Volume I Part 14 (1/2)
”There's a barrel of porter at Tammany Hall, And the Bucktails are swigging it all the night long; In the time of my boyhood 'twas pleasant to call For a seat and cigar 'mid the jovial throng.”
Thus sang Fitz-Greene Halleck of the social customs that continued far into the nineteenth century. Originally, Federalists and anti-Federalists found a welcome around Tammany's council fire; and its bucktail badge, the symbol of liberty, hung from the hat of Clintonian and Hamiltonian alike. But toward the end of Was.h.i.+ngton's second administration the society became thoroughly partisan and thoroughly anti-Federalist, s.h.i.+fting its wigwam to the historic ”Long Room,” at the tavern of Abraham Martling, a favourite hostlery which the Federalists contemptuously called ”the Pig-Pen.” Then it was, that Aaron Burr made Tammany a power in political campaigns. He does not seem to have been its grand sachem, or any sachem at all; nor is it known that he ever entered its wigwam or affiliated as a member; but its leaders were his satellites, who began manufacturing public opinion, manipulating primaries, dictating nominations, and carrying wards.
Out of Burr's candidacy for President sprang Tammany's long and bitter warfare against DeWitt Clinton. The quarrel began in 1802 when Clinton and Cheetham charged Burr with intriguing to beat Jefferson; it grew in bitterness when Clinton turned Burr and the Swartouts out of the directorate of the Manhattan Bank; nor was it softened after the secret compromise, made at Dyde's Hotel, in February, 1806. Indeed, from that moment, Tammany seemed the more determined to hara.s.s the ambitious Clinton; and, although his agents, as late as 1809, sought reconciliation, the society expelled Cheetham and made Clinton an object of detestation. Cheetham, who died in 1810, did not live to wreak full vengeance; but he did enough to arouse a shower of brick-bats which broke the windows of his home and threatened the demolition of the _American Citizen_.
Though Cheetham's decease relieved Tammany of one of its earliest and most vindictive a.s.sailants, the political death of DeWitt Clinton would have been more helpful, since Clinton's opposition proved the more harmful. As mayor he lived like a prince distributing bounty liberally among his supporters. He was lavish in the gift of lucrative offices, lavish in the loan of money, and lavish in contributions to charity. His salary and fees were estimated at twenty thousand dollars, an extravagant sum in days when eight hundred dollars met the expense of an average family, and the possessor of fifty thousand dollars was considered a rich man. Besides, his wife had inherited from her father, Walter Franklin, a wealthy member of the Society of Friends, an estate valued at forty thousand dollars, making her one of the richest women in New York.
But Clinton had more than rich fees and a wealthy wife. The foreign element, especially the Irish, admired him because, when a United States senator, he had urged and secured a reduction of the period of naturalisation from fourteen years to five; and because he relieved the political and financial distress of their countrymen, by aiding the repeal of the alien and sedition laws. For a score of years, America had invited to its sh.o.r.es every fugitive from British persecution. But the heroes of 'Ninety-eight, who had escaped the gibbet, and successfully made their way to this country through the cordon of English frigates, were welcomed with laws even more offensive than the coercion acts which they had left behind. The last rebellious uprising to occur in Ireland under the Georges, had sent Thomas Addis Emmet, brother of the famous and unfortunate Irish patriot, a fugitive to the land of larger liberty. To receive this brother with laws that might send him back to death, was to despise the national sentiment of Irishmen; and the men, Clinton declared, who had been indisposed or unable to take account of the force of a national sentiment, were not and never could be fit to carry on the great work of government.
Thoughtful, however, as DeWitt Clinton had been of the oppressed in other lands, he lacked what Dean Swift said Bolingbroke needed--”a small infusion of the alderman.” If he thought a man stupid he let him know it. To those who disagreed with him, he was rude and overbearing.
All of what is known as the ”politician's art” he professed to despise; and while Tammany organised wards into districts, and districts into blocks, Clinton pinned his faith on the supremacy of intellect, and on office-holding friends. The day the news of his nomination for lieutenant-governor reached New York, Tammany publicly charged him with attempting ”to establish in his person a pernicious family aristocracy;” with making complete devotion ”the exclusive test of merit and the only pa.s.sport to promotion;” and with excluding himself from the Republican party by ”opposing the election of President Madison.” There was much truth in some of these charges.
