Mr. Tweed must not imagine that he can buy his way out of the present complication with money, as he did in 1870. The next Legislature will be made up of different material from the Republicans he purchased, and the people will exercise a sterner supervision over its acts.
A good picture of Tweed’s popularity, which he still retained among his own people, was drawn in an editorial article in the Sun of October 30, 1871, three days after the boss had been arrested and released in a million dollars’ bail:
In the Fourth District William M. Tweed is sure to be re-elected [to the State Senate]. The Republican factions, after a great deal of quarreling, have concentrated on O’Donovan Rossa, a well-known Fenian, but his chance is nothing. Even if it had been possible by beginning in season to defeat Tweed, it cannot be done with only a week’s time.
Besides, his power there is absolute. The district comprises the most ignorant and most vicious portion of the city. It is full of low grog-shops, houses of ill-fame, low gambling-houses, and sailor boarding-houses, whose keepers enjoy protection and immunity, for which they pay by the most efficient electioneering services. Moreover, the district is full of sinecures paid from the city treasury. If, instead of having stolen millions, Mr. Tweed were accused of a dozen murders, or if, instead of being in human form, he wore the semblance of a bull or a bear, the voters of the Fourth District would march to the polls and vote for him just as zealously as they will do now, and the inspectors of election would furnish for him by fraudulent counting any majority that might be thought necessary in addition to the votes really given.
Tweed was re-elected to the State Senate by twelve thousand plurality.
The great robber-boss was a source of news from his rise in the late sixties to his death in 1878. As early as March, 1870, the Sun gave its readers an intimate idea of Tweed’s private extravagances under the heading: “Bill Tweed’s Big Barn—Democratic Extravagance Versus That of the White House—Grant’s Billiard Saloon, Caligula’s Stable, and Leonard Jerome’s Private Theatre Eclipsed—Martin Van Buren’s Gold Spoons Nowhere—Belmont’s Four-in-Hand Overshadowed—a Picture for Rural Democrats.”
Beneath this head was a column story beginning:
The Hon. William M. Tweed resides at 41 West Thirty-sixth Street. The Hon. William M. Tweed’s horses reside in East Fortieth Street, between Madison and Park Avenues.
That was the Sun’s characteristic way of starting a story.
Tweed was, in a way, responsible for the appearance of a Sun more than four pages in size. Up to December, 1875, there was no issue of the Sun on Sundays. In November of that year it was announced that beginning on December 5 there would be a Sunday Sun, to be sold at three cents, one cent more than the week-day price, but nothing was said, or thought, of an increase In size.