BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (47 page)

Oakey Hall, now basking in celebrity as the vindicated ex-mayor, had written a play called
The Crucible
that was set to open in mid-December at the Park Theatre on 22nd Street with Hall himself appearing on stage as an actor playing the lead role: an innocent man named Wilmot Kierton, wrongly convicted of theft. Elegant Oakey played the role well, even off stage. The
New-York Times
now cooed him as a victim: “We do not now believe—much as appearances at first were against him—that he ever shared in the profits of the old Ring Government,” it announced in a note on the new play, “and we … have now no worse wishes for him than that he may win both fortune and fame in his new enterprise.”
²⁴

Only Tweed, it seemed, still deserved the scorn of mankind. Prosecutors seemingly had thrown up their hands on pursuing any of the other Ring members. Tilden as governor had pardoned Ingersoll and made no effort to extradite Sweeny or Connolly from Europe. In October, prosecutors settled with the widow of James Watson, the dead county auditor, for just under $600,000, closing that case as well.

Tweed, in effect, faced spending the rest of his life in prison, dragged from court to court, jail to jail, despite his having been convicted of nothing but a misdemeanor for which he’d already served the sentence. In October, yet another arrest order was issued against him on a newly-filed civil suit demanding $1 million in restitution and prompting an additional $1 million in bail. In November, the state Court of Appeals rejected his lawyers’ challenges to the pending $6.3 million civil suit for its lack of a bill of particulars. Even the
New-York Times
began to question why Tweed alone was being punished: “because he is the only leading member of the Ring who has faced the ordeal of the courts,” it asked, “[ought he] to be made to bear the punishment due his associates?”
²⁵

Tweed made the best of things at Ludlow Street Jail. He took a liking to a black prison servant named Louis “Luke” Grant and began paying him to act as a personal aide. Through his window, he could hear the women shopping each day at the Essex Street Market and grew attuned to the neighborhood. During meals, he became friendly with Charles Lawrence, a silk smuggler serving time with him in a nearby room on the jail’s first floor. Lawrence had been arrested in England and sent home to stand trial. He fascinated Tweed with his stories of the legal fine points, the fact that some European countries had no extradition treaties with the United States to handle such cases. Tweed decorated his own room with photographs of family members and of his Greenwich estate. He clipped and saved a newspaper drawing of himself entering prison and hung above his bed a silk-sewn tapestry with the motto “In God we Trust.” He stocked his desk with papers and filled a shelf with books to read.

Every few weeks, he even convinced the warden to let him leave the jail building and go outdoors, always accompanied by guards. Sometimes they’d take a carriage and ride out into the country around Central Park to walk under trees and stop on the way back to have dinner with his family. The warden had allowed Tweed this privilege at least four times during the summer and fall that year and perhaps as many as seven or more.
²⁶
Sometimes, he son William Jr. would pick him up in his personal carriage and they’d enjoy the outside walk together. Most recently, they’d allowed Tweed to spend Thanksgiving Day at his son’s dinner table.

Early in December, Tweed again asked the warden for the chance to go out and the warden agreed, sympathizing with Tweed over his “delicate” health. A neighbor on Ludlow Street remembered seeing them leave the jail at about 1 pm that day, Saturday, December 4, in a new carriage with a folding leather top, William Jr.’s carriage. Along with Warden Dunham and Keeper Edward Hagen, they rode north through the city past Central Park and crossed the Harlem Bridge into the Bronx to enjoy the rural countryside. On the way back they stopped in the park and sat on a hill to talk and stretch their legs. Afterward, they rode back to 60th Street and parked the carriage on the corner with Madison Avenue. From here, they walked down the sidewalk to Tweed’s son Richard’s house, a four-story brownstone on Madison near 59th Street. They came inside and met Mary Jane, Richard, and Tweed’s daughter Josephine and son-in-law Frederick Douglas for a family visit.

Tweed sat in the front parlor by a bay window for over an hour talking to his sons. Then at one point he excused himself to go upstairs for a word with his wife who was sick in bed. By now the hour had turned late, nearly 6:30 pm. The sun had gone down and the streets outside had turned dark. After a few minutes, Warden Dunham asked William Jr. to go upstairs and fetch his father for the trip back to Ludlow Street and jail.

