Volume III Part 24 (1/2)
[Footnote 1267: ”Governor Fenton and his friends were lukewarm throughout the campaign, the Governor absenting himself from the State much of the time. Late in October he returned from the Western States, and on the 31st, five days before election, he made a speech.” From Conkling's speech of July 22, 1872. New York _Times_, July 24.]
Throughout the canva.s.s Conkling was energetic. He spoke frequently.
That his temper was hot no one who looked at him could doubt, but he had it in tight control. Although he encountered unfriendly demonstrations, especially in New York, the pettiness of ruffled vanity did not appear. Nothing could be more easy and graceful than his manner on these occasions. His expository statements, lucid, smooth, and equally free from monotony and abruptness, were models of their kind. In dealing with election frauds in New York his utterances, without growing more vehement or higher keyed, found expression in the fire of his eye and the resistless strength of his words. The proud, bold nature of the man seemed to flash out, startling and thrilling the hearer by the power of his towering personality.
Revelations of fraud had been strengthened by the publication of the Eighth Census. In many election districts it appeared that the count was three, four, five, and even six times as large as an honest vote could be. Proofs existed, including in some instances a confession, that in 1868 the same men registered more than one hundred times under different names--one man one hundred and twenty-seven times. Instances were known and admitted in which the same man on the same day voted more than twenty times for John T. Hoffman. ”To perpetuate this infamy,” declared Conkling, ”Mayor Hall has invented since the publication of the census new escapes for repeaters by changing the numbers and the boundaries of most of the election districts, in some cases bisecting blocks and buildings, so that rooms on the same premises are in different districts, thus enabling colonised repeaters to register and vote often, and to find doors of escape left open by officials who have sworn to keep them closed.” The registration for 1870, although twenty thousand less than in 1868, he declared, contained seventeen thousand known fraudulent entries.[1268] The newspapers strengthened his arguments. In one of Nast's cartoons Tweed as ”Falstaff” reviews his army of repeaters, with Hoffman as sword-bearer, and Comptroller Sweeny, Mayor Hall, James Fisk, Jr., and Jay Gould as spectators.[1269] Another pre-election cartoon, ent.i.tled ”The Power behind the Throne,” presented Governor Hoffman crowned and robed as king, with Tweed grasping the sword of power and Sweeny the axe of an headsman.[1270]
[Footnote 1268: New York _Times_, November 7, 1870.]
[Footnote 1269: _Harper's Weekly_, November 5, 1870.]
[Footnote 1270: _Harper's Weekly_, October 29, 1870.]
Democrats resented these attacks. People, still indifferent to or ignorant of Tweed's misdeeds, rested undisturbed. The Citizens'
a.s.sociation of New York had memorialised the Legislature to pa.s.s the Tweed charter, men of wealth and character pet.i.tioned for its adoption, and the press in the main approved it.[1271] Even the _World_, after its bitter attacks in the preceding winter upon the Ring officials, championed their cause.[1272] ”There is not another munic.i.p.al government in the world,” said Manton Marble, ”which combines so much character, capacity, experience, and energy as are to be found in the city government of New York under the new charter.”[1273] The final Democratic rally of the campaign also contributed to Tammany's glory. Horatio Seymour was the guest of honor and August Belmont chairman. Conspicuous in the list of vice-presidents were Samuel J. Tilden, George Tichnor Curtis, Augustus Sch.e.l.l, and Charles O'Conor, while Tweed, with Hoffman and McClellan, reviewed thirty thousand marchers in the presence of one hundred thousand people who thronged Union Square, attracted by an entertainment as lavish as the fetes of Napoleon III. To many this prodigal expenditure of money suggested as complete and sudden a collapse to Tweed as had befallen the French Emperor, then about to become the prisoner of Germany. In the midst of the noise Seymour, refraining from committing himself to Tammany's methods, read a carefully written essay on the ca.n.a.ls.[1274] It was noted, too, that Tilden did not speak.
[Footnote 1271: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1870, pp. 543, 544; Frank J.
Goodnow in Bryce's _American Commonwealth_, Vol. 1, p. 342.]
[Footnote 1272: New York _World_, March 29, 1870.]
[Footnote 1273: _Ibid._, June 13, 1871.]
[Footnote 1274: _Ibid._, Oct. 28, 1870.]
