It was not until about the middle of the century that Tammany laid the hand upon the agency which for nearly fifty years has been the sceptre of its power. A certain Southerner, rejoicing in the name of Rynders, who was a leading man in Tammany in the Forties, organised as a kind of affiliated institution the Empire Club, whose members were too disreputable even for Tammany. These men, largely composed of roughs and rowdies, who rejoiced in the expressive title of the Bowery Plug Uglies, were the first to lay their hand upon the immigrant and utilise him for the purpose of carrying elections. Mr. Edwards, writing in McClure’s Magazine, says:—
It was the Empire Club, indeed, which taught the political value of the newly-arrived foreigner. Its members approached the immigrants at the piers on the arrival of every steamship or packet; conducted them into congenial districts; found them employment in the city works, or perhaps helped them to set up in business as keepers of grog-shops.
“Politics in Louisiana,” General Grant is reported to have said on one occasion, “are Hell.” They seem to have been very much like hell in the days when the Plug Uglies with Rynders at their head ruled the roast at Tammany. Mr. Edwards tells a story which sheds a lurid ray of light on the man and manners of that time. Mr. Godwin, who preceded Mr. Godkin in the incessant warfare which the Evening Post has waged against Tammany, had given more than usual offence to Rynders. That worthy, therefore, decided to assassinate the editor as he was taking his lunch at the hotel. Mike Walsh, however, a plucky Irishman, interfered, and enabled Godwin to make his escape. When the intended victim had gone out—
Rynders stepped up to Walsh and said: “What do you mean by interfering in this matter? It is none of your affair.”
“Well, Godwin did me a good turn once, and I don’t propose to see him stabbed in the back. You were going to do a sneaking thing; you were going to assassinate him, and any man who will do that is a coward.”
“No man ever called me a coward, Mike Walsh, and you can’t.”
“But I do, and I will prove that you are a coward. If you are not one, come upstairs with me now. We will lock ourselves into a room; I will take a knife and you take one; and the man who is alive after we have got through, will unlock the door and go out.”
Rynders accepted the challenge. They went to an upper room. Walsh locked the door, gave Rynders a large bowie-knife, took one himself, and said: “You stand in that corner, and I’ll stand in this. Then we will walk towards the centre of the room, and we won’t stop until one or the other of us is finished.”
Each took his corner. Then Walsh turned and approached the centre of the room. But Rynders did not stir. “Why don’t you come out?” said Walsh. Rynders, turning in his corner, faced his antagonist, and said: “Mike, you and I have always been friends; what is the use of our fighting now? If we get at it, we shall both be killed, and there is no good in that.” Walsh for a moment said not a word; but his lip curled, and he looked upon Rynders with an expression of utter contempt. Then he said: “I told you you were a coward, and now I prove it. Never speak to me again.”
Mike Walsh, the hero of this episode of the bowie-knife, is notable as having been the first man to publicly accuse Tammany of tampering with the ballot-box. He was not the last by any means; but Tammany seems to have begun well, for, says Mr. Edwards:—