William Jr. disappeared up the stairway and came back a few minutes later. He had a startled look on his face. Father was gone.
^F
OOTNOTE

CHAPTER 20

ESCAPE

“ Now, is it likely I’m going to run away? Ain’t my wife, my children,
my children’s children, and everything and every interest I have
in the world here? What would I gain by running away? …”

—Tweed, after resigning as Commissioner of Public Works, December 29, 1871.
¹

“ I shall follow him wherever he may have gone or go; anywhere this side of the infernal regions, for I do not care to follow him there. He must be found, however, and found he will be, either sooner or later, go where he may. Every effort will be made to secure his return to the Court, and, if necessary, the effort will be a lasting one.”

—
WHEELER H. PECKHAM
, prosecutor, on hearing of Tweed’s escape, December 4, 1875.
²

T
WEED had kept his plan utterly secret. He’d told no one—not his family, not his lawyers, not his friends. He simply disappeared. That evening, as he’d entered his son’s house on Madison Avenue escorted by the two Ludlow Street Jail guards, he’d noticed a mark on the stoop at the front door. This was his signal. All through dinner he hid his nervousness by overeating and telling stories. Then, afterward, he slipped away, took a hat and coat from the rack, and stepped out the front door. He hid in a shadow by the street until a covered wagon drove up at precisely 8 o’clock, the agreed time. On its signal, Tweed hesitated, then climbed inside.
³

The wagon pulled away from the curb onto Madison Avenue but, before going far, the driver pulled it to a stop. A crowd of people had blocked the road; a streetcar had gone off its tracks and workmen had gathered to try and right it. Police on horseback stopped to help. Tweed, cowering behind the canvas, felt his heart race in his chest. What if they decided to search the wagon? What if they found him? He’d never felt anything like it. He was a fugitive.

Moving again, the wagon creaked its way across uptown cobblestone streets until it reached a deserted spot along the Hudson River. Here, it stopped and Tweed got out. Following orders, he climbed into a small wood rowboat that waited for them in the darkness by the shore; a man at the oars took the boat out onto the river. Silently, they made their way across, dodging occasional sloops and ferries that plied the waters this time of night. Reaching New Jersey, they landed on a rocky shore beneath the Palisades, the rugged cliffs that dominate the river from the New Jersey side. They were not far from the spot where, 70 years earlier, another Tammany Boss, Aaron Burr, had shot dead his rival Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

Tweed stepped off the boat in New Jersey as a wagon rode up to meet them. It carried him away from the water and up into the rocky New Jersey hillside, an area with few roads, miles of thick woods, and occasional broken-down farmhouses. Few visitors came this way. After several miles, the wagon stopped at an isolated shack and Tweed got out. A stranger greeted him at the door. His host—a man whose name remains unknown—invited him inside and gave him food to eat and a bed in which to sleep.

The next morning, Tweed woke early and stepped outside to find himself in a secluded woods near Weehawken,
^F
OOTNOTE
a short walk from the edge of a cliff looking back across the Hudson giving him a panoramic view of Manhattan. From his perch, he could see steeples of Trinity and St. Paul’s churches, the outlines of Central Park and Croton Reservoir, and the rising brick towers of the Brooklyn Bridge beyond.

Here, he waited. All he needed had been provided in his New Jersey hideout; his two keepers cared for him, cooked his meals, got him newspapers, and kept away strangers. He spent his time indoors, going out only in the early morning for walks. He developed a disguise: He shaved his beard, cut his hair short and began wearing a reddish-yellow wig and gold spectacles. He took the name “John Secor,” an invalid wanting rest and fresh air. Mostly, he passed the hours reading newspapers and following the most intriguing story in the country that week: his own.