The election resulted in the choice of all the Democratic candidates, with sixteen of the thirty-one congressmen and a majority in each branch of the Legislature. Hall was also re-elected mayor.[1275]
Republicans extracted a bit of comfort out of the reduced majority in New York City, but to all appearances Tammany had tightened its grip.
Indeed, on New Year's Day, 1871, when Hoffman and Hall, with almost unlimited patronage to divide, were installed for a second time, the Boss had reason to feel that he could do as he liked. From a modest house on Henry Street he moved to Fifth Avenue. At his summer home in Greenwich he erected a stable with stalls of finest mahogany. His daughter's wedding became a prodigal exhibition of great wealth, and admittance to the Americus Club, his favourite retreat, required an initiation fee of one thousand dollars. To the poor he gave lavishly.
In the winter of 1870-71 he donated one thousand dollars to each alderman to buy coal and food for the needy. His own ward received fifty thousand. Finally, in return for his gifts scattered broadcast to the press and to an army of proteges, it was proposed to erect a statue ”in commemoration of his services to the Commonwealth of New York.” His followers thought him invulnerable, and those who despised him feared his power. In New York he had come to occupy something of the position formerly accorded to Napoleon III by the public opinion of Europe.
[Footnote 1275: Hoffman over Woodford, 33,096. James S. Graham, Labor Reform candidate, received 1,907 votes, and Myron H. Clark, Temperance candidate, 1,459 votes. a.s.sembly, 65 Democrats to 63 Republicans; Senate, 17 Democrats to 14 Republicans. Hall's majority, 23,811.
Hoffman's majority in New York City, 52,037, being 16,000 less than in 1868. Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1870, p. 547.]
Tweed's legislative achievements, increasing in boldness, climaxed in the session of 1871 by the pa.s.sage of the Acts to widen Broadway and construct the Viaduct Railroad. The latter company had power to grade streets, to sell five millions of its stock to the munic.i.p.ality, and to have its property exempted from taxation,[1276] while the Broadway swindle, estimated to cost the city between fifty and sixty millions,[1277] enabled members of the Ring to enrich themselves in the purchase of real estate. To pa.s.s these measures Tweed required the entire Democratic vote, so that when one member resigned to avoid expulsion for having a.s.saulted a colleague,[1278] he found it necessary to purchase a Republican to break the deadlock. The character of Republican a.s.semblymen had materially changed for the better, and the belief obtained that ”none would be brazen enough to take the risk of selling out;”[1279] but an offer of seventy-five thousand dollars secured the needed vote.[1280] Thus did the power of evil seem more strongly intrenched than ever.
[Footnote 1276: Myers, _History of Tammany_, p. 276.]
[Footnote 1277: Myers, _History of Tammany_, p. 276.]
[Footnote 1278: Without provocation James Irving of New York a.s.saulted Smith M. Weed of Clinton.]
[Footnote 1279: New York _Tribune_, April 14, 1871.]
[Footnote 1280: ”Winans was unfortunate in his bargain, for after rendering the service agreed upon Tweed gave him only one-tenth of the sum promised.” Myers' _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 277. It might be added that Winans' wife left him, and that the contempt of his neighbours drove him from home. A rumour that he subsequently committed suicide remains unverified.]
Meanwhile the constant and unsparing denunciation of the New York _Times_, coupled with Nast's cartoons in _Harper's Weekly_, excited increasing attention to the Ring. As early as 1869 Nast began satirising the partners.h.i.+p of Tweed, Sweeny, Connolly, and Hall, and in 1870 the _Times_ opened its battery with an energy and sureness of aim that greatly disturbed the conspirators. To silence its suggestive and relentless attacks Tweed sought to bribe its editor, making an offer of one million dollars.[1281] A little later he sent word to Nast that he could have half a million.[1282] Failing in these attempts the Ring, in November, 1870, secured an indors.e.m.e.nt from Marshall O.
Roberts, Moses Taylor, John Jacob Astor, and three others of like position, that the financial affairs of the city, as shown by the comptroller's books, were administered correctly. It subsequently transpired that some of these men were a.s.sociated with Tweed in the notorious Viaduct job,[1283] but for the time their certificate re-established the Ring's credit more firmly than ever. ”There is absolutely nothing in the city,” said the _Times_, ”which is beyond the reach of the insatiable gang who have obtained possession of it.”[1284]