The Epic of New York City

by Edward Robb Ellis

  In January, 1871, Jimmy Watson died as the result of a sleighing accident. His official tide was county auditor, but his unofficial job was bookkeeper and paymaster for the Tweed Ring. The Times could howl its head off about the way the city was run, but proof of corruption could only be obtained by access to the ring’s books, and no one but Connolly and Watson ever saw these doctored documents. So far the Times didn’t know that Watson had issued a $66,000 voucher to an imaginary man with the outlandish name of Philippo Donnoruma or that the fellow who had cashed it had signed it with the anglicized name of Philip Dummy. If you’re going to bilk the public, you may as well have some fun while doing it. Although Watson’s salary was only $1,500 a year, he had become a millionaire and lived in a mansion at 42d Street and Madison Avenue. The sleighing accident happened on January 24 at the corner of 8th Avenue and 130th Street. Newspaper readers tilted their eyebrows and pulled down the corners of their mouths when they read that Watson’s mare, killed in the collision, was worth $10,000. For the week that Watson lingered on his deathbed, Tweed kept some of his plug-uglies handy to thwart a last-minute confession.

  In the spring of 1871 James O’Brien decided that he, too, wanted a bigger slice of the melon. Tweed had made O’Brien county sheriff. This office paid no salary; but the sheriff was entitled to keep all the fees he collected, and they were enormous. O’Brien panted for power, as well as plunder. He dreamed of displacing Tweed as grand sachem of Tammany and Hall as mayor of New York. O’Brien helped organize a maverick group within Tammany, known as the Young Democracy, only to have Tweed beat its ears off. But when O’Brien finished his profitable term as sheriff, he brazenly submitted a bill for $350,000 in “extras” he claimed the county owed him. Tweed, the granddaddy of grifters, wasn’t going to let an upstart get away with a haul like that. He bellowed like a wounded rhinoceros and stamped his foot, and that was that. Or so Tweed thought. O’Brien withdrew his claim and returned to the fold of tweedledum democracy. Secretly, though, O’Brien decided to try to get the goods on the Boss and blackmail him.

  After Watson’s death a nonentity, named Stephen C. Lyons, was made county auditor, but he soon faded from sight. Matthew J. O’Rourke, former military editor of a newspaper, became the new auditor. Connolly’s faith in O’Rourke was misplaced, for he began copying incriminating terms from the secret books of the ring. About the same time O’Brien asked Connolly to find a job for his friend William Copeland. Connolly thought O’Brien had made his peace with the Boss; after all, the former sheriff was trustee of a group collecting funds to raise a statue of Tweed. So Connolly obliged O’Brien by putting Copeland to work on some books in his office. A spy for O’Brien, Copeland also started copying fraudulent accounts. No one knows if O’Rourke and Copeland were aware that each was playing the same dangerous game.

  Copeland fed facts and figures to O’Brien. O’Brien then told the Boss he would publish this proof unless he got the $350,000 he wanted. Tweed apparently considered this a bluff. But soon thereafter O’Brien called at the office of the Sun with evidence of the ring’s corruption under one arm. No one there would touch this dynamite. O’Brien then trudged to the Times, which kept calling for an examination of the city’s financial records. If all was well, the paper argued, why object to publication of the figures? The Evening Post, which sided with Tweed, protested righteously that Connolly could not open these books because only city aldermen had this power.

  One steaming hot night in the first week of July, 1871, the balding O’Brien opened the door of Jennings’ office at the Times. The former sheriff mopped his brow and said vaguely, “Hot night.” The managing editor replied in a flat voice, “Yes. Hot.” O’Brien fingered a big paper envelope he carried and said, “You and Tom Nast have had a tough fight.” Jennings nodded and said, “Still have.” O’Brien remarked, “I said—had.” He laid the envelope on Jennings’ desk and added, “Here’s the proof to back up all that the Times has charged. They’re copied right out of the city ledgers.” Jennings’ muscles tightened, but he did not move until O’Brien left his office. Then he pounced on the envelope.

  A couple of days later O’Rourke also came to the Times with his copies of the ring’s books. His data included some information missing from the O’Brien collection. Now the Times had the hard facts and figures with which to expose the most astonishing story of graft in the history of New York.