Clinton had quarrelled with Aaron Burr; he had overthrown Morgan Lewis; and he was ready to defeat Daniel D. Tompkins. Even Cheetham had left him some months before his death, and Richard Riker, who acted as second in the duel with John Swartout, was soon to ignore the chilly Mayor when he pa.s.sed. The estrangement of these friends is pathetic, yet one gets no melancholy accounts of Clinton's troubles.
The great clamour of Tammany brought no darkening clouds into his life. He was soon to learn that Tammany, heretofore an object of contempt, was now a force to be reckoned with, but he did not show any qualms of uneasiness even if he felt them.
Tammany bolted Clinton's nomination, selecting for its candidate Marinus Willett, its most available member, and most brilliant historic character. Before and during the Revolution, Willett did much to make him a popular hero. He served the inefficient Abercrombie in his unsuccessful attack on Ticonderoga in 1758; he was with the resolute Bradstreet at the brilliant charge of Fort Frontenac; he led the historic sortie at Fort Schuyler on the 7th of August, 1777. Men were still living who saw his furious a.s.sault upon the camp of Johnson's Greens, so sudden and sharp that the baronet himself, before joining the flight of his Indians to the depths of the thick forest, did not have time to put on his coat, or to save the British flag and the personal baggage of Barry St. Leger. The tale was strange enough to seem incredible to minds more sober than those of the Tammany braves, who listened with pride to the achievements of their sachem.
With two hundred and fifty men and an iron three-pounder, Willett had fallen so unexpectedly upon the English and Indians, that the advance guard, panic-stricken, suddenly disappeared--officers, men, and savages--leaving twenty-one wagon loads of rich spoil. This heroic deed was a part of Willett's stock in trade, and, although he was wobbly in his politics, the people could not forget his courage and good judgment in war. But Willett's influence was confined to the wards of a city. The rural counties believed in New York's mayor rather than in New York's hero; and when the votes were counted, Clinton had a safe majority. He had fared badly in New York City, being deprived of more than half his votes through the popular candidacy of Nicholas Fish; but, in spite of Tammany, he was able to go to Albany, and to begin work upon a scheme which, until then, had been only a dream. It was to be a gigantic struggle. Lewis and the Livingstons opposed him, Tammany detested him, Tompkins was jealous of him, Spencer deserted him; but he had shown he knew how to wait; and when waiting was over, he showed he knew how to act.
CHAPTER XVII
BANKS AND BRIBERY
1791-1812
During the early years of the last century, efforts to incorporate banks in New York were characterised by such an utter disregard of moral methods, that the period was long remembered as a black spot in the history of the State. Under the lead of Hamilton, Congress incorporated the United States Bank in 1791; and, inspired by his broad financial views, the Legislature chartered the Bank of New York in the same year, the Bank of Albany in 1792, and the Bank of Columbia, located at Hudson, in 1793. These inst.i.tutions soon fell under the management of Federalists, who believed in banks and were ready to aid in their establishment, so long as they remained under Federalist control.
Republicans, on the other hand, disbelieved in banks. They opposed the United States Bank; and by George Clinton's casting vote defeated an extension of its charter, which expired by limitation on March 4, 1811. To them a bank was a combination of the rich against the poor, a moneyed corporation whose power was a menace to free inst.i.tutions, and whose secret machinations were to be dreaded. At the same time, Republican leaders recognised the political necessity of having Republican banks to offset the influence of Federalist banks, and in order to overcome the deep seated prejudice of their party and to defeat the opposition of Federalists, inducements were offered and means employed which unscrupulous men quickly turned into base and shameless bribery.
In his partisan zeal Burr began the practice of deception. The Republicans needed a bank. The only one in New York City was controlled by the Federalists, who also controlled the Legislature, and the necessities of the rising party, if not his own financial needs, appealed to Burr's clever management. Under the cover of chartering a company to supply pure water, and thus avoid a return of the yellow fever which had so recently devastated the city, he asked authority to charter the Manhattan Company, with a capital of two million dollars, provided ”the surplus capital might be employed in any way not inconsistent with the laws and Const.i.tution of the United States and of the State of New York.” The people remembered the terrible yellow fever scourge, and the Legislature considered only the question of relieving the danger with pure and wholesome water; and, although the large capitalisation aroused suspicion in the Senate, and Chief Justice Lansing called it ”a novel experiment,”[157] the bill pa.s.sed. Thus the Manhattan Bank came into existence, while wells, brackish and unwholesome, continued the only sufficient source of water supply.
