Leggett, some years before this, had become a radical Abolitionist. By this time the anti-slavery movement in the city and State had grown to considerable proportions, though as yet it had exercised but little influence on politics. Several riots had taken place in the streets of the city, two rather serious ones happening on July 9 and 10, 1834, and June 21, 1835, and Lewis Tappan, an anti-slavery propagandist, had been mobbed. The local movement gradually acquired new adherents, and constantly increased its propaganda. At this period, however, it was more in the nature of a growing moral force.
During this period another great series of disclosures regarding Tammany chieftains was made public. Samuel Swartwout, whom Jackson had made Collector of the Port shortly after coming into office in 1829, fled from the city late in 1838. He had long been a power in the organization. His name had been mentioned unpleasantly when he, with M. M. Noah and Henry Ogden,[10] contrived by means of their official positions to get $10,000 reward for the recovery of the jewels stolen from the Prince of Orange, though the recovery had been made by others. And in 1833 he had threatened, as Collector of the Port, to remove the Custom House uptown because the merchants would not lend him more than $7,000 on the strength of some worthless “Jersey meadows.” Three years later he was connected with the unsavory Harlem Railroad stock corner and the manipulation of the funds of the Commercial Bank. Early in 1838 he joined forces with the notorious politicians of the Seventh Ward Bank for the defeat of William Leggett for the Democratic nomination for Congress, securing the nomination of Isaac L. Varian in his stead. A few months later the city was astounded to learn that since 1830 he had been systematically robbing the Government, through the manipulation of Custom House receipts, and that the total of his thefts amounted to nearly $1,250,000.[11] Fleeing to Europe, he wandered aimlessly about[12] for many years.[13] The community was so impressed with the size of this defalcation that a verb, “to Swartwout,” was coined, remaining in general use for many years thereafter. A defaulter was generally spoken of as having “Swartwouted.”
A lesser figure in Tammany circles, though a person of considerable consequence, followed Swartwout in flight. This was William M. Price, at the time District Attorney for the Southern District of New York. It was discovered that he had defaulted to the Government in the sum of $75,000. Price, like so many other Tammany politicians of his time, had been mixed up with Seventh Ward Bank politics. During the latter part of his career he had been known as the personal representative in the city of President Van Buren.
During the following Spring, William Paxen Hallett, a member of the “Big Four” against whom the Equal Rights party had so energetically protested in 1836, was made the defendant in a civil suit involving grave fraud. As referee in a suit for damages of one John A. Manning against one Charles J. Morris, Hallett had wrongfully reported that only trifling judgments remained outstanding against Morris, and the court had accordingly given the latter a year’s time in which to make good a judgment for $3,496 rendered in favor of Manning. It appeared, however, in the proceedings before the Superior Court, May 20, 1839, that Hallett knew, or should have known, of a previous judgment against the defendant for $15,014.44 in favor of one Nathan Davis, who during the year of grace seized upon all of Morris’s property, thus defrauding Manning. The testimony was so convincing that Hallett was forced to compromise the suit by paying the damages asked for. Through the influence of the organization, however, he escaped prosecution.
The “ring” of Police Justices had for several years been a crying scandal. Whig and Tammany magistrates were equally involved. Public clamor fixed upon John M. Bloodgood, despite his private charities, as the first victim. The Assistant Aldermen impeached him in January, 1839,[14] and submitted the case to the Court of Common Pleas, by whom he was tried.[15] Testimony was brought out tending to show that the Police Justices, by means of an understanding with policemen and jailers, extorted money from prisoners and shielded counterfeiters, thieves, street walkers and other malefactors from arrest or conviction. The charges were dismissed.[16] Stronger testimony of the same kind was brought out in May, 1840, on the trial of Police Justice Henry W. Merritt, and other testimony involved in the same way Special Justice Oliver M. Lowndes. The case, however, was dismissed.[17]
A strong public agitation had been waged for the reorganization of the criminal courts. The Weekly Herald of February 1, 1840, had made the statement that the farce of conducting the correctional machinery of the city involved a yearly sum of $1,360,564—this sum being the total of judges’, policemen’s and court attendants’ salaries (about $50,000), added to the blackmail exacted from offenders, and various “pickings and stealings.” The statement was an extravagant one; $700,000 would have been nearer the mark. But whatever the sum, the acquittal of the Police Justices by their fellows in judicial evil-doing indicated that the carnival was to continue. The Tammany leaders had been “out” for the two years 1837-38, and were now vigorously making hay while the sun shone, while such of their Whig contemporaries as still held office were vying with the chiefs in systematic and organized plundering.
The Manhattan Bank scandals were made public in February, 1840. This was the bank whose charter Aaron Burr had so ingeniously secured in 1799. It had been a Tammany institution from the beginning, and Tammany politicians had ruled its policies. It was now generally regarded as the leading financial institution in the city, rivaled only by the Bank of America. It carried $600,000 of Government funds on deposit, and, of course, a large city and State fund.
It was now shown that for years it had loaned large sums to Tammany leaders and to family connections of its directors and officials, and that it had spent other large sums for political purposes. The total of its worthless loans and political expenditures reached the enormous sum of $1,344,266.99. Cashier Campbell P. White, tried on the technical charge of stealing several of the bank’s books, was freed through the disagreement of the jury,[18] but on a second trial, charged with assaulting Jonathan Thompson, a Tammany director of the bank who had criticized his management, he was fined $250 and imprisoned for fifteen days.[19] In the midst of the excitement Colin G. Newcomb, the teller, disappeared with $50,000. That the bank weathered the storm well-nigh reaches the dimensions of a miracle. Paulding, twice a Tammany Mayor; Bowne, another Tammany ex-Mayor; and Robert H. Morris, at that time Recorder, appeared as the defendant’s witnesses in the first trial. White was an influential Wigwam chief, and in 1832 had been elected to Congress on the Tammany ticket.