  On July 8, 1871, the newspaper began publishing the inside story of the Tweed Ring. At first Tweed shrugged this off as a partisan attack by a Republican journal, but the Times kept it up day after day, revealing one secret after another. In its July 22 issue it printed this front-page headline: “THE SECRET ACCOUNTS . . . PROOFS OF UNDOUBTED FRAUDS BROUGHT TO LIGHT . . . WARRANTS SIGNED BY HALL AND CONNOLLY UNDER FALSE PRETENSES.”

  This and subsequent revelations told of fraud so cunning and monumental that it was appalling. Contractors and merchants overcharged the city at the behest of the ring and then kicked back the excess to ring members. Some bills were absolutely false in both amounts and prices. The city was charged for work never done. Streetlamps were often painted on rainy days so that the paint would run off immediately, thus creating extra work and giving more pay to Tweed’s followers. The city paid money to imaginary persons, imaginary firms, and imaginary charitable institutions. In six weeks alone the Boss added 1,300 names to the city payroll, which ultimately rose from 12,000 to nearly 15,000 persons. Some did no work whatsoever. William “Pudding” Long, who walked Tweed’s dogs, was paid $100 a month as an interpreter, although he couldn’t read or write any language.

  The permit bureau spent $2,842 to collect $6 worth of permits. Andrew J. Garvey, the ring’s plasterer, got $133,187 for two days’ work. George S. Miller, its carpenter, was paid $360,747 for one month’s work. At $14 per ream of paper, plus other marked-up items, the city’s stationery bill for one year came to $1,000,000. The city paid $170,729 for 35 to 40 chairs and 3 or 4 tables. At $5 per chair this sum would have entitled the city to 34,145 chairs, and if they had been placed side by side in a straight line, they would have reached the 4½ miles from City Hall to the arsenal in Central Park opposite East Sixty-fourth Street.

  The prime catch-all for this graft was the new County Courthouse, located behind City Hall, on the corner of Chambers and Centre streets, just west of the present Municipal Building. It gained renown as the House That Tweed Built In 1858 a bill authorizing its construction and providing $250,000 for this purpose had been passed. Work began in 1862, but before it was finished, it needed many repairs. By 1867 some of its rooms had been put to use, but the structure wasn’t completed until 1872. Its total cost came to more than $12,000,000. At the most, the building and all its equipment couldn’t have cost more than $3,000,000, but of course, Tweed and his fellow rogues pocketed the other $9,000,000. The North American Review estimated that the three-story courthouse cost New York taxpayers more than four times the cost of the Houses of Parliament.

  The Nation, a weekly magazine founded in New York in 1865, now joined the Times in attacking the Tweed Ring. Back in 1868 the Nation had daringly used the phrase “the notorious Supervisor Tweed,” but it had not crusaded so vigorously as either the Times or Harper’s Weekly. The Nation’s editor was liberal Irish-born Edwin Lawrence Godkin, a Utilitarian philosopher.

  Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s also became more frequent and savage now, and his drawings made Tweed look like a bloated vulture. On November 11, 1871, Nast created the emblem of the predatory Tammany tiger, inspired by the tiger painted on the fire engine belonging to the Big Six, Tweed’s onetime volunteer fire company. The cartoons frightened Tweed, who rumbled, “Let’s stop them damned pictures! I don’t care much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read. But—dammit!—they can see pictures!” (Indeed, nearly half the people of New York were foreign-born, and most of Tweed’s supporters were illiterate.)

  The Boss, who really did care what was written about him, now counterattacked
. He growled that if he were twenty-five years younger, he would kill Times owner George Jones with his bare hands, and he mumbled something about having Thomas Nast horsewhipped. Ring members pointed out that the Times’ managing editor, Jennings, was an Englishman and married to an actress. They spread rumors that Jennings had been discharged from the London Times for printing lies. The New York Sun, still aligned with Tweed, archly commented that “the decline of the New York Times in everything that entitles a paper to respect and confidence has been rapid and complete. . . .”