[Footnote 157: ”This, in the opinion of the Council, as a novel experiment, the result whereof, as to its influence on the community, must be merely speculative and uncertain, peculiarly requires the application of the policy which has heretofore uniformly obtained--that the powers of corporations relative to their money operations, should be of limited instead of perpetual duration.”--Alfred B. Street, _New York Council of Revision_, p. 423.]
That was in 1799. Four years later, the Republicans of Albany, realising the importance of a bank and the necessity of avoiding the opposition of their own party, obtained a charter for the State Bank, by selling stock to Republican members of the Legislature, with an a.s.surance that it could be resold at a premium as soon as the inst.i.tution had an existence. There was a ring of money in this proposition. Such an investment meant a gift of ten or twenty dollars on each share, and immediately members clamoured, intrigued, and battled for stock. The very boldness of the proposition seemed to save it from criticism. Nothing was covered up. To put the stock at a premium there must be a bank; to make a bank there must be a charter; and to secure a charter a majority of the members must own its stock.
The result was inevitable.
It seems incredible in our day that such corruption could go on in broad daylight without a challenge. At the present time a legislator could not carry a district in New York if it were known that his vote had been secured by such ill-gotten gains. Yet the methods of the Republican promoters of the State Bank seem not to have brought a blush to the cheek of the youngest legislator. No one of prominence took exception to it save Abraham Van Vechten, and he was less concerned about the immorality of the thing than the compet.i.tion to be arrayed against the Federalist bank in Albany. Even Erastus Root, then just entering his first term in Congress, saw nothing in the transaction to shock society's sense of propriety or to break the loftiest code of morality. ”There was nothing of mystery in the pa.s.sage of the bank,” he wrote. ”The projectors sought to push it forward by spreading the stock among the influential Republicans of the State, including members of the Legislature, and carry it through as a party measure. It was argued by the managers of the scheme that the stock would be above par in order to induce the members of the Legislature to go into the measure, but nothing in the transaction had the least semblance of a corrupt influence. No one would hesitate from motives of delicacy, to offer a member, nor for him to take, shares in a bank sooner than in a turnpike or in an old ca.n.a.l.”[158]
[Footnote 158: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
1. Appendix, p. 583, Note J.]
One can hardly imagine Erastus Root serious in the expression of such a monstrous doctrine. His life had been pure and n.o.ble. He was a sincere lover of his country; a statesman of high purpose, and of the most commanding talents. No one ever accused him of any share in this financial corruption. Yet a more Machiavellian opinion could not have been uttered. On principle, Republican members of the Legislature opposed banks, and that principle was overcome by profits; in other words, members must be bought, or the charter would fail. That the stock did go above par is evident from Root's keen desire to get some of it. As an influential Republican, he was allowed to subscribe for fifty shares, but when he called for it the papers could not be found.
The bank was not a bubble. It had been organised and its stock issued, but its hook had been so well baited that the legislators left nothing for outsiders. Subsequently the directors sent Root a certificate for eight shares, and John Lamb, an a.s.semblyman from Root's home, gave up eight more; but the Delaware congressman, angry because deprived of his fifty shares, refused to accept any. ”I had come prepared to take the fifty,” he wrote, ”and in a fit of more s.p.u.n.k than wisdom, I rejected the whole.”[159]
[Footnote 159: Jabez D. Hammond, _Political History of New York_, Vol.
1. Appendix, p. 582, Note S.]
Two years after, in 1805, the Federalists desired to charter the Merchants' Bank of New York City. But the Legislature, largely Republican, was led by DeWitt Clinton, now at the zenith of his power, who resented its establishment because it must become a compet.i.tor of the Manhattan, an inst.i.tution that furnished him fat dividends and large influence. Clinton had undoubtedly acquired a reputation for love of gain as well as of power, but he had never been charged, like John Taylor, with avarice. He spent with a lavish hand, he loaned liberally to friends, and he borrowed as if the day of payment was never to come; yet he had no disposition to help opponents of a bank that must cripple his control and diminish his profits. In this contest, too, he had the active support of Ambrose Spencer, who fought the proposed charter in the double capacity of a stockholder in the Manhattan and the State, and a member of the Council of Revision.
Three banks, with five millions of capital and authority to issue notes and create debts for fifteen millions more, he argued, were enough for one city. He had something to say also about ”an alarming decrease of specie,” and ”an influx of bills of credit,” which ”tended to further banish the precious metals from circulation.”[160]