The Epic of New York City (59 page)

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 find 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: