USA > New York > New York City > History of New York city from the discovery to the present day, V. 2 > Part 20
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"Some of the members of this Committee have been known by reputation to every intelligent voter of this State for many years, and their words will not be doubted when they say-as do all the Committee-that they have in all their deliberations faithfully represented the non-partisan spirit of the great body of citizens who conferred on them the high honor of serving as their spokesmen and agents. Not one word has been uttered in our most confiden- tial intercourse that could be construed into proof of the slightest desire to use the power of this Committee for any partisan end. We should have been not only false to a most sacred trust, but untrue to the inspiration that has daily come to us in the earnest support of both Democrats and Republicans, had we failed to realize the nature of the righteous revolution which has brought us to the front.
" We have not so failed, but have given all the aid in our power to the honest members of the party which is dominant here, and which is peculiarly humiliated by scoundrels who have misused an honored party name as a cover for their villainies.
" We appeal to citizens of both parties to save ns and the State from the possibility of another such degradation as has fallen on all of us, from Montauk
* For this speech see Appendix No. XI. This speech should be read in con- nection with the text.
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Point to the westernmost and northernmost corners of New York. It lies easily In your power to so assert the honest manhood that ought to prevail in both parties, that no such Legislatures as those of the last few years will be possible during the rest of this century. No private business, no partisan end, can be so important to any right-minded citizen as the plain duties that are thrown on him by recent deplorable revelations. Unfit nominations for the Legislature cannot succeed, and are not likely to be made, in any district where honest men are alive and awake to the issues of this campaign. The money that has been accumulated from the spoils of the metropolis will be poured out like water to procure the election of purchasable legislators, but it will be spent in vain wherever the people are aroused by a few earnest leaders. All the wealth of our city could not bribe a thoroughily awakened people or divert them from their purpose. Whether aroused by the treason that is bold and armed, or by the meaner and fouler treason that makes the ballot a farce, law an instrument of fraud, and courts of justice a snare, the people are equal to the demand, and their loyalty and honesty are sure to conquer.
"A free and active and prosperous people like ours will endure many evils in their government ; but there is no power on earth that is so irresistible or so fatal to wrong-doers as the public opinion which is finally sure to be roused by successive and growing enormities.
" The fountain can rise no higher than its source. When the people are apathetic, and demagogues and selfish schemers make a business of politics, there is no force to sustain our officials above the low level of indifference and easy morals. But the moral power of ten actively righteous men in every Assem- bly district would so raise the tone of local politics that no bad man could get his head high enough above the surface to command the support of either party.
" Official corruption has grown up as the result of the necessarily enormous expenses of a gigantic war, of an inflated currency, of the magnificent chances offered to private ambitions, of stock and gold gambling, and a universally spreau passion for sudden wealth and idle display. It is an evil which has afflicted both parties and dragged them down from the high principles that gave them origin. Honest and earnest patriots will feel the common woes and humiliations that have been brought on us by the representatives of both par- ties, and will be enkindled to a doubly bitter hatred of the Achans that are in their own camp, and that have draggled their own banners in the mire of corruption.
"In this city, where one political party has had unchecked rule for so many years, and where millions could be stolen from the tax-payers without imposing extra burdens that were felt as onerous by so wealthy a constituency, it is not strange that prevailing corruption should have broken out in aggravated forms, nor that all the evil elements in our community should have finally been combined into an apparently irresistible phalanx. No such mass of bad material was elsewhere to be found waiting such a masterly alliance of corrupt leaders to develop all its resources of evil. Ignorance furnishes really tools of a combination that included a political craft worthy of a depraved Macchia-
* velli, an a 'roitness of advocacy that was effective in spite of occasional buf- fooneries, a coarse brutality of power that awed and inspired ruftians and low natures, and a sort of cunning that was the sublimation of the skill of the sneak-thief. Given these elements, opportunities, aud leaders, and the natural 59
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result was the Ring, which, until lately, has robbed and stolen itself into power, which has bought Legislatures, controlled governors, corrupted newspapers, defiled courts of justice, violated the ballot-box, threatened all forms of civil and religious liberty, awed the timid rich, bribed the toiling masses, and cajoled respectable citizens, and which has finally grown so strong and reckless as to openly defy the intelligence and virtue which it believed to be inert, voiceless, and powerless to stay its aggressions or to assert the supremacy of honesty and justice.
