BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman Page B
Authors: Kenneth D. Ackerman
Tags: History
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pennies of the fees, the rest going to bribe court officials and political higher-ups.
Murray had arrested Rosenberg on federal charges just two weeks before Election Day and locked him away in the Ludlow Street Jail. F OOTNOTE When friendly newspapers began to dig deeper, they found local judges undeterred by the one arrest, stamping out new citizens at an alarming pace. One in particular, George Barnard of the State Supreme Court, had been running a virtual factory: “a system was established whereby four oaths could be administered at once…. Six or eight [immigrants] put their hands on the Bible—some put the right hand and some the left—and as many more place hands on another Bible.” Many of the oath-takers lied, were underage, didn’t meet the residency requirement, didn’t understand the questions, or were imposters. 9
The image of hordes of Irish Catholic vagabonds, fresh off the boat, cheating the system by the thousands and herded like cattle to vote the Tammany ticket, rankled old-time, affluent, taxpaying New Yorkers who saw their own votes being nullified by intruders. Beyond the usual anti-immigrant griping, they began voicing a new complaint: that universal suffrage itself, a reform of the 1840s, had failed in cities like New York, allowing mobs of ignorant sheep to prop up corrupt governments. Local New York judges stood for election and George Barnard specifically ran on Tweed’s Tammany ticket. No wonder he’d been so helpful, critics charged. Ultimately, the congressional investigators would find that local judges like Barnard had processed 41,112 new citizenships in the weeks before that year’s election—a startling number comprising almost a third of all the votes cast in New York City that year. They’d claim that thousands of additional fake papers had been issued and used to doctor registration lists.
And that wasn’t all: The prior afternoon, William Hendrick, an unemployed saloon gambler, had told the congressmen how he’d been part of a “gang of repeaters”—forty men who’d met in a liquor store on Bleecker Street just before Election Day, been lavished with whiskey, then went out and registered to vote up to twenty-five times each, using fake names and addresses provided by local party fixers. 10 During the hearings, the congressmen would hear dozens more such stories. Repeat voting might be an old game, but never before had they heard it done so brazenly and on such an organized large scale.
Samuel Tilden, of course, considered himself far above any such grimy street tricks. He was a nationally prominent figure. Ushered into the committee’s private room that morning, he found himself facing four congressmen across a wooden table with a nearby clerk. The committee was meeting in a grand jury room designed for secrecy—they’d decided to take testimony behind closed doors. Witnesses had to appear alone without counsel. Michael Kerr, a red-bearded Indiana trial lawyer and senior Democrat on the panel, had been working for weeks with local Democrats to refute the fraud charges. He had arranged for Tilden and Tweed to come today and plead their innocence. But Tilden had a special problem—what we today would call a “smoking gun.”
“State to the Committee what relations you bore during the last political campaign to the political parties in this State,” Kerr asked Tilden once he’d taken his seat and sworn an oath. 11
“I was chairman of the [D]emocratic State committee.” Samuel Tilden had a round, clean-shaven face, short hair, blue eyes and high forehead; he spoke in a bland, colorless voice. Sickly since childhood, isolated and protected by his mother, treated with laudanum that would weaken his digestion for life, Tilden’s skin had a sallow complexion—despite his daily regimen of walking or riding horseback. His mouth appeared uneven; Tilden had lost several teeth as a youngster and later had the rest removed and all replaced. A lifelong bachelor, he
Murray had arrested Rosenberg on federal charges just two weeks before Election Day and locked him away in the Ludlow Street Jail. F OOTNOTE When friendly newspapers began to dig deeper, they found local judges undeterred by the one arrest, stamping out new citizens at an alarming pace. One in particular, George Barnard of the State Supreme Court, had been running a virtual factory: “a system was established whereby four oaths could be administered at once…. Six or eight [immigrants] put their hands on the Bible—some put the right hand and some the left—and as many more place hands on another Bible.” Many of the oath-takers lied, were underage, didn’t meet the residency requirement, didn’t understand the questions, or were imposters. 9
The image of hordes of Irish Catholic vagabonds, fresh off the boat, cheating the system by the thousands and herded like cattle to vote the Tammany ticket, rankled old-time, affluent, taxpaying New Yorkers who saw their own votes being nullified by intruders. Beyond the usual anti-immigrant griping, they began voicing a new complaint: that universal suffrage itself, a reform of the 1840s, had failed in cities like New York, allowing mobs of ignorant sheep to prop up corrupt governments. Local New York judges stood for election and George Barnard specifically ran on Tweed’s Tammany ticket. No wonder he’d been so helpful, critics charged. Ultimately, the congressional investigators would find that local judges like Barnard had processed 41,112 new citizenships in the weeks before that year’s election—a startling number comprising almost a third of all the votes cast in New York City that year. They’d claim that thousands of additional fake papers had been issued and used to doctor registration lists.
And that wasn’t all: The prior afternoon, William Hendrick, an unemployed saloon gambler, had told the congressmen how he’d been part of a “gang of repeaters”—forty men who’d met in a liquor store on Bleecker Street just before Election Day, been lavished with whiskey, then went out and registered to vote up to twenty-five times each, using fake names and addresses provided by local party fixers. 10 During the hearings, the congressmen would hear dozens more such stories. Repeat voting might be an old game, but never before had they heard it done so brazenly and on such an organized large scale.
Samuel Tilden, of course, considered himself far above any such grimy street tricks. He was a nationally prominent figure. Ushered into the committee’s private room that morning, he found himself facing four congressmen across a wooden table with a nearby clerk. The committee was meeting in a grand jury room designed for secrecy—they’d decided to take testimony behind closed doors. Witnesses had to appear alone without counsel. Michael Kerr, a red-bearded Indiana trial lawyer and senior Democrat on the panel, had been working for weeks with local Democrats to refute the fraud charges. He had arranged for Tilden and Tweed to come today and plead their innocence. But Tilden had a special problem—what we today would call a “smoking gun.”
“State to the Committee what relations you bore during the last political campaign to the political parties in this State,” Kerr asked Tilden once he’d taken his seat and sworn an oath. 11
“I was chairman of the [D]emocratic State committee.” Samuel Tilden had a round, clean-shaven face, short hair, blue eyes and high forehead; he spoke in a bland, colorless voice. Sickly since childhood, isolated and protected by his mother, treated with laudanum that would weaken his digestion for life, Tilden’s skin had a sallow complexion—despite his daily regimen of walking or riding horseback. His mouth appeared uneven; Tilden had lost several teeth as a youngster and later had the rest removed and all replaced. A lifelong bachelor, he
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