Meanwhile the Sachems were professing the highest virtue. The society’s calls for meetings ran like this:
“Tammany Society, or Columbian Order—Brothers, You are requested to assemble around the council fire in the Great Wigwam, No. 1, on Saturday, the 12th inst., at 9 o’clock A. M. (wearing a bucktail in your hat), to celebrate the anniversary of the Columbian Order and recount to each other the deeds of our departed chiefs and warriors in order that it may stimulate us to imitate them in whatever is virtuous and just.”[12]
The public, however, took another view of the matter. These scandals, and the showing of a deficit in the city’s accounts of $250,000, hurt Tammany’s prestige considerably. The Republican strength in the city at the election of April, 1809, showed a decrease of six hundred votes, the majority being only 116, while the Federalists carried the State, and thus secured control of the Council of Appointment.
The lesson was lost on the leaders. The society at this time was led by various men, of whom Teunis Wortman[13] was considered the chief power. Wortman was as enraged at the defection of these few hundred voters as his successors were at a later day at an adverse majority of tens of thousands. He caused a meeting to be held at Martling’s on May 19, and secured the appointment of a committee, with one member from each of the ten wards, instructed to inquire into the causes contributing to lessen Tammany’s usual majority. The committee was further instructed to call a general meeting of the Republican citizens of the county, on the completion of its investigation, and to report to them, that it might be known who were their friends and who their enemies. Here is to be seen the first manifestation of that systematic discipline which Tammany Hall thereafter exercised. Wortman’s plan excited both Clintonites and Federalists. The committee was called “the committee of spies,” and was regarded generally as the beginning of a system of intimidation and proscription.
In the passionate acrimony of the struggle between Tammany and the Clintons, the Federalists seemed to be well-nigh forgotten. The speakers and writers of each side assailed the other with great fury. One of these was James Cheetham, a Clinton supporter and editor of the American Citizen. Goaded by his strictures, the Tammany Society on the night of February 28, 1809, expelled him from membership on the grounds that he had assailed the general Government and vilified Jefferson.
In the American Citizen of March 1, Cheetham replied that the resolution was carried by trickery. “Tammany Society,” Cheetham continued, “was chartered by the Legislature of the State for charitable purposes. Not a member of the Legislature, when it was chartered, imagined, I dare to say, that it would be thus perverted to the worst purposes of faction.” On May 1 he sent this note to the Grand Sachem:
“Sir, I decline membership in Tammany Society. Originally national and Republican, it has degenerated into a savage barbarity.”
Cheetham then wrote to Grand Sachem Cowdrey for a certified copy of the proceedings, saying he wanted it to base an action which he would bring for the annulment of the charter of the Tammany Society for misuser. Cowdrey expressed regret at not being able to accommodate him. “Tammany Society,” wrote Cowdrey,
“is an institution that has done much good and may and undoubtedly will do more.… I do not think one error can or ought to cancel its long list of good actions and wrest from it its charter of incorporation, the basis of its stability and existence.”
The American Citizen thereupon bristled with fiercer attacks upon Tammany. “Jacobin clubs,” says “A Disciple of Washington,” in this newspaper, July 29, 1809,