[129] "On the Penitentiary System in the United States," etc., by G. De Beaumont and A. De Tocqueville, Appendix 17, Statistical Notes: 244-245.
[130] A complete error. Walling, for more than thirty years Superintendent of Police of New York City, says in his "Memoirs" that he never knew an instance of a rich murderer who was hanged or otherwise executed. And have we all not noted likewise?
[131] "On the Penitentiary System," etc., 184-185.
[132] Prison Association of New York, Annual Reports, 1844-46. It is characteristic of the origin of all of these charity associations, that many of the founders of this prison association were some of the very men who had profited by bribery and theft. Horace Greeley was actuated by pure humanitarian motives, but such incorporators as Prosper Wetmore, Ulshoeffer, and others were, or had been, notorious in lobbying by bribing bank charters through the New York Legislature.
[133] "The New Yorker," Feb. 17, 1838.
[134] "Reminiscences of John Jacob Astor," New York "Herald," March 31, 1848.
[135] Doc. No. 24, Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant Aldermen, xxix. The Merchant's Bank, for instance, was assessed in 1833 at $6,000; it had cost that sum twenty years before and in 1833 was worth three times as much.
[136] Proceedings of the [New York City] Board of Assistant Aldermen, xxix, Doc. No. 18.
[137] Many eminent lawyers, elected or appointed to high official or judicial office, were financially interested in corporations, and very often profited in dubious ways. The case of Roger B. Taney, who, from 1836, was for many years, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, is a conspicuous example. After he was appointed United States Secretary of the Treasury in 1833, the United States Senate passed a resolution inquiring of him whether he were not a stockholder in the Union Bank of Maryland, in which bank he had ordered public funds deposited. He admitted that he was, but asserted that he had obtained the stock before he had selected that bank as a depository of public funds. (See Senate Docs., First Session, 23rd Congress, Vol. iii, Doc. No. 238.) It was Taney, who as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, handed down the decision, in the Dred Scott case, that negro slaves, under the United States Constitution, were not eligible to citizenship and were without civil rights.
[138] These frauds at the polls went on, not only in every State but even in such newly-organized Territories as New Mexico. Many facts were brought out by contestants before committees of Congress. (See "Contested Elections," 1834 to 1865, Second Session, 38th Congress, 1864-65, Vol. v, Doc. No. 57.) In the case of Monroe vs. Jackson, in 1848, James Monroe claimed that his opponent was illegally elected by the votes of convicts and other non-voters brought over from Blackwell's Island. The majority of the House Elections Committee reported favoring Monroe's being seated. Aldermanic documents tell likewise of the same state of affairs in New York. (See the author's "History of Tammany Hall.") Similar practices were common in Philadelphia, Baltimore and other cities, and in country townships.