The one Tammany candidate for Senator elected was the “Boss” himself, and he won by over 9,000 majority. The frauds in his district were represented by careful observers as enormous. In many precincts it was unsafe to vote against him. Opposing voters were beaten and driven away from the polls, the police helping in the assaults. The reelection of Tweed, good citizens thought, was the crowning disgrace, and measures were soon taken which effectually prevented him from taking his seat.
On November 20 Connolly resigned as Controller, and Andrew H. Green was appointed in his place. On November 25 Connolly was arrested and held in $1,000,000 bail. Unable to furnish it, he was committed to jail. On December 16 Tweed was indicted for felony. While being taken to the Tombs he was snatched away on a writ of habeas corpus and haled before Judge Barnard, who released him on the paltry bail of $5,000. A fortnight later, forced by public opinion, Tweed resigned as Commissioner of Public Works, thus giving up his last hold on power.
The careers of the “ring” men after 1871 form a striking contrast to their former splendor. Tweed ceased to be Grand Sachem. Almost every man’s hand seemed raised against him. The newspapers which had profited most by his thefts grew rabid in denouncing him and his followers, and urged the fullest punishment for them.
He was tried on January 30, 1873. The jury disagreed. During the next Summer he fled to California. Voluntarily returning to New York City, against the advice of his friends, he was tried a second time, on criminal indictments, on November 19. Found guilty on three-fourths of the 120 counts, Judge Noah Davis sentenced him to twelve years’ imprisonment and to pay a fine of $12,000. Upon being taken to Blackwell’s Island, the Warden of the Penitentiary asked him the usual questions: “What occupation?” “Statesman!” he replied. “What religion?” “None.”
After one year’s imprisonment, Tweed was released by a decision of the Court of Appeals, on January 15, 1875, on the ground that owing to a legal technicality the one year was all he was required to serve. Anticipating this decision, Tilden and his associates had secured the passage of an act by the Legislature, expressly authorizing the People to institute a civil suit such as they could not otherwise maintain. New civil suits were then brought against Tweed, and as soon as he was discharged from the Penitentiary he was rearrested and held in $3,000,000 bail.
This bail he could not get, and he lay in prison until December 4, when, while visiting his home, in the custody of two keepers, he escaped. For two days he hid in New Jersey, and later was taken to a farm-house near the Palisades. He disguised himself by shaving his beard and clipping his hair, and wearing a wig and gold spectacles. Fleeing again, he spent a while in a fisherman’s hut near the Narrows, visiting Brooklyn and assuming the name of “John Secor.” Leaving on a schooner, he landed on the coast of Florida, whence he went to Cuba in a fishing smack, landing near Santiago de Cuba. The fallen “Boss” and a companion were at once arrested as suspicious characters—the Ten Years’ War being then in progress—and Tweed was recognized. He, however, smuggled himself on board the Spanish bark Carmen, which conveyed him to Vigo, Spain. Upon the request of Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State, he was arrested and turned over to the commander of the United States man-of-war Franklin, which brought him back to New York on November 23, 1876.
In one of the civil suits judgment had been given against him for over $6,000,000. Confessing to this, he was put in jail, to be kept there until he satisfied it, a requirement he said he was unable to meet. The city found no personal property upon which to levy. Tweed testified in 1877 that he held about $2,500,000 worth of real estate in 1871, and that at no time in his life was he worth more than from that amount to $3,000,000.[7] He had recklessly parted with a great deal of his money, he stated. He testified also to having lost $600,000 in two years in fitting up the Metropolitan Hotel for one of his sons,[8] and to having paid his lawyers $400,000 between 1872 and 1875. His escape from Ludlow Street Jail had cost him $60,000. It is reasonably certain that he had been blackmailed on all sides, and besides this, as has already been shown, he had been compelled to disgorge a vast share of the plunder to members of the Legislature and others. When his troubles began he transferred his real estate—and, it is supposed, his money—to his son, Richard M. Tweed.
In Ludlow Street Jail he occupied the Warden’s parlor, at a cost of $75 a week. As he lay dying, on April 12, 1878, he said to the matron’s daughter: “Mary, I have tried to do good to everybody, and if I have not, it is not my fault. I am ready to die, and I know God will receive me.” To his physician, Dr. Carnochan, he said: “Doctor, I’ve tried to do some good, if I haven’t had good luck. I am not afraid to die. I believe the guardian angels will protect me.” The matron said he never missed reading his Bible. According to S. Foster Dewey, his private secretary, Tweed’s last words were: “I have tried to right some great wrongs. I have been forbearing with those who did not deserve it. I forgive all those who have ever done evil to me, and I want all those whom I have harmed to forgive me.” Then throwing out his hand to catch that of Luke, his black attendant, he breathed his last.
Only eight carriages followed the plain hearse carrying his remains, and the cortège attracted no attention. “If Tweed had died in 1870,” said the cynical Coroner Woltman, one of his former partizans, “Broadway would have been festooned with black, and every military and civic organization in the city would have followed him to Greenwood.”