Tweed’s escape had thrown New York City into turmoil. It dominated newspaper headlines, political talk, and saloon arguments for days. “GONE AT LAST,” announced the
New York Herald
.
⁴
Police searched frantically for him; witnesses came forward claiming to have seen Tweed on the run in Canada, Long Island, Savannah, Cuba, Texas, and other exotic places.
⁵
Others speculated he might still be hiding in New York right under their noses. Tweed followed the search closely through the newspapers, keeping his own bags packed and ready to move if anyone came near.

Sheriff William Connor, who stood personally responsible for the escape, offered a $10,000 reward for Tweed’s capture. Suspicions pointed everywhere: Warden Dunham and Keeper Hagen of the Ludlow Street Jail faced withering criticism for allowing Tweed to enjoy jaunts in Central Park and family dinners at his son’s house, making a joke of his incarceration, not to mention negligence or complicity for the escape itself. Two of Tweed’s jail mates also drew questions: Charles Lawrence the silk smuggler and a Vermont bank robber calling himself “Bliss” who conceded he’d once offered to help Tweed break out, but that Tweed had laughed off the idea. “What could I do with myself?” Tweed had told him, pointing to his own conspicuous body. “Where could I hope to hide myself?”
⁶

Tweed must have winced at reading how the escape had again embarrassed his own family. His son William Jr., who’d seen his own career wrecked by the scandal but who’d stood by his father throughout his court trials and prison terms, was described as having run downstairs after discovering Tweed missing crying “I am ruined” and pulling his hair. Tweed’s son-in-law Frederick Douglas also was described as acting “like an insane man.” Tweed saw his wife Mary Jane, already sick from the strain, portrayed as being utterly confused that night, huddled upstairs with her daughters while denying to skeptical police she had any idea where her husband had gone.
⁷

For now, all he could do was wait. Utterly secluded, Tweed made himself comfortable, passing his days playing cards, talking walks, making small talk with his keepers, or jotting occasional notes in a diary. After a few weeks, he got to enjoy the strange sensation of following his own trial in
absentia
. He still faced the $6.3 million civil lawsuit brought by Tilden’s prosecutors and State Supreme Court Judge T.R. Westbrook insisted that the case go forward. Tweed had left his lawyers no instructions and his escape had made their job daunting: “Flight is always interpreted as a confession of guilt,” Wheeler Peckham pronounced, and Tweed’s own top lawyer David Dudley Field agreed, calling it “a great mistake.”
⁸

Still, following the twists and turns in the daily press from his New Jersey hideout, Tweed saw his lawyers mount a spirited defense. David Dudley Field delighted at putting the prosecutors themselves on trial for bias and incompetence. As the trial dragged on through February and March, Field attacked them daily for “letting all the alleged wrongdoers go free, and attempting to fix the responsibility for this [entire] $6,000,000 upon Tweed.” Where were the cases against Connolly, Keyser, Ingersoll, and Sweeny, he asked? He ridiculed them in open court as cowards who “once bowed before [Tweed], and there wasn’t one of them, so hasty now to prosecute, that did not almost cringe at his feet.”
⁹

Tweed grew hopeful reading the accounts and began to think his legal magician actually might win the case, despite the negative hoopla over his own disappearance. Perhaps he might then be allowed to come home, pay a fine for the escape but be considered vindicated on the larger charges.

Fortunes changed in mid-March, though, when Charles O’Conor, the 71-year-old lead prosecutor who’d been sick in bed for most of the trial, finally returned to court. Seeing the case foundering in his absence, O’Conor had dragged himself out of bed, rode a coach through snowdrifts over the long distance from his home at Fort Washington—the northern tip of Manhattan Island far above Central Park—and arrived at the courthouse unannounced. He first day back at the prosecutors’ table, he raised a series of objections and convinced Judge Westbrook to disallow much of Field’s defense. It wasn’t the prosecutors who were on trial, he argued, it was Tweed. The tenor changed. Ultimately, the jury would take just one hour to rule against the former Boss for the full $6.3 million.

Any hope of vindication had gone out the window.

