CHAPTER XXII
THE CIVIL WAR AND AFTER
1859-1867
The stirring years of the Civil War were drawing near. In this crisis, Tammany, ever pro-slavery, dealt in no equivocal phrases. On November 1, 1859, at a meeting called to order by Isaac V. Fowler, James T. Brady, acting as president, referred to John Brown’s raid as “riot, treason and murder.” Brady and others spoke dolefully of the dire consequences of a continuation of the abolition agitation and prophesied that if the “irrepressible conflict” ever came, it would result in an extermination of the black race.
But Grand Sachem Fowler was not to officiate at any more meetings. He had been living for several years at a rate far beyond his means. In one year his bill at the New York Hotel, which he made the Democratic headquarters, amounted to $25,000.[1] He had spent $50,000 toward the election of Buchanan. A social favorite, he gave frequent and lavish entertainments.[2] President Pierce had appointed him Postmaster, but the salary was only $2,500 a year, and he had long ago exhausted his private means and much of the property of his family. It was therefore a source of wonder whence his money came. The problem was cleared up when, on May 10, 1860, he was removed from office, and an order was issued for his arrest under the accusation of having embezzled $155,000.[3] The filching, it appeared, had been going on since 1855.[4]
Isaiah Rynders, then United States Marshal at New York, upon receiving orders to arrest Fowler, went to his hotel, but tarried at the bar and by his loud announcement of his errand, allowed word to be taken to Fowler, who forthwith escaped. He subsequently made his way to Mexico. His brother, John Walker Fowler, who upon recommendation of the “seven Sachems” had been appointed clerk to Surrogate Gideon J. Tucker, subsequently absconded with $31,079.65 belonging to orphans and others.[5]
In 1860 Tammany was greatly instrumental in inducing the Democrats of New York State to agree upon a fusion Douglas-Bell-Breckinridge electoral ticket. On the registration and election days the frauds practised against the Lincoln electors surpassed anything the city had known. In the Third Ward 63 fictitious names were registered in a single election district. Five hundred of the 3,500 names of the Twelfth Ward register were found to be fraudulent. In the Seventeenth Ward 935 names on the registry books were spurious, no persons representing them being discoverable at the places given as their residences. An Irish widow’s two boys, six and seven years old respectively, were registered, mother and sons, of course, knowing nothing of it—and so on ad libitum. Fictitious names, accredited to vacant lots or uninhabited buildings, were voted by the thousands. The announcement of the result gave the Fusionists 62,611 votes, and Lincoln 33,311.
At the outbreak of the war, Mozart Hall, for purposes of political display, took a prompt position in favor of maintaining the Union, although Wood, its master spirit, advocated, in a public message, the detaching of New York City from the Union and transforming it into a free city on the Hamburg plan.[6] Tammany, perforce, had to follow the lead of Mozart Hall in parading its loyalist sentiments. The society raised a regiment, which was taken to the field in June, 1861, by Grand Sachem William D. Kennedy.[7] Tammany long dwelt upon this action as a crowning proof of its patriotism.
The real sentiments of the bulk of Tammany and of Mozart Hall were to the contrary. Both did their best to paralyze the energies of Lincoln’s administration. In a speech to his Mozart Hall followers at the Volks Garden, on November 27, 1861, Wood charged the national administration with having provoked the war, and said that they (the administration) meant to prolong it while there was a dollar to be stolen from the national Treasury or a drop of Southern blood to be shed. At the Tammany celebration of July 4, 1862, Grand Sachem Nelson J. Waterbury, though expressing loyalty to the Union, averred that it was the President’s duty “to set his foot firmly upon abolitionism and crush it to pieces, and then the soldiers would fight unembarrassed, and victory must soon sit upon the National banners.” Declarations of this kind were generally received with enthusiasm in both halls.
At times, however, under the sting of severe public criticism, Tammany Hall made haste to assert its fealty to the Union cause. In September, 1861, Elijah F. Purdy, chairman of its general committee, issued a statement that “Tammany Hall had maintained an unswerving position upon this great question from the time the first gun was fired to the present hour. It has been zealously devoted to the Union, in favor of upholding it with the utmost resources of the nation, and opposed to any action calculated to embarrass the Government or to prevent all loyal men from standing together in solid column for the country.” Tammany put forth the claim that “three-fourths of the volunteer soldiers enlisted in this city and at the seat of war, are Democrats attached to Tammany Hall”; and on October 3, 1861, resolved that with a deep sense of the peril in which the Union and the Constitution were involved by the reckless war being waged for their destruction by armed traitors, it (Tammany Hall) held it to be the first and most sacred duty of every man who loved his country to support the Government.
The war, which so engaged and diverted the popular mind, served as a cover for the continued manipulation of primaries and conventions, and the consummation of huge schemes of public plunder. Wood himself pointed out that from 1850 to 1860 the expenses of the city government had increased from over $3,200,000 to $9,758,000, yet his tenure of office from 1860 to 1862 was characterized by even worse corruption than had flourished so signally in his previous terms. After his installation, in 1860, it was charged that he had sold the office of City Inspector to Samuel Downes, a man of wealth, for $20,000; that Downes had paid $10,000 to certain confederates of Wood, and that he had afterward been cheated out of the office. Another charge, the facts of which were related in a presentment by the Grand Jury, accused Wood of robbing the taxpayers of $420,000. The Common Council had awarded a five-years’ street-cleaning contract to Andrew J. Hackley, at $279,000 a year, notwithstanding the fact that one among other responsible persons had bid $84,000 a year less. Afraid to submit the contract to the ordeal of public opinion, which might give rise to injunctions, the Common Council sped it through both boards on the same night. Waiting in his office until nearly midnight for the express purpose of signing it, the Mayor hastily affixed his signature the moment it reached him. The Grand Jury found that the sum of $40,000 in bribes had been raised and paid for the passage of the contract. It was asserted that the equivalent Wood received for signing the bill was one-fourth the amount of the contract, or $69,750 a year, for five years, free of any other consideration than his signature, the other beneficiaries of the contract supplying all the money needed to protect the fraud. Spurred on by public opinion, the police—when the work was not done in compliance with the contract—had reported to the Controller, who had refused to pay the monthly bills. Then the contractors reduced the pay of their laborers from $1.25 to 95 cents a day in order to make good their payments to Wood.[8]