After this election William M. Tweed's supremacy was acknowledged. In 1867 he had captured the Assembly and elected most of the State officials; in 1868, after forcing the nomination of John T. Hoffman, he made him governor by a system of gigantic frauds; and now in 1869, having employed similar tactics in the southern tier of counties, he had carried the Senate by four majority, secured the Assembly by sixteen, and for the third time elected the State officials. This made him leader of the State Democracy. Seymour so understood it, and Tilden knew that he existed only as a figure-head.
Tweed's power became more apparent after the Legislature opened in January, 1870. He again controlled the Assembly committees through William Hitchman, his speaker; he arranged them to his liking in the Senate through Allen C. Beach, the lieutenant-governor; and he sweetened a majority of the members in both houses with substantial hopes of large rewards. This defeated an organisation, called the Young Democracy, which hoped to break his power by the passage of a measure known as the Huckleberry Charter, transferring the duties of State commissions to the Board of Aldermen. Then Tweed appeared with a charter. Sweeny was its author and home-rule its alleged object. It substituted for metropolitan commissions, devised and fostered by Republicans, municipal departments charged with equivalent duties, whose heads were appointed by the mayor. It also created a department of docks, and merged the election of city and state officials. Its crowning audacity, however, was the substitution of a superintendent of public works for street commissioner, to be appointed by the mayor for a term of four years, and to be removable only after an impeachment trial, in which the entire six judges of the Common Pleas Court must participate. It was apparent that this charter perpetuated whatever was most feared in the system of commissions, and obliterated all trace of the corrective. It was obvious, also, that by placing officials beyond the reach of everybody interested in their good behaviour except the Courts, whose aid could be invoked only by the mayor, and by him only for the extreme offense of malfeasance, it gave a firmer hold to a Ring actuated by the resolute determination to enrich itself at the public expense.
Yet this measure encountered little opposition. The Young Democracy, backed by Tilden and the remnant of the Albany Regency, exposed its dangerous features, the Times called it an "abominable charter,"[475] and Manton Marble bitterly denounced it. But Tweed raised no flag of truce, and after the distribution of a million of dollars the Sweeny charter had an easy passage through both houses, the Senate recording but two votes against it and the Assembly only five.[476] It was said that five Republican senators received $40,000 each, and six others $10,000 each. Six hundred thousand went to a lobbyist to buy assemblymen.[477] Within three days after its passage (April 5) the Governor had approved it, the Mayor had appointed Tweed to the position of most power, and Sweeny had taken the place of most lucre. Thereafter, as commissioner of public works, the Boss was to be "the bold burglar," and his silent partner "the dark plotter." A week later the departments of police and health, the office of comptroller, the park commission, and the great law bureau had passed into the control of their pals, with Connolly as "sneak-thief" and Hall "the dashing bandit of the gang."[478] Indeed, a month had scarcely elapsed before the ad interim Board of Audit, authorised by the Legislature as an additional scheme for theft, and composed of Tweed, Hall, and Connolly, had ordered the payment of $6,000,000, and within the year, as subsequent revelations disclosed, its bills aggregated $12,250,000, of which 66 per cent. went to the thieves.[479]
John T. Hoffman approved Tweed's measures. During the earlier months of his gubernatorial career his veto of several bills granting aid to railroads gave promise of independence, but after Tweed and Sweeny became directors of the Erie he approved the measure enabling corrupt operators to retain possession of the road for an indefinite period in defiance of the stockholders. It is probable that the real character and fatal tendency of his associates had not been revealed to him. Nevertheless, ambition seems to have blunted a strong, alert mind. The appointment of Ingraham, Cardozo, and Barnard to the General Term of the Supreme Court within the city of New York, if further evidence were needed, revealed the Governor's subserviency. To avoid the Tweed judges as well as interruption to the business of the Courts, the Bar Association asked the Executive to designate outside judges. Tweed understood the real object, and before the lawyers' committee, consisting of Charles O'Conor, Joseph H. Choate, Henry Nicoll, William H. Peckham, and William E. Curtis, could reach Albany, the Governor, under telegraphic instructions from the Boss, appointed the notorious trio. Such revelations of weakness plunged the Evening Post and other admirers into tribulation. "The moral of Hoffman's fall," said the Nation, "is that respectable citizens must give up the notion that good can be accomplished by patting anybody on the back who, having got by accident or intrigue into high official position, treats them to a few spasms of virtue and independence.... Had Hoffman held out against the Erie Ring he would have had no chance of renomination, all hope of the Presidency would be gone, and he would find himself ostracised by his Democratic associates."[480]
Hoffman knew this as well as the Nation, and his obedience made him the favourite of the Democratic State convention which assembled at Rochester on September 21, 1870. It was a Tweed body. When he nodded the delegates became unanimous. Tilden called it to order and had his pocket picked by a gentleman in attendance.[481] "We hope he has a realising sense of the company he keeps," said the Nation, "when he opens conventions for Mr. Tweed, Mr. Hall, and Mr. Sweeny."[482] A week later it expressed the opinion that "Tilden's appearance ought to be the last exhibition the country is to witness of the alliance of decent men for any purpose with these wretched thieves and swindlers."[483] The plundering Boss denied so much as a hearing to the Young Democracy whom Tilden encouraged, while their delegates, without vote or voice or seat, witnessed the renomination of Hoffman by acclamation, and saw the programme, drafted by Tweed, executed with unanimity. Mighty was Tammany, and, mightier still, its Tweed! The Rochester authorities urged the departure of the delegates before dark, and upon their arrival at Jersey City the next morning the local police made indiscriminate arrests and locked up large batches of them, including a Commissioner of Charities and Correction.[484]