued orders that the police should disperse, not the assailants, but the Orange procession; and this made the Post furious. It meant that the Tammany Ring, “with a cynical contempt for law and order, have taken the part of the mob.” Very properly, Gov. Hoffman overruled Mayor Hall, and directed that the Orangemen be protected in any lawful assemblage. On the 12th the parade formed, and began its march under a strong escort of police and militia. The more turbulent Irish element was out in force, lining the route threateningly. As the parade passed along Eighth Avenue near Twenty-sixth Street, a shot was fired by an Irishman from a second story window at the Ninth Regiment, and was the signal for other shots and a shower of brickbats and stones. The order to fire was given, the Eighty-fourth Regiment—according to the Post—was the first to respond, and before the mob was dispersed the street was full of the dead and dying. The Evening Post had nothing but praise for the militia, nothing but abuse for the city government. Bryant penned a ringing editorial upon Tweed:

New York, like every great city, contains a certain number of idle, ignorant, and lawless people. But these classes are not dangerous to our peace, either by their numbers or by their organization. They are dangerous and injurious only because they are the tools of Tweed, Sweeney, Oakey Hall, Connolly, and the Ring of corruptionists of whom these four persons are the leaders. Depose the Tammany Ring and all danger from the “dangerous classes” will cease. It is because these know themselves to be supported by the Ring, because they are employed when they want employment, salaried when they are idle, succored when they commit petty crimes, pardoned when they are convicted, and flattered at all times by the Tammany Ring, that they have become so audacious and restless....

The Tammany Ring purposely panders to the worst and most dangerous elements and passions of our population. It cares nothing for liberty, nothing for the rights of the citizen, nothing for the public peace, for law and order; it cares only to fasten itself upon the city, and chooses to use, for that end, the most corrupt and demoralizing means, and the most lawless and dangerous part of our population. It is the Head of the Mob. It rules by, and through, and for the Mob; and unless it is struck down New York has not yet seen the worst part of its history.

It was soon struck down. The Times began the verbatim publication of O’Brien’s evidence on July 22, 1871, with a masterly analysis of it. The Evening Post’s editorial that afternoon took the view that the Times’s evidence was in all probability valid to the last figure, that the Ring could not disprove it, and that it made the refusal of the authorities to show their accounts intolerable. During the seven days that the Times required for publishing all of O’Brien’s transcripts the Post carried half a dozen editorials pressing this opinion.

However, the “secret accounts” so courageously brought out by the Times offered little more than the starting point of the exposure. They consisted of the dates and amounts of certain payments by Controller Connolly, their objects, and the names of the men who received them. The enormous sums disbursed, taken in connection with the brevity of the time, the inadequacy of the objects, and the recurrence of the same names as recipients, made the public certain that the Ring had stolen on a colossal scale. A single carpenter, for example, had been paid $360,000 for one month’s repairs on the new Courthouse. But as yet there was no legal proof against any one official. There was no evidence, sufficient to sustain a civil or criminal action, which disclosed the principals behind the bogus accounts. Moreover, redress could not be sought from the Aldermen, who were allies of the Ring, and powerless under the new Charter anyway; from the District Attorney, who was Tweed’s friend; from the grand juries, which were packed; or from the Legislature, which was not in session. Tweed might well exclaim, “What are you going to do about it?”

The Times, the Post, and other papers could do no more than continue their attacks on the Ring, call for exhibition of the city’s books, and express their faith that in the November election punishment would be made certain by the choice of a reform Legislature and a zealous Attorney-General. Several journals did less. The World, for example, was so far misled by Democratic partisanship as to assume an attitude of apology for the Ring. But the work of the Times and O’Brien bore its first fruit when on Sept. 4 a great city mass-meeting was held at which a Committee of Seventy was appointed; and a more important result followed ten days later when Controller Connolly, after an interview with Tilden, turned traitor to the Ring, and tried to save himself by resigning and deputing the reformer, Andrew H. Green, to take his place.

For the fight was won, as the Evening Post recognized, when the party of good government gained the Controller’s books. Tilden obtained the legal opinion of Charles O’Conor, whose name carried the greatest weight, affirming the right of Mr. Green to hold the office, and gave it to the Evening Post of Sept. 18 for exclusive publication. It caused Mayor Hall to abandon instantly his intention of trying to eject Mr. Green. With the Controllership in their hands, the reformers were able to protect the city records from destruction, to undertake their careful examination, and to find the clues to judicial proofs lying in the Broadway Bank and elsewhere—clues of which Tilden made admirable use. “New York will carry down through the memory and history of the coming years,” said the Post, “the fact that Mr. Tilden threw a flood of light into the widened breach of this fortress of fraud, and that he and Mr. Havemeyer, as the only means of saving the city from bankruptcy, thrust perforce ... Mr. Andrew H. Green, whom they knew to be of stern and honest stuff, into the charge of the depleted treasury.” It was only a few months before the leading Ring members were in jail or exile.