UNION SQUARE, NEW YORK, WITH THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT.
Then, says the legend, ensued the most tremendous battle that has ever been waged between man and his great enemy. For many months the great fight went on, and as Tammany and the Devil wrestled to and fro in mortal combat, whole forests were broken down, and the ground was so effectually trampled under foot that it has remained prairie land to this day. At last, after the forests had been destroyed, and the country trodden flat, St. Tammany, catching his adversary unawares, tripped him up, and hurled him to the ground. It was in the nick of time, for Tammany was so exhausted with the prolonged struggle that when he drew his scalping-knife to make a final end of the Evil One, the fiend, to the eternal regret of all the children of men, succeeded in slipping from Tammany’s clutches. He escaped across the river to New York, where—so runs the legend, as it is recorded by a writer in Harper—“he was hospitably received by the natives, and has ever since continued to make his home.”
Such, in the quaint but suggestive narrative of the ancient myth, is the way in which the Devil first came to New York, where, as if in revenge for his defeat, he seems to have christened the political organisation which has been his headquarters after the name of Tammany.
The Tammany organisation did not in the beginning take its rise in New York. It first sprang into being in the ranks of the revolutionary army of Pennsylvania. Tammany, or Tamanend, as he was then called, was adopted by the Pennsylvanian troops under General Washington as their patron saint. There were two reasons for this. In the first place, it was Hobson’s choice, for St. Tammany was the only native American who had ever been canonised; and, in the second place, nothing seemed more appropriate to the revolutionary heroes than to adopt as their patron saint a brave who had “whipped the Devil.” St. Tammany, therefore, came to be adopted by the American army as a kind of counterpart to our own St. George. St. Tammany and the Devil seemed to be a good counterpoise to the legendary tale of St. George and the Dragon. The 12th of May was Tammany’s Saint’s Day, and was celebrated with wigwams, liberty poles, tomahawks, and all the regular paraphernalia of the Redskin. A soldier attired in Indian costume represented the great Sachem, “and, after delivering a talk full of eloquence for law and liberty and courage in battle to the members of the order, they danced with feathers in their caps and buck tails dangling on behind.” The practice spread from the Pennsylvania troops to the rest of the army, and so popular did Tammany become that May 12th bid fair to be much more a popular national festival than July 4th.
It was not until this century had begun that the Tammany Society was domiciled in New York. It was introduced there by an upholsterer of Irish descent, named William Mooney. He did not take much stock in St. Tammany, but preferred to call his Society the Columbian Order, in honour of Columbus. The transactions of the Society dated from the discovery of America. Besides the European head, who was to be known as the Great Father, there were to be twelve Sachems, or counsellors—“Old Men” being the Indian signification of the word; a Sagamore, or master of ceremonies; a Wiskinkie, or doorkeeper of the sacred wigwam; and a Secretary.
The Society from its outset appears to have been political, but in its early days it combined charity with politics. In the second year of its existence it undertook the establishment of a Museum of Natural History, and got together the exhibits which formed the nucleus of Barnum’s famous museum. It was a social and convivial club, which met first in a hotel of Broadway, then in a public-house in Broad Street, and finally in the Pig-pen, a long room attached to a saloon kept by one Martling. In 1811 it erected a hall of its own. Its present address is “Tammany Hall, Fourteenth Street.”
There is no necessity to do more than glance at the curious beginnings of a society which is perhaps the most distinctively American of all the associations that have ever been founded in the New World. A writer of “The Story of Tammany,” which appeared in Harper’s Magazine many years ago, from which most of these facts are taken, says:—
The Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, is doubtless the oldest purely self-constituted political association in the world, and has certainly been by far the most influential. Beginning with the government, for it was organised within a fortnight of the inauguration of the first President, and at a spot within the sound of his voice as he spoke his first official words to his countrymen, it has not only continued down to the present time—through nearly three generations of men—but has controlled the choice of at least one President, fixed the character of several national as well as State administrations, given pseudonyms to half a dozen well-known organisations, and, in fact, has shaped the destiny of the country in several turning-points of its history.
Few suspect, much less comprehend, the extent of the influence this purely local association has exerted. To its agency more than any other is due the fact that for the last three-quarters of a century New York city has been the most potent political centre in the world, not even Paris excepted. Greater than a party, inasmuch as it has been the master of parties, it has seen political organisation after organisation, in whose conflicts it has fearlessly participated, arise, flourish, and go down, and yet has stood ready, with powers unimpaired, to engage in the struggles of the next crop of contestants. In this experience it has been solitary and peculiar. Imitators it has had in abundance, but not one of them has succeeded in catching that secret of political management which has endowed Tammany with its wonderful permanency.