BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (52 page)

Still, even during this period, barely a week after losing the presidency, Sam Tilden found time to climb out of his shell and meet with the Tweed prosecutors. “[Fairchild] accepted Tilden’s invitation for himself and his wife, and will be at Gramercy Park over Sunday next,” O’Brian Bryant, Fairchild’s go-between, reported to Tweed’s lawyer John Townsend that week. “He expects to go to Fort Washington [O’Conor’s home] on Sunday with Tilden and arrange the enlargement of
our
client [Tweed] immediately. The future conduct of the affair will be confined strictly to O’Conor and the Attorney-General.”
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The next week O’Brien Bryant telegraphed an update: “The understanding is absolute, as I said, and all is right for a close next week.”
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It is doubtful that Sam Tilden gave a green light to a deal with Tweed in these post-election private talks. What was more likely, based on later events, was that Fairchild asked Tilden’s advice on how to string out the convict, get from Tweed all the value he could, then cast the old man away.

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“The talk of a compromise with Tweed is now becoming so general that perhaps it may impose some responsibility on me,” New York City corporation counsel Charles Whitney wrote to Fairchild in mid-March.
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Progress, in fact, appeared substantial. Fairchild returned to New York in late March for another talk with Tweed at Ludlow Street Jail. He happened to pick a day when John Townsend, Tweed lawyer, was out of town but Tweed met alone with him anyway. The next day, Fairchild came back and this time left Ludlow Street taking with him loads of documents, Tweed’s old checks and ledgers. “I saw [Tweed] again at the jail, and I saw him a second time, next day for a few moments,” Fairchild explained. “I then told him I did not propose to ask him questions about various individuals and people, but if he had any statement to make of facts that were within his knowledge, to prepare such a statement and submit it to me, and I would see whether it was of any value to the public.”
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Townsend, hearing what had happened, rushed over to the exclusive Buckingham Hotel uptown on 50th Street where Fairchild stayed and asked how things had gone. What Fairchild told him, his exact choice of words, remains a mystery, but Townsend came away with a definite impression: that Fairchild had all but decided to set Tweed free. “Mr. Fairchild did not fix any date for his discharge, but he clearly intimate to [me] that he would order the discharge within a few days,” he recalled.
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He rushed back to Ludlow Street and told Tweed, who asked him quickly to visit Greenwich and tell his wife Mary Jane to expect him home soon. That week, Townsend received a follow-up telegram from O’Brien Bryant: “
Buckingham
[code for Fairchild] all right. Took my paper down this morning.”
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The flurry of messages back and forth heated up; telegrams to Ludlow Street Jail came in disguise, addressed to “Luke Grant,” Tweed’s aide. Now was the time for Tweed to put his cards on the table.

Following up on Fairchild’s idea, he and Townsend sat down over the next few weeks and prepared a detailed written “confession.” The remarkable document, a narrative, covered the history of Tweed Ring, its rise to power, its division of spoils, its skimming of city contractors, and Tweed’s bribery of the state legislature, all things that Tweed had denied for years. The confession took special aim at Tweed’s three closest Ring cohorts, still running free: Oakey Hall, Connolly, and Sweeny, spotlighting their central role in all the Ring scandals. To back up his claims, Tweed included lists of canceled checks, names of witnesses who could back his story, and a full inventory of his real estate holdings.
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The document also specified Tweed’s offer to prosecutors: that he’d surrender his property, testify for the city against lawsuits, provide checks, papers, and other documents, and appear in court whenever they asked.

Before finalizing the “confession,” John Townsend took a copy of the draft and rode up to Fort Washington to show it to Charles O’Conor and ask his opinion. O’Conor declined to read it but gave his view regardless: “He says he has no doubt you will be discharged, and that after receiving the statement they could do nothing else,” Townsend told Tweed.
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O’Brien Bryant, who happened to be visiting O’Conor when Townsend dropped by that day, put it slightly differently. The evidence—the checks, the statements, the interview notes—he said, were now “in Tilden’s hands.”
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Townsend rode the train up to Albany and handed the “confession” to Fairchild in unsigned form in mid-April. Almost immediately, a lengthy, detailed description of it appeared in the
New York World
. It caused a stir in the state capitol. Tweed talking? Who knew how many lives and careers the old Boss could scuttle with his secrets? “Since his troubles most of those whom he had looked upon as his friends in the palmy days had held themselves aloof from him,” Townsend warned in a comment to the newspaper, “he does not propose to recognize any further claim upon him for silence.”
^F
OOTNOTE
43