  Charles Nordhoff was fired as managing editor of the Evening Post for criticizing Tweed; then the Post stoutly defended the Boss. Mayor Hall forbade all city employees to eat in the basement of the nearby Times Building. The mayor also upheld Tweed in Hall’s own newspaper, the Leader. Ring members then tried, but failed, to prove that the real estate title to the Times Building was defective. Tweed thought of trying to buy the Times itself, but George Jones snorted that he wouldn’t sell under any circumstances. Next, the ring caused a bill to be passed in the state legislature, and Tweed’s vassal, Governor Hoffman, signed it. This weasel-worded law gave the appellate division of the state supreme court the power to hold any critic of Tweed or his ring in contempt of court and send him to jail. Two of the three appellate judges, Barnard and Cardozo, were owned by Tweed.

  His whisper squads now spread the lie that Nast had left Germany to escape military service, although Nast had been a child of six when he had landed in New York. The cartoonist received threatening letters; one enclosed a drawing of him with a thread tied around his neck like a noose. Harper’s Weekly was owned by Harper & Brothers, and now the Boss banned all their books from public schools. Fletcher Harper refused to be frightened into silence. A Tweed emissary offered Nast a $50,000 bribe to drop his attacks on the ring and leave for Europe. Nast refused. “Slippery Dick” Connolly offered George Jones of the Times the fantastic sum of $5,000,000 to forget the whole thing. Jones not only brushed this aside but dared the ring to sue the Times for libel.

  Tweed, usually a master of mob psychology, now made a damaging mistake. For the first and only time during a newspaper interview he lost his temper when reporters badgered him about the disclosures in the Times. “Well,” he snarled, “what are you going to do about it?” He failed to anticipate an utterance of a character in a book, by Alfred Henry Lewis, entitled The Boss: “Th’ public is a sheep, while ye do no more than just rob them. But if ye insult it, it’s a wolf!”

  The righteous and outraged wolves held a historic mass meeting in Cooper Union on the sweltering evening of September 4, 1871. So hot and sticky was the Great Hall that aging Peter Cooper, G. T. Strong, and other dignitaries adjourned to a nearby committee room. This was the meeting that brought to the surface an undercover adversary of Boss Tweed—the masterful and emotionless politician Samuel J. Tilden. Slight of figure and racked by illness, Tilden had a big nose and small eyes. His droopy left eyelid lent him a baleful look. Snake-cold, withdrawn, and ignorant of human nature, a man who thought five times before doing anything, Tilden had become a millionaire as a corporation lawyer, and he had risen to power in the Democratic party. When the Tammany tiger first began stalking the city, Tilden belonged to the organization and must have known much of what was going on. He held his tongue, however, for he hoped to become President of the United States, and it would have been unwise to cross Tweed prematurely. Now that Tweed seemed to be on the run, Tilden closed in for the kill, thinking that this would further his political future.

  William F. Havemeyer, a sugar merchant and former mayor of New York, chaired the Cooper Union meeting. Many of the city’s leading business and professional men were there, the Times’ exposé having convinced them of Tweed’s venality. When attorney Joseph H. Choate mentioned Tweed’s name, there arose cries of “Pitch into the Boss! Give it to him! He deserves it!” Two days before, the Nation had hinted that Tweed should be lynched; the usually responsible magazine declared that such violence would no more constitute a real lynching than had the execution of Robespierre, the French revolutionary who had loosed the Reign of Terror on Paris. On this tense torrid evening Judge James Emmott shouted, “Now, what are you going to do with these men?” People screamed, “Hang them!” Serious consideration was given to forming a vigilance committee like that which Californians had organized in the days of the gold rush. Wiser heads prevailed, however. A respectable Committee of Seventy was set up under Tilden’s leadership. Resolutions were passed, and a program was presented for prosecuting the Tweed Ring. One of the seventy committee members was John Foley, chosen for his Irish name since most of Tweed’s followers were Irish.

  Two days after the mass meeting Foley brought a taxpayer’s suit asking for an injunction to restrain the mayor, comptroller, and others from (1) paying any city money to anyone and (2) issuing any more bonds. When the case was given to Judge Barnard, who liked to whittle, some people felt that it was like presenting a matchstick to an ax killer. Foley’s suit would end up on the floor among other wood shavings from the judge’s pocketknife. Everyone understood the significance of the suit, for it marked the very first time that Tweed’s total power had been challenged in a court of law. To the stunned surprise of all—especially Tweed—Judge Barnard granted the injunction. Samuel J. Tilden apparently promised to make Barnard governor of New York State if he doublecrossed Tweed, and this is just what the judge did. Barnard’s betrayal nearly drove Tweed insane. He even considered suicide.

