The sentiment of certain politicians may be taken from John Cochrane’s[20] remark that “he would vote for the devil incarnate if nominated by Tammany Hall.” Meanwhile they took care to make out Wood to be a much-abused man. At the ratification meeting in Tammany Hall, on November 23, long resolutions were passed, fulsomely flattering Wood and asking voters to remember that if Wood was assailed, so Jefferson, Jackson and Daniel Webster were pursued to their graves by harpies. The voters were asked not to be deceived by the abuse of the graceless, godless characters and disappointed demagogues.
Wood and his partizans strained every nerve for success. But it was a futile effort. The opposition won, Tiemann receiving 43,216 votes, to 40,889 for Wood. His large vote, however, showed the dangerous strength of the worst classes of the city, and boded ill for the years to come.
The opposition of the Tammany Society and the general committee having been responsible for his defeat, Wood made renewed efforts to regain sway over both. On their part, elated at his supposed downfall, the Anti-Wood members of the general committee decided to expel Daniel E. Sickles and C. Godfrey Gunther, two of his supporters, and met for that purpose in the Wigwam on December 9, 1857.
Wood’s followers thought proper to impress upon the general committee a sense of their strength. Accordingly, their fighting men were present in full force, awaiting an opportunity to mingle in the proceedings. The probability of a violent row increasing momentarily, the Metropolitan police were summoned to Tammany Hall. For a time they kept the hostiles within bounds; but the bar was well patronized, and large delegations of the “Dead Rabbits” and “shoulder-hitters” from the wards were flowing in constantly.
At 9 o’clock a desperate fight was begun in the center of the bar-room, amid intense excitement. By using their clubs unsparingly, the forty policemen succeeded in separating the combatants, though not before a young man, Cornelius Woods, had been shot in the shoulder with a slug. Unwilling to draw upon themselves the resentment of the influential ward politicians, the police made no arrests. The meeting broke up without definite action being taken in the matter of expelling the two supporters of Wood.
The first and chief point in the struggle for the control of the organization was, as usual, the control of the Tammany Society. Both factions were alive to this necessity. On April 13, 1858, 150 members of the society met at the Westchester House, Bowery and Broome streets, where it was announced that 212 members were pledged to vote for Anti-Wood Sachems. Some of these members were seeking the ascendency for their own benefit, while others were not active in politics at all, but had become disgusted with Wood’s methods and men. At the election, six days later, the Anti-Wood ticket, headed by Isaac V. Fowler and Nelson J. Waterbury, won by a majority of nearly 100, 378 members voting. More than twenty members who had not been at an election of the society for twenty years or more, and a large number who had eschewed voting for ten years, hastened, some from distances, to deposit their votes. Three came from Hudson, a number from Albany, two from Washington, and one from Cincinnati.
The result was Wood’s forced withdrawal from the organization. He immediately started a Democratic organization opposed to Tammany and upon the same lines. It was known generally as “Mozart Hall,” from the name of the assembly room in which it met. Wood denounced Tammany, declaring that its nominees were chosen by five members of the Tammany Society, in a parlor, and ferociously expressed his determination to wage war upon the society as long as he lived until (this reservation was added) “it opened its doors.”
Each hall, as a matter of political business, made the most virtuous and the strongest claims of being the true Democratic organization. Each execrated the other and announced itself as the sole, valiant, sincere upholder of Democracy.
Wood’s enemies made haste to guarantee their ascendency when, on December 28, the Sachems ordered elections for the committees to be held on December 30, thus giving but one day’s notice of the event. Moreover, they forced upon all persons accepting membership in the committees, a pledge that in case of their election they would support the Tammany organization and all nominations made under its authority, and disclaim allegiance to any other organization, party or clique.