A new set of leaders came in view. Wortman and Judah had been forced from public life through the lottery exposures of 1818, and Broome had lost prestige. Hubbard had fled; Haff, Buckmaster, Strong and Prince were no longer powerful, and Jonas Humbert, who until 1820 had been a person of some authority, was now no longer in public notice. Stephen Allen and Mordecai M. Noah, with a following of some of the old Burrites, were now regarded as being at the helm.
The pro-Tammany Council of Appointment chosen late in 1820, before the new constitutional amendments were adopted, had removed Colden and appointed Allen (Grand Sachem about this time) Mayor[1] in his place. Noah was made Sheriff, and all the other offices were filled with Wigwam men.
The new voting element coming into the organization had to be impressed with the traditional principle of discipline. Otherwise there might be all kinds of nominations, whose effect upon the machine-made “regular” nominations of the organization would be disastrous, if not destructive. To this end the different ward committees passed resolutions (April 27 and 28, 1822) declaring in nearly identical terms that the sense of a majority, fairly expressed, ought always to govern, and that no party, however actuated by principle, could be truly useful without organization. “Therefore, that the discipline of the Republican party, as established and practised for the last twenty-five years, has, by experience, been found conducive to the general good and success of the party.”[2]
In 1822 Clinton declined to stand for reelection. Tammany Hall was considered so invincible in the city that the Clintonites and the remnant of the Federalists refused to nominate contesting candidates for Congress and the Legislature. Experience demonstrating that almost all the voters cast their ballots for the “regular” ticket without asking questions, competition for a place on that ticket, which now was equivalent to election, became sharp. When, on October 30, the nominating committee reported the name of M. M. Noah for the office of Sheriff, Benjamin Romaine moved to have that of Peter H. Wendover substituted. Two factors were at work here; one was religious prejudice against Noah, who was a Jew; the other and greater, was the struggle between the partizans of Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams and William H. Crawford to get control of Tammany Hall, as a necessary preliminary to the efforts of each for the nomination for President.[3] Romaine was an Adams supporter and could easily have nominated a ticket independent of Tammany Hall, but it would have lacked “regularity,” and hence popular support. A row ensued; and while Noah’s party rushed out of Tammany Hall claiming the “regular” nomination, the other faction, by the light of a solitary candle, passed resolutions denouncing Noah and claiming that Wendover was the “regular” nominee.
Each of the candidates put himself before the people, declaring that a majority of the nominating committee favored him as “regular.” The leaders of the organization inclined to Noah, as one of its heads, but Wendover skillfully appealed to Anti-Semitic bigotry and gathered a large following. The Sachems dared not interfere between them, and each in consequence had a room in Tammany Hall, where his tickets were distributed and his agents made their headquarters. Noah was defeated at the polls; but his defeat did not impair his influence in Tammany Hall. He was a person of singular ability. A facile writer and effective manipulator, he maintained his hold.
“Regularity,” then, was the agency by which the leaders imposed their candidates upon the thousands of voters who, from their stores and benches, offices and farms, went to the polls to deposit a list of names prepared for them. The voters were expected only to vote; the leaders assumed the burden of determining for whom the voting should be done. An instance of the general recognition of this fact was given in 1820 when the counties of Suffolk, Queens, Kings and Dutchess voted to discontinue the practice of holding Senatorial conventions in Tammany Hall because a fair expression of the wishes of a great proportion of the Democratic-Republican electors was not obtainable there. At the same time, and for years later, complaints were frequent that the ward meetings had long since become an object of so little interest that they were nearly neglected; and that a small knot of six or eight men managed them for their own purposes.
In 1823 attempts were made by different factions to obtain the invaluable “regular” nominations. Seemingly a local election, the real point turned on whether partisans of Jackson, Adams or Crawford should be chosen. Upon this question Tammany Hall was still divided. The nominating committee, however, was for Jackson. The voters were bidden to assemble in the hall at 7 o’clock on the evening of October 30 to hear that committee’s report. When they tried to enter, they found the hall occupied by the committee and its friends. This was a new departure in Tammany practices. Since the building of the hall the nominating committee had always waited in a lower room for the opening of the great popular meeting, and had then marched up stairs and reported. To head off expected hostile action by the Adams men, the committee this time started proceedings before the appointed hour. The names of its candidates were called and affirmed in haste. Gen. Robert Swartwout, a corrupt but skillful politician and an Adams supporter, proposed a substitute list of names, upon which the chairman declared that the meeting stood adjourned. A general fist-fight followed, in the excitement of which Swartwout took the chair, read off a list of names and declared it adopted. Epithets, among which “liar” and “traitor” figured most, were distributed freely. Both tickets went to the people under the claim of “regularity,” and each carried five of the ten wards.
Though Robert Swartwout[4] was for Adams, another Swartwout (Samuel), an even shrewder politician, was Jackson’s direct representative in the task of securing the organization’s support for President. A third and less important group were the Crawford advocates. They were led by Gen. John P. Van Ness, an adroit intriguer and one of the old Burr chieftains of Tammany. In 1821 Adams, then Secretary of State, ascertaining that Van Ness, as president of the Bank of the Metropolis, was indebted to that institution to the amount of $60,000 and that its affairs were in bad condition, transferred the account of the State Department to another bank. From that time Van Ness bore deep hatred against Adams, and supported Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, for President. Crawford had deposited as a standing balance with Van Ness about the same sum Adams had withdrawn, notwithstanding the bank’s suspicious character. The Crawford men went first about the business of obtaining complete ascendency in the Tammany Society. With that end in view they tried in 1823 to elect a Grand Sachem favoring Crawford. The old Burr faction now brought forth a Presidential candidate of its own in the person of John C. Calhoun, and taking advantage of the absence of most of the society’s members, dexterously managed to elect William Todd, a partisan of Calhoun, Grand Sachem.
The popular voice for Jackson becoming daily stronger, some of the Adams leaders changed about. Perhaps having a premonition that Adams would be chosen President by the House of Representatives, the general committee of Tammany Hall, on October 3, 1823, resolved that the election of President by that branch of Congress was “an event to be deprecated,” and that the constitution ought to be so amended as to give the election directly to the people without the intervention of electors. The ward committees passed similar resolutions. This action was on a line with that of a few years before when the Wigwam, fearing the nomination of Clinton for Governor by legislative caucus, recommended that State nominations be made by a State convention of delegates. In the following April (1824) Jackson’s friends filled Tammany Hall and nominated him for President.
Before the election came on, however, the organization, in the full swing of power, again brought public odium upon itself. De Witt Clinton, having filled his gubernatorial term, was now serving in the modest post of a Canal Commissioner, without pay and utterly without political power. Yet Tammany carried its hatred of him so far as to cause the Legislature to remove him (April 12, 1824), despite the protests of a few of its more sagacious members.[5]