Upon assuming office, Wood surprised his followers by announcing that he would purge all offices of corruption and give good government. His messages were filled with flattering promises and lofty sentiments. At the outset he seemed disposed for good. He closed the saloons on Sunday, suppressed brothels, gambling houses and rowdyism, had the streets cleaned, and opened a complaint book. The religious part of the community for a time believed in him. He assumed personal charge of the police, and when a bill was introduced in the Legislature to strip him of this power, the foremost citizens called a mass meeting to support him.
The troubles between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells” continued throughout the year 1855. When the latter held their county ratification meeting in the Wigwam and the name of their nominee for Street Commissioner was announced, the “Hardshells,” who had come thither with a nominee of their own, raised an uproar, whereupon “the factions on both sides went to work and pummeled each other pretty soundly and highly satisfactorily to the lookers, for at least ten minutes.”
The election of 1855 was of little consequence. All eyes were now turned to the coming contest of 1856. Before the end of a year Wood had begun to reveal his real nature. Many of the decent element that had for a time believed in him began to turn against him. He had also made himself unpopular with certain powerful Sachems by not giving them either a share, or a large enough share, in the spoils. His appointments were made wholly from a circle of personal friends who were more attached to him than to the Tammany organization. Knowing the folly of expecting a renomination from Tammany, as it was then constituted, he set about obtaining it by trickery.
Inducing Wilson Small, a Custom House officer holding a seat in the general committee, to resign, Wood had himself substituted. Then he personally assumed control of the primary election inspectors in every ward, so as to manipulate the election of convention delegates. He caused the appointment of an executive committee, which was to have the entire choice of inspectors in every instance in which the general committee failed to agree. This new committee was composed mainly of his friends, and he named himself chairman.
His henchmen incited divisions in such of the wards as were not under the control of his inspectors, and the contests, upon being referred to the “executive committee,” were of course decided in Wood’s favor. Thus he appropriated a great majority of the delegates to the nominating convention.
“It is well known,” wrote Peter B. Sweeny and J. Y. Savage, secretaries of the Tammany General Committee, in a long statement denouncing Wood’s thimble-rigging “that for many years this [primary] system has been degenerating until it has become so corrupt as to be a mere machine in the hands of unprincipled men, by which they foist themselves before the people as the nominees of a party for office in defiance of public sentiment.”[1] Sweeny and Savage charged further than when the primary elections took place under this patent process for cheating the people, the ballot boxes were stuffed and detachments of police were stationed at every poll to aid Wood’s agents and bully his opponents. A sickening mass of evidence of corruption was at hand, Sweeny and Savage recounted.
Wood was renominated by the city convention, and at an hour when most of his opponents on the general committee were absent, he had that body endorse his nomination by a vote of 56 to 26, nearly all of those voting being office-holders by his grace.
He also arranged a reconciliation between the “Hardshells” and “Softshells.” With a show of traditional Tammany custom, the “Softs” marched in Indian file to the Stuyvesant Institute, the headquarters of the “Hards,” and the reunited leaders marched back to Tammany Hall—in pairs, arm-in-arm. The “Hardshell”-“Softshell” contention thus became a thing of the past.
But Wood’s personal enemies in the Wigwam were not to be appeased, and they nominated a candidate to oppose him—James S. Libby. Bitter feelings were aroused. At the Wood ratification meeting in the Wigwam, October 22, both Wood and Anti-Wood men crowded in, and then ensued another of those clashes for which Tammany Hall had become so celebrated. When John Kelly mentioned Wood’s name the Anti-Wood men raised a din and smothered the speaker’s voice. The Wood men, growing enraged, “pitched into the Anti-Woodites hot and heavy, and for a time a scene of the wildest clamor ensued. A general fight took place in front of the speaker’s stand and all round the room. Blows were given and exchanged with great spirit, and not a few faces were badly disfigured.” After a few planks had been plucked from the stand and wielded with telling effect, the Wood men won. “The great body of the Libbyites were kicked out of the room and down the stairs with a velocity proportionate to the expelling force behind.”