FOOTNOTES
[1] Many of the “Barnburners” had finally broken with the Democratic party, and were now acting independently as Free Soilers. Afterward, in great part, these independents gravitated to the new Republican party.
[2] This affair was exploited in the General Courts later. Seven rioters were arrested.
[3] The statements of both sides were published officially in the New York Herald, February 10, 1853, the bare facts covering more than an entire page of solid print.
CHAPTER XIX
A CHAPTER OF DISCLOSURES
1853-1854
Now came an appalling series of disclosures regarding public officials. Acting on the affidavit of James E. Coulter, a lobbyist, charging that there was a private organization[1] in the Board of Aldermen formed to receive and distribute bribes, the Grand Jury, after investigation, handed down a presentment, on February 26, 1853, together with a vast mass of testimony.
“It was clearly shown,” stated the presentment, “that enormous sums of money have been expended for and towards the procurement of railroad grants in the city, and that towards the decision and procurement of the Eighth Avenue Railroad grant a sum so large that would startle the most credulous was expended; but in consequence of the voluntary absence of important witnesses, the Grand Jury was left without direct testimony of the particular recipients of the different amounts.”[2]
Solomon Kipp, one of the grantees of the Eighth and Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises, admitted frequently to a member of the Grand Jury that he had expended, in 1851, upwards of $50,000 in getting them. Five grantees of the Third Avenue Railroad franchise swore that upwards of $30,000 was paid for it in 1852 in bribes to both boards.[3] Of this sum Alderman Tweed received $3,000. Chief among those who bribed the Aldermen were Elijah F. Purdy (one of the line of Grand Sachems) and Myndert Van Schaick, who only a few years before had been the Tammany candidate for Mayor. A franchise for a surface railroad on Broadway, with scarcely any provision for compensation and with permission to charge a five-cent fare, was given to Jacob Sharp, over five profitable bids from responsible persons. One applicant, Thomas E. Davies, had offered to give the city one cent for every fare charged. In another application, Davies, D. H. Haight and others had offered $100,000 a year and the payment of a license fee of $1,000 on each car (the prevailing fee being $20) for a ten-years’ grant, on the agreement to charge a five-cent fare. There were two other offers equally favorable.[4] When Mayor Kingsland had vetoed the bill[5] the Aldermen had repassed it, notwithstanding an injunction forbidding them to do so.[6]