In early May, Tweed and his two keepers packed their belongings and left the hideout atop the New Jersey Palisades, his home for over three months. They traveled south to nearby Staten Island around Fort Wadsworth facing the harbor Narrows.
^F
OOTNOTE
They found an abandoned hut that local shad fisherman used for shelter and made it home. They hid here by day but sometimes ventured out onto the choppy waters at night in a small rowboat. One time, they ventured all the way across the harbor to Brooklyn to enjoy a few hours in a lively saloon, Tweed introducing himself as “Secor” and hoping no one would recognize him in his red wig, clean-shaven face, and glasses.

Finally, after about two weeks, Tweed and his keepers left the hut one night, got into their small boat and rowed far out to a spot outside the harbor where a small schooner, the
Frank Atwood
, waited to meet them. All his life, Tweed had feared the water. He’d rarely sailed his own yachts on Long Island Sound; he was prone to seasickness. Now he’d have to spend weeks learning to live with it.

The
Frank Atwood
headed south along the Atlantic coast past the New Jersey, Virginia, and Carolina beaches. Days grew longer and waters tropical as they reached northern Florida. Here, the schooner left Tweed along a strip of sandy beach near a lighthouse—his next hideout. His two keepers from New Jersey stayed behind.

Things had been arranged. Tweed walked over to the lighthouse and found the master and his family ready to board him as a guest. Again, he introduced himself only as “John Secor” and soon was joined there by another traveler, a man identified only as “William Hunt,” a guide who would lead him on the rest of his journey. Hunt, much younger than Tweed, would introduce himself to strangers as Secor’s nephew. Theories abound over Hunt’s actual identity. One report pegged him as Arthur Maginnis, Tweed’s son-in-law from New Orleans, another as a cousin, still another as a coachman whom Tweed had employed in New York City to drive his carriages while he was still Boss of Tammany.
¹⁰

Whoever he was, they left the lighthouse and “Hunt” led Tweed on an excursion through the Florida interior, camping in the everglades and nearby pine forests. As the summer grew hot, they settled near St. Augustine along the ocean. Tweed used this free and private time to think, about prospects for his future and mistakes of his past. In June, he and Hunt left St. Augustine for the Florida Keys, then found passage on a fishing boat to Cuba, which was then part of Spain, a country with no extradition treaty with the United States.
¹¹
From Cuba he could embark to the Spanish mainland and perhaps find refuge. “I should have lived in Spain my whole life,” he’d confide years later, “I had designed to go into some quiet part, like Catalonia or somewhere where living was inexpensive, and I have always been prudent in my appetites and personal living. I could have lived there for the rest of my life.”
¹²

Reaching Cuban waters on about June 12, the fishing boat carrying Tweed and Hunt refused to come into port; it had no papers and feared being stopped by authorities. Instead, it left Tweed and Hunt on a deserted beach about ten miles outside the port of Santiago de Cuba near the Island’s eastern tip. Tweed and Hunt camped the first night under a moonlit sky. The next morning, a local fisherman found them and offered to lead them to town. Tweed, overweight, short of breath, and suffering from diabetes, found the hike exhausting. An observer described him reaching Santiago as “terribly sunburnt, his face being as brown as a berry and very much blistered.”
¹³
A custom official approached and asked to see their passports. Seeing that “Secor” and “Hunt” had no visas, he ordered them both arrested—apparently not knowing who they were.

Cuba in 1876 was a country at war. Thousands of Spanish troops faced independence rebels aided often by American “filibusterers” or “adventurers.” Just three years earlier, Spanish troops had captured twelve Americans on a ship called the
Virginius
and, ignoring diplomatic protests, had executed them all as “enemies of the state.” Spain had recently sent a new hard-line Captain-General to Havana, Joaquin Jovellar, who’d issued orders to detain suspicious Americans on sight—a new diplomatic sore point. Tweed and Hunt, arrested and held on the Spanish man-of-war
Churrucca
, feared nothing more than being mistaken for “filibusterers” and getting tangled in the bloody fray. Fortunately, his Spanish captors recognized “Secor”-Tweed as too old or sick to be a rebel fighter. They treated him courteously and help soon arrived in the form of the American consul in Santiago, a young diplomat named Alfred Young of Cincinnati, who came aboard and won their release on bond.