  Then Comptroller Connolly, quaking with fear, visited Tilden, babbled about some of the frauds, and threw himself on the mercy of the reformers. On the night of September 11, 1871, someone broke into Connolly’s office and stole 3,500 incriminating vouchers, which were burned in the City Hall furnace. This may have been done at the suggestion of Mayor Hall, who now called on Connolly to resign. Tilden advised Connolly to appoint Andrew H. Green, one of the Committee of Seventy, deputy comptroller with the full powers of comptroller. After Green had taken office on September 18, it was reported that Mayor Hall had gone mad and was tearing out his hair. Duplicates of the burned vouchers, or most of them, rested in a bank used by ring members, and now the duplicates fell into the hands of the Tilden forces. Here was more proof of corruption.

  Charles O’Conor was named the state’s special attorney general to prosecute Tweed. A week later Tilden swore out a complaining affidavit. A grand jury indicted the Boss on 120 counts, boiling down to the charge that the board of audit had passed fake claims and that much of the plunder had been paid to Tweed. About 1:30 P.M. on December 16, 1871, Sheriff Matthew Brennan, one of Tweed’s creatures, had to arrest the Boss in his own private office in the department of public works at 237 Broadway. Jay Gould of the Erie Railroad and other friends instantly put up bail for Tweed. The Boss soon resigned as commissioner of public works, as a director of the Erie, and as grand sachem of Tammany. However, he clung to his office of state senator.

  Tweed’s trial did not begin for more than a year, his lawyers winning one postponement after another on the grounds that they needed time for preparation. He was represented by seven eminent attorneys, including Elihu Root, who later became United States Secretary of State under President Theodore Roosevelt. Mayor A. Oakey Hall stubbornly finished his term in City Hall but was succeeded on January 1, 1873, by William F. Havemeyer, mayor for the third and last time.

  At last, on January 7, 1873, Tweed was brought into the court of oyer and terminer. Tilden, who hoped to be elected governor despite his alleged promise to Judge Barnard, testified against Tweed. So did Andrew J. Garvey, whom the Times called the “Prince of Plasterers.” Garvey squirmed in the witness chair and during a recess was approached by Tweed, who growled into his ear. Later, when Garvey was asked what the Boss said to him, the plasterer replied piously, “His language was blaphemous.” Despite the judge’s instructions, which almost demanded a verdict of guilty, the trial ended in a hung jury. Nine jurors held out for acquittal, while three wanted to f
ind Tweed guilty. Most were men of low character, intelligence, and education, and one had lobbied for Tweed in Albany. Almost everyone believed that Tweed’s lawyers had packed the hung jury.

  Tweed’s second trial began on November 5, 1873. This time the prosecutors went to great pains to keep Tweed henchmen off the jury. Nine days were spent in picking the jurors, but the trial itself lasted only four days. The same facts were presented more briefly. This time Garvey was not called, and Tweed exercised his legal right not to take the witness stand. This second jury found the Boss guilty of 102 offenses. Three days later he was brought back to court for sentencing. Judge Noah Davis said in part:

  Holding high public office, honored and respected by large classes of the community in which you lived, and, I have no doubt, beloved by your associates, you with all these trusts devolved upon you, with all the opportunity you had, by the faithful discharge of your duty, saw fit to pervert the powers with which you were clothed in a manner more infamous, more outrageous, than any instance of like character which the history of the civilized world contains!

  Tweed’s lips quivered as the judge then sentenced him to 12 years in prison and fined him $12,750. The date was November 19, 1873.

  But the court of appeals soon reduced Tweed’s sentence to a mere year in jail and a token fine of $250. When Tweed was registered at the Tombs, the warden asked his occupation. Chins held high, Tweed replied, “Statesman.” Religion? “I have none.” In the Tombs the Boss enjoyed relative luxury, for he occupied a room, not a cell. Cracked windows were replaced with new glass panes, the floor was covered with a dark-green rug, five chairs were provided for visitors, and the famous prisoner could ease his bulk into either a leather lounge or a rocking chair.

  Tweed later was removed to the county’s grim penitentiary on Blackwells Island. While he sat it out there, Samuel J. Tilden was elected governor for having helped put the Boss behind bars, and a new law enabled the state to sue for money stolen from the public treasury.