The Equal Rights party then nominated Isaac L. Smith, of Buffalo, for Governor, and Moses L. Jacques, of New York City, for Lieutenant-Governor.
To draw from the strength of the new party, some of Tammany’s leaders—Samuel Swartwout, Jesse Hoyt, Stephen Allen, Saul Alley and a few others—professed to favor the repeal of the Restraining law, which in effect prohibited private banking and gave the incorporated institutions a monopoly. The Anti-Monopolists were not to be deluded. On September 21 they declared that in the recent professions of the Tammany corruptionists in advocating this repeal and in favoring some other few minor democratic measures, they beheld the stale expedient of luring the bone and sinew of the country to the support of their monopoly and banking men and measures and that they had no faith in Tammany “usages,” policy or its incorrigible Sachems.
The characters of most of the Wigwam nominations were so tainted that it seemed as if the candidates were put forward in defiance of the best public sentiment. It is not so certain that outside the Equal Rights party the voters were repelled by the current methods of buying legislation and dictating nominations. A low tone of public morals was manifested. Men were bent on money-making. He who could get rich by grace of the Legislature was thought “smart” and worthy of emulation. The successful in politics were likewise to be envied, and, if possible, imitated. A large part of the community bowed in respect to the person of wealth, no matter whence came his riches; and the bank lobbyists were the recipients of a due share of this reverence.
From these men the Tammany leaders selected candidates. One of the Assembly nominees was Prosper M. Wetmore, who had lobbied for the notorious State Bank charter. This bank, according to the charter, was to have $10,000,000 capital, although its organizers did not have more than a mere fraction of that sum. This was going too far, even for Albany, though upon modifying their application, the charter was granted.[26] Reuben Withers and James C. Stoneall, bank lobbyists; Benjamin Ringgold, a bank and legislative “go-between,” and Morgan L. Smith, preeminent among lobbyists, were other Tammany nominees. Notwithstanding the low standards of public morals, these men were so unpopular, that when the form of submitting their names for ratification to the great popular meeting at the Wigwam on November 1, was carried out, a hostile demonstration followed. The names of Wetmore, Smith and Ringgold especially were hooted. But the leaders had groups of “whippers-in” brought in hurriedly to vote affirmatively, and the presiding officer declared all the nominees duly accepted by the people.
Only six of the organization’s thirteen Assembly nominees survived the popular wrath, and the nominees for nearly all the other offices were beaten, notwithstanding the expectation that the Presidential election would carry them in on the party ticket. A number of Tammany men of principle refused to vote. The Whigs, the Native Americans and some “Locofocos” joined forces. They were aided by the panic, which, breaking out shortly before election, reacted against the Democrats. The Equal Rights men as a rule voted for Van Buren. Tammany Hall and the Whigs both committed frauds. Van Buren received 1,124 majority in New York City, which in 1832 had given Jackson nearly 6,000 majority.
Made wiser by defeat, the organization leaders realized the importance of the Equal Rights movement, and caused, as a sop, the passage, in February, 1837, of the bill repealing the Restraining act. The Common Council likewise modified the Pawnbrokers’ act by cutting down the interest to a more reasonable percentage.[27]
Their providence stopped at this point, however,[28] and during the panic Winter following neither Legislature nor Common Council did anything to alleviate the miseries of the poor. On the contrary, the poor complained that the tendency more and more was to use the power of the law to make the rich richer. While the suffering was greatest, Alderman Aaron Clark, a Whig, who had made his fortune from lotteries, proposed that the city spend several millions of dollars to surround its water front with a line of still-water ponds for shipping purposes, his justification for this expenditure being that the North River piers would “raise the price of every lot 25 × 100 feet west of Broadway $5,000 at a jump.”[29] “Millions to benefit landowners and shippers, but not a dollar for the unemployed hungry!” exclaimed the Anti-Monopolists. Alderman Bruen, another Whig, at a time when the fall in the value of real estate in New York City alone exceeded $50,000,000, suggested the underwriting by the city to the speculators for the sum of $5,000,000, to take in pledge the lands they had bought and to give them the bonds of the city for two-thirds their value. To the Equal Rights men there was not much difference between the Tammany Hall and the Whig leaders. Both, it was plain, sweated the people for their own private interests, although the Whigs, inheriting the Federalist idea that property was the sole test of merit, did not flaunt their undying concern for the laborer so persistently as did the Wigwam.
The city in 1837 was filled with the homeless and unemployed. Rent was high, and provisions were dear. Cattle speculators had possession of nearly all the stock, and a barrel of flour cost $12. On February 12 a crowd met in the City Hall Park, after which over 200 of them sped to the flour warehouse of Eli Hart & Co., on Washington street. This firm and that of S. B. Herrick & Son, it was known, held a monopoly in the scarce supply of flour and wheat. The doors of Hart’s place were battered down, and nearly 500 barrels of flour and 1,000 bushels of wheat were taken out and strewed in the street. Herrick’s place likewise was mobbed.[30] On May 10, when the banks suspended specie payments, a vast and excited crowd gathered in Wall Street, and a riot was narrowly averted.[31]
The Equal Rights party could not be bought out or snuffed out. To deprive it of its best leaders Tammany Hall resorted to petty persecution. Jacques and Slamm had headed a petition to the Legislature protesting against the appointment of a certain suspicious bank investigating committee. The Wigwam men in the Legislature immediately secured the passage of a resolution for the appointment of a committee to investigate this petition, and this committee instantly haled Jacques and Slamm to appear at Albany and give testimony.[32] The purpose was plain. The Tammany men sought to have the Equal Rights leaders at Albany, which was not as accessible from the city as now, and there keep them under various pretexts while the Spring campaign for Mayor was going on. Jacques and Slamm did not appear and were adjudged guilty of contempt. When they were most needed in New York City they were arrested and arraigned before the Legislature. William Leggett also was threatened, but escaped arrest.
The Equal Rights party, however, was soon to demonstrate its capacity to do harm to Tammany. The organization nominated John J. Morgan for Mayor; the Whigs named Aaron Clark, and the Equal Rights party opposed them with Jacques. The 3,911 votes Jacques received were enough to defeat Morgan, with his 12,974 votes, against Clark’s 16,140. Worst blow of all, Tammany Hall lost the Common Council. When the new body came in it removed all of the Wigwam’s office-holders that it could. The spoils in the form of annual salaries paid by the city, amounting to $468,000; the perquisites and contracts—such as that for the Croton Aqueduct, in favor of which the people had voted some years before—and other improvements, all went to the Whigs.