More leaks followed and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering became a public circus. “It is pretty well understood here that any of the Tilden-O’Conor-Kelly gang who want to hit the head of an enemy have only to send the name to the ‘Boss,’ and they will be furnished [charges]—provided always that Tweed is promised a full pardon for his crimes and release from imprisonment,” the
New-York Times
sneered at the process.
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In fact, Tweed already had been asked if he had any special dirt to throw against Republican state senator William Woodin or Republican publisher Thurlow Weed—both enemies of Tilden—or against the New York Central Railroad, then represented by Fairchild’s father, who was acting as an advisor in the case.
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Still, by early May, despite all this hoopla and constant meetings, nothing had changed. Tweed sat in jail growing increasingly restless. Why hadn’t Fairchild freed him yet? Or even answered his offer? “My mind is not easy at the long delay of the Attorney-General in deciding, and I fear he will delay until the suspense will be more of a torture than at present,” he wrote.
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The emotional turmoil was taking a physical toll on him. Tweed’s body could no longer absorb stress. “He is suffering intensely from diabetes, and since he had been under the excitement attending his anticipation of release his troubles have been greatly aggravated.
He absolutely needs rest of mind and opportunity to obtain exercise and sunshine,
” his physician William Schirmer wrote after examining him in early May.
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Admittedly, Tweed came to enjoy mingling with some of the prosecutors, a chance to reminisce about his days in power. “If possible, have the Counsel to the Corporation, Mr. Whitney, call today,” he asked Townsend that week. “I would much like to see him. My mind and thoughts are now fresh on the matter and I can explain fully all he desires.”
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By now, Tweed had firmly convinced several of the prosecution lawyers of his value. Whitney, who was responsible for defending the $1 million “water meter” cases,
^F
OOTNOTE
was eager to use him as a witness in court. “Tweed’s testimony will so key up and strengthen the case that I should be of the opinion that it would save the city in the end from the payment of this claim,” he wrote Fairchild. “Personally, I feel much averse to seeing Tweed at liberty…. But in my position… the money side of the questions looks big.”
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Wheeler Peckham, responsible for the Peter B. Sweeny trial, agreed. “Pursuant to your suggestion I saw Tweed and examined him,” he wrote. “His testimony would be important & … He seemed quite ready to talk.”
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“Whitney & I saw [Tweed] today & got all out of him we could on the points you suggested,” Peckham reported a few days later. “He would be of decided use in the Sweeny case.”
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The time had come for Charles Fairchild to make a choice: what to do about Tweed? Sitting in Albany at the state capitol, he heard a gaggle of advice, Sam Tilden talking in one ear, Tammany Boss John Kelly in another, his own staff of lawyers flooding him with letters and appeals. He tested the political winds: “I consulted with several people as to their view of the general policy of trying to make any use of Tweed, what the public sentiment was on the subject,” he conceded.
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Certainly, he saw his own political future affected by the outcome. Releasing Tweed would outrage the reformers; keeping his in jail could spark a backlash of sympathy for a sick old man. And his own credibility too had been questioned: Even if Fairchild hadn’t explicitly promised Tweed his freedom, he’d planted enough seductive hints to create that impression.

Another factor arose at this point tipping the balance, the chance to seal a deal with Peter Sweeny—the biggest fish from the Tammany scandal after Tweed himself—and collect some money for the city treasury. Ever since Sweeny had returned to New York City that winter, attorney Wheeler Peckham had been meeting secretly with Sweeny’s agents in his New York office.
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They’d traded proposals for an all-money settlement; Sweeny had already raised his original proffer of $100,000 to $250,000 and perhaps they could get more. These were small sums compared to the $6.3 million claimed under the lawsuit or the $4 million in bail demanded of Tweed but hard cash nonetheless. Peckham justified a deal to Fairchild by painting a gloomy picture of the evidence: Sweeny, he argued, not been a member of the 1870 interim Board of Audit and had not signed any of the suspect Tax Levy warrants that year, thus other proof would be needed to show that he’d taken his split of the money. True, Peckham had bank records to show that ten percent of the Tax Levy proceeds went to James Sweeny, his brother, who’d transferred large sums to Peter, but James had died in Paris the prior March and could not testify in court.
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After that, he argued, the case became tissue-soft. Only one thing could save it: Tweed. “In my view the trial of the case without Tweed gives us less than an even chance for success unless we can prove the case on the def’t himself,” he argued, “Now having given you the facts I leave it to your decision….”
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Sweetening the pot was that fact that Slippery Dick Connolly too had made recent overtures from Europe about a “compromise,” perhaps with a partial payment as well. An agreement with Sweeny could pave the way for both: two large feathers in Fairchild’s hat.

He decided. He’d settle with Sweeny and take the money. Tweed could wait.

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Peter B. Sweeny came to the courtroom on Chambers Street in a jaunty mood to start his scheduled trial on June 7, “laughing and talking… looking very little disturbed,” according to a reporter.
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Life in Paris had worn well on him; he’d aged little, with barely a touch of gray in his heavy black hair as he sat at the defense table flanked by lawyers. As the judge gaveled the room to order, he announced that a settlement had been reached in the case. Jaws dropped around the room, though, as the details became clear. The city would collect $400,000 in restitution, but Sweeny himself wouldn’t pay a dime of it. All the money all would come from the estate of his recently-deceased brother James. Even more striking was Judge Westbrook’s statement from the bench: “It may be proper for me to say in passing that the terms of the arrangement, so far as they have been communicated to me, involve no concession or reflection upon the defendant.”
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He’d been “fully exonerated,” Sweeny gloated after the announcement. “[A]ny settlement [was on] condition that my responsibility or culpability is expressly defined.” And since not a penny had been asked from Sweeny himself, his culpability had been defined as zero.
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Almost immediately, even the prosecutors themselves disowned their own handiwork, shocked at the one-sided whitewash. “I was no party… to any agreement that Mr. Sweeny should be in any way exonerated or declared exonerated. I say that very emphatically,” William Whitney insisted when asked by a reporter.
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Pechkam too denied having approved the judge’s exonerating statement, even though he’d been standing at the prosecution table at the moment the judge made it and hadn’t objected.
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