With its large majority in the Common Council Tammany at first made a feint at curtailing city expenses. The taxpayers complained that the taxes were upwards of $3,500,000, for which there was little apparent benefit. The new Common Council made professions of giving a spotless administration; but before its term was over it had generally earned the expressive title of “the Forty Thieves.”[4] This was the body that with lavish promises of reform replaced the Whig Common Council. William M. Tweed, an Alderman in the “Forty Thieves” Common Council, was busy in the Fall of this year indignantly defending, in speeches and public writings, the Aldermen from the numerous charges of corruption; but, as will be seen, these charges were by no means groundless.
Since the passings of the Equal Rights party, the mechanics and laborers had taken no concerted part in politics, not even as a faction. But at this period they were far from being lethargic. The recent discoveries of gold and silver had given a quickened pulse to business, enormously increasing the number of transactions and the aggregate of profits. The workers were determined to have their share of this prosperity, and acted accordingly. Old trade-unions were rapidly strengthened and new ones formed. More pay and shorter hours of work were demanded. Between the Spring of 1850 and the Spring of 1853 nearly every trade in the city engaged in one or more strikes, with almost invariable success.
Having now no sincere leaders to prompt them to concerted political action, the workers oscillated listlessly between the two parties. They had lost the tremendous influence secured in the thirties, and the business element had again become dominant. Legislature and Common Council vied with each other in granting exploitative charters, and the persons who secured these, generally by bribery, were considered the leaders of public opinion. Every company demanding special privileges of the State maintained its lobby at Albany. The City Council was more easily reached, and was generally dealt with personally. Fortunes were made by plundering the city and State, and while the conduct of the agents and actual performers in this wholesale brigandage—the lobbyists, Legislators and Aldermen—was looked upon somewhat doubtfully, their employers stood before the world as the representatives of virtue and respectability. The one force which might have stood as a bulwark against this system of pillage had been so completely demoralized by its political experiences that it could now only look on and let matters drift as they would.
In the Baltimore Democratic convention the Wigwam was represented by so boisterous a delegation that its speakers were denied a hearing. Among the delegates were Capt. Rynders, “Mike” Walsh and a number of the same kind. Cass was their favorite, and they shouted for him lustily; but on attempting to speak for him they were invariably howled down, despite the fact that Cass had a majority of the convention almost to the end of the balloting.
The Wigwam, however, lost no time in indorsing the nomination of Franklin Pierce. In this ratification the “Barnburners” joined, ardently urging the election of candidates on a platform which held that Congress had no power under the Constitution “to interfere with the domestic institutions of the States”; which advocated compromise measures, the execution of the Fugitive Slave law, and which opposed all attempts to agitate the slavery question.
The election of November, 1852, was not only for President and Congressmen, but for a long list of officials, city and State. Each of the Wigwam factions began playing for advantage. On July 16 a portion of the general committee met, apparently to accept an invitation to attend the funeral of Henry Clay. The “Barnburners,” finding themselves in a majority, sprang a trick upon the “Hunkers” by adopting a plan of primary elections favorable to their side. Later the general committee, in full meeting, substituted another plan, and a great hubbub followed. A “committee of conciliation,” composed of members of both factions, was appointed. When it met, on August 20, the halls, lobbies and entrances of Tammany Hall were filled with a vicious assortment of persons, chiefly inimical to the general committee. “The bar-room,” wrote a chronicler, “was the scene of several encounters and knockdowns. It was only necessary for a man to express himself strongly on any point, when down he went, by the hammer-fist of one of the fighting men.” Even members of the committee, while passing in and out of the room, were intimidated. Daniel E. Sickles was threatened with personal violence, and it might have gone hard with him had he not taken the precaution of arming himself with a bowie and revolver. Members’ lives were constantly threatened; the scenes of uproar and confusion were indescribable. Mr. Sickles, for his own safety, had to jump from a window to Frankfort street, and other members were forced to retreat through secret byways.[5] It was near day-break when the factions consented to leave the Wigwam.
The anxiety of each was explained by the proceedings at the primaries. The faction having a majority of the inspectors secured by far the greater number of votes, and consequently the delegates who had the power of making nominations. At the primaries of August, 1852, fraud and violence occurred at nearly every voting place. In some instances one faction took possession of the polls and prevented the other from voting; in others, both factions had control by turns, and fighting was desperate. One party ran away with a ballot box and carried it off to the police station. Many ballot boxes, it was alleged, were half filled with votes before the election was opened. Wards containing less than 1,000 legal Democratic voters yielded 2,000 votes, and a ticket which not a hundred voters of the ward had seen was elected by 600 or 700 majority. Whigs, boys and paupers voted; the purchasable, who flocked to either party according to the price, came out in force, and ruffianism dominated the whole.
The police dared not interfere. Their appointment was made by the Aldermen and Assistant Aldermen, with the nominal consent of the Mayor, exclusively on political grounds and for one year. The policeman’s livelihood depended upon the whims of those most concerned in the ward turmoils. A hard lot was the policeman’s. On the one hand, public opinion demanded that he arrest offenders. On the other, most of the Aldermen had their “gangs” of lawbreakers at the polls, and to arrest one of these might mean his dismissal.[6] But this was not all. The politics of the Common Council changed frequently; and to insure himself his position the guardian of the peace must conduct himself according to the difficult mean of aiding his own party to victory and yet of giving no offense to the politicians of the other party. Hence, whenever a political disturbance took place the policeman instantly, it was a saying, became “deaf and blind, and generally invisible.”[7]
The necessity of uniting to displace the Whigs from the millions of city patronage and profit brought the factions to an understanding. Jacob A. Westervelt, a moderate “Hunker,” and a shipbuilder of wealth, who was considered the very essence of “respectability,” and a contrast to Wood, was nominated for Mayor. Tammany planned to have its candidates swept in on the Presidential current. National issues were made dominant, and the city responded by giving the Pierce electors 11,159 plurality, and electing the whole organization ticket.[8] Fraud was common. No registry law was in force to hinder men from voting, as it was charged some did, as often as twenty times. On the other hand, 80,000 tickets purporting to be Democratic, intended for distribution by the Whigs, but not containing the name of a single Democrat, were seized at the post-office and carried in triumph to the Wigwam.
Tammany once more had full control of the city.