This letter appeared in the Sun the next day under the facetious heading: “A Great Man’s Modesty—The Most Remarkable Letter Ever Written by the Noble Benefactor of the People.” Editorial regret was expressed at Tweed’s declination; and, still in solemn mockery, the Sun grieved over the return to the subscribers of the several thousand dollars that had been sent to Shandley’s committee. William J. Florence, the comedian, had put himself down for five hundred dollars.
Was it utterly absurd that the Tweed idolaters should have taken seriously the Sun’s little joke? No, for so serious a writer as Gustavus Myers wrote in his “History of Tammany Hall” (1901) that “one of the signers of the circular has assured the author that it was a serious proposal. The attitude of the Sun confirms this.” And another grave literary man, Dr. Henry Van Dyke, set this down in his “Essays on Application” (1908):
William M. Tweed, of New York, who reigned over the city for seven years, stole six million dollars or more for himself and six million dollars or more for his followers; was indorsed at the heights of his corruption by six of the richest citizens of the metropolis; had a public statue offered to him by the New York Sun as a “noble benefactor of the city,” etc.
Of course Mr. Myers and Dr. Van Dyke had never read the statue articles from beginning to end, else they would not have stumbled over the brick that even Tweed, with all his conceit, was able to perceive.
In July, 1871, when the New York Times was fortunate enough to have put in its hands the proof of what everybody already suspected—that Senator Tweed, Comptroller Connolly, Park Commissioner Sweeny, and their associates were plundering the city—the Sun was busy with its own pet news and political articles, the investigation of the Orange riots and the extravagance and nepotism of President Grant’s administration.
The Sun did not like the Times, which had been directed, since the death of Henry J. Raymond, in 1869, by Raymond’s partner, George Jones, and Raymond’s chief editorial writer, Louis J. Jennings; but the Sun liked the Tweed gang still less. It had been pounding at it for two years, using the head-lines “Boss Tweed’s Legislature,” or “Mr. Sweeny’s Legislature,” every day of the sessions at the State capital; but neither the Sun nor any other newspaper had been able to obtain the figures that proved the robbery until the county bookkeeper, Matthew J. O’Rourke, dug them out and took them to the Times.
The books showed that the city had been gouged out of five million dollars in one item alone—the price paid in two years to a Tweed contracting firm, Ingersoll & Co., for furniture and carpets for the county court-house. Enough carpets had been bought—or at least paid for—to cover the eight acres of City Hall Park three layers deep. And that five million dollars was only a fraction of the loot.
In September, 1871, after the mass-meeting of citizens in Cooper Union, the Sun began printing the revelations of Tweedism under the standing head, “The Doom of the Ring.”
Tweed engaged as counsel, among others, William O. Bartlett, who was not only counsel for the Sun but, next to Mr. Dana, the paper’s leading editorial writer at that time. The boss may have fancied that in retaining Bartlett he retained the Sun, but it is more likely that he sought Bartlett’s services because of that lawyer’s reputation as an aggressive and able counsellor. If Tweed had any delusions about influencing the Sun, they were quickly dispelled. On September 18, in an editorial article probably written by Dana, the Sun said:
While Mr. Bartlett, in his able argument before Judge Barnard on Friday, vindicated Mr. Tweed from certain allegations set forth in the complaint of Mr. Foley, he by no means relieved him from all complicity in the enormous frauds and robberies that have been committed in the government of this city. With all his ability, that is something beyond Mr. Bartlett’s power; and it is vain to hope that either of the leaders of the Tammany Ring can ever regain the confidence of the public, or for any length of time exercise the authority of political office. They must all go, Sweeny, Tweed, and Hall, as well as Connolly.