Mayor Harper was a quaint character, and his odd rulings when presiding in Special Sessions were the talk of the town. If a shoemaker, for instance, was arraigned before him, he would say: “Well, we want shoemakers on the island, so we’ll send you up for three months, and be smart while you last, John, be smart.” Or, in the instance of a man who claimed to be “a sort of carpenter”: “Well, we’ll send you up for two months to round your apprenticeship, and the city will take care of your lodging and board, Matthew.”
In the reaction that set in, many voters swung back to Tammany on the general belief that it was no worse than the other parties. This change of sentiment put the organization in good form to carry the city for James K. Polk in November, 1844. A short time before this there had come into distinction one of the most effective auxiliaries of the Wigwam. This was the Empire Club,[24] of No. 28 Park Row. Its chief was Captain Isaiah Rynders, and its membership was made up of a choice variety of picked worthies who could argue a mooted point to a finish with knuckles. Rynders had a most varied career before entering New York politics. A gambler in New Orleans, he mixed in some bowie and pistol fights there in which he was cut severely on the head and elsewhere, and his hat was perforated by a bullet. On a Mississippi steamboat he drove O’Rourke, a pugilist, out of the saloon with a red-hot poker, after O’Rourke had lost at faro and had attempted to kill the winner. These were but a few of his many diversions. In Washington he was arrested with Breedlove and Jewell on suspicion of being connected with the theft of a large sum in Treasury notes, though no proof was found against him. He was a very considerable power in the Wigwam for over twenty years, frequently officiating at meetings there. Chief among the club’s other members of like proclivities were such noted fighters and “unterrified Democrats” as “Country McCleester” (McClusky), “Bill” Ford, “Manny” Kelly, John Ling, “Mike” Phillips, “Bill” Miner, “Denny” McGuire, “Ike” Austin, “Tom” McGuire, “Tom” Freeman and “Dave” Scandlin. After the nomination of Henry Clay, “Johnny” Austin—a common report of the day had it—was offered the sum of $2,000 to bring himself and five of his associates—McClusky, Kelly, Ford, Scandlin and Phillips—into the Unionist Club (a Whig organization) with the hope that they could secure success to the Whigs in the city. Offices also were promised, but the offers were refused; whether because the Wigwam held forth greater inducements is not clear.
Aided by these worthies, and by the popular indignation against the reform administration, the Wigwam men grew confident. They were now heard boasting that they intended electing their entire ticket. There being no longer fear of the Registry law (which the Wigwam had recently influenced a friendly Legislature to repeal on the ground of its discriminative application to New York City alone), fraud was open and general. The vote on its face proved this; since, while New York City could claim a legitimate vote of only 45,000, the Polk electors were credited with 28,216, and the Clay electors with 26,870 votes. For James G. Birney, the Abolition candidate, but 118 votes were polled, or at least counted.
The Tammany General Committee, on January 13, 1845, passed resolutions favoring the annexation of Texas and calling a public meeting. With a view of glorifying John Tyler—to whom they owed their positions—and at the same time of winning the good will of the incoming administration, the Custom House officers tried to anticipate the committee’s action, but were not allowed to use the hall. Resolved, at any rate, to control the meeting regularly called, they crowded two thousand of their creatures, under the leadership of Rynders, into the Wigwam. The meeting was soon one of uproar, turbulence and some fighting. Rynders had his resolutions adopted “amid yells, shouts, screams, oaths, cheers, blasphemy, hisses and an uproar never before known in the pandemonium of politics.” It was the generally expressed opinion that the time had come when the proceedings of a meeting at Tammany Hall were no longer to be considered as any certain indication of the opinions of the Democratic party; that a class of men who chose to organize themselves for the purpose, by being early on the ground, acting in concert and clamoring according to certain understood signals, could carry any set of resolutions they pleased, in the very teeth of the large majority of the Democratic party.
In the local campaign of 1845 Tammany acted sagaciously. It nominated William F. Havemeyer for Mayor, laying stress on the fact that he was a “native New Yorker.” The Native Americans renominated Harper, and the Whigs, Dudley Selden. The vote stood: Havemeyer, 24,183, Harper, 17,472; Selden, 7,082. Tammany secured a majority of 26 on joint ballot in the Common Council—the real power.
Mayor Havemeyer sincerely tried to effect reforms. In the beginning of his term he urged the fact that the Common Council united in itself nearly all the executive with all the legislative power, and declared that its main business was to collect and distribute, through the various forms of patronage, nearly a million and a half dollars a year.[25] His attacks upon the arbitrary powers and corrupt practises of the Common Council made so little impression upon that body that on May 13, the very first day of convening, the Aldermen, immediately after the reading of the Mayor’s message, removed not less than seventy officials, from the heads of departments to Street Inspectors;[26] and on subsequent days the process was continued until every post was filled with a Tammany man.
But the effect upon the public mind was such that in 1846 a new charter was drafted and adopted, which deprived the Common Council of the power which it hitherto had enjoyed of appointing the heads of departments, and gave their election direct to the people.
Mayor Havemeyer not being pliable enough for the Wigwam leaders, they nominated and elected, in the Spring of 1846, Andrew H. Mickle, by a vote of 21,675, the Whigs receiving 15,111, and the Native Americans 8,301.[27] Mayor Mickle was regarded as “one of the people.” He was born in a shanty in the “bloody ould Sixth,” in the attic of which a dozen pigs made their habitation. Marrying the daughter of the owner of a large tobacco house, he later became its proprietor. He improved his opportunities, business and official, so well that he died worth over a million dollars.