" But you of the country must help us. This is your city, as truly as it is our own. We are your factors and business agents. If we are overburdened with taxes, you have to pay us the more for doing your business. The corrup- tion of our municipal government could not have grown to its present gigantic proportions had our leaders of the Ring not found active support and willing material in bribable members of the Legislature elected by the rural districts. You must help us in our effort to purify our political life, and the one effica- cious manner by which you can come to our relief is to elect honest men only to the next Legislature. If our city is disgraced by a senator who domineers among weaker villains by mere grossness and magnitude of scoundrelism, he has found willing tools among the false representatives of districts where one year of his stealings would be regarded as enormous wealth.
" There is no occasion for advice from this Committee as to the details of the great fight against all forms of official corruption which has made such cheering progress in this city. If the feeling which prevails among all our good citizens shall be shared by those who are further removed from the evils which at first appalled and then stung us into activity, earnest hearts will find ready means to incarnate honest purposes in noble actions, and to redeem the fair fame of our State for generations to come. We have tried to define the issue as it has pressed on us. If we have succeeded, and if you feel, as we do, that it is now the honest manhood of the State that is on trial, no combina- tion of political tricksters can repress or even direct the swelling tide of popu- lar indignation and resolve. In its presence all ordinary political issues will sink out of sight, and next November will witness a vindication of the manhood of the people of New York, as proud and momentous in its consequences a; that which was attested when the State rose as one man at the call of a differ- ent form of patriotismn.
" The cause of self-government is deeply involved in this campaign. Of what use was it for tens of thousands of our best and bravest to lay down their lives on distant fields, if our government-municipal, State, and national -are to fall into the hands of tricksters and thieves? Where is the demoral- ization to end that has made such appalling progress in the city of New York ? Will even the local governments of the interior long withstand the inroads of corruption, when weak and bad men see it glittering with diamonds, reveling in private palaces, gaudy in equipages, and the master of the means of luxuri- ous vice, in the metropolis of the State ? How long will it be safe for you to irtrust your business to a community that you will not help to rid of thieves, and where successful villainy sets dangerous examples to men of easy con- sciences, infirm purpose, and eager ambition ? When the confidence that underlies all profitable human intercourse is sapped, in so far as concerns the relations between rulers and ruled among a quarter of the population of the
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State, where and how is the process of decay and disease to stop ? What other relations of trust between man and man will be long held sacred ?
" We appeal especially to the vast reserve force of voters through whose criminal indifference to their political duties the shamne and disgrace that we are now enduring has come upon us. At least one-third of the best classes of of our people are habitually absent from the polls. The forces of evil are active, crafty, and resolute. They are already visible all over the State, in the shape of combinations to purchase votes for the Ring with offers of local benefits. We believe that the temper of the people is such that it will render all these schemes futile and disastrous to their authors. The honest people of this State have never before had such inspiration to redeem them- selves from all the wiles of corruptionists and to teach them a lesson that will be remembered for generations to come. Never has the proud motto of our State been more appropriate than it will be if we do our duty this fall. In our glorious resurrection of public virtue the humiliations of the past will be forgotten as a hateful dream, and every institution of our society and politics will feel the elevating influences of revived confidence in honesty and justice."
Thus the matter rested until the morning of the 11th of September, when it was discovered(?) that the Comptrol- ler's office at the City Hall had been broken open during the preceding night, and all the vouchers abstracted, to the number of more than thirty-five hundred, from their place of deposit .* The news of this robbery at once aroused such a storm of indignation from all classes, with- out distinction of party, that Mayor Hall, in a letter, immediately requested Mr. Connolly to resign his office of Comptroller. To this request, the latter returned a peremptory refusal, assigning as a reason, that for him to take such a step without impeachment, and a trial, and a conviction, would be tantamount to an acknowledgment of guilt. The day following, however, acting upon the advice of a prominent Democrat, viz., William H. Have- meyer, he appointed to the office of Deputy-Comptroller, Andrew H. Green. This appointment gave great satis- faction to the community, who now, for the first time, since the skein of corruption had begun to unravel,
* I may strike the reader as singular that, when about a hundred thousand dollars had been paid for safes for the new Court-house the vouchers were kept in a glass-case-from which place they were abstracted as mentioned in the text.
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breathed more freely. Not only was Mr. Green a distin- guished member of the Democratic party, but he had formerly and for a long time held the responsible position of Comptroller of the Central Park Commission, dur- ing which period, although daily handling large sums of money, his record was unsullied. Against him, suspicion, with her hundred tongues, had never whispered the slight- est charge of venality. Soon after his assuming the duties of his office, he instituted an investigation into the " voucher robbery"-an investigation which resulted in the discovery of their charred remains in an old ash-heap in the attic of the City Hall. The supposed agents in this affair were arrested, indicted, and committed for trial without bail, but up to the present period remain untried. But Deputy-Comptroller Green did not stop here. He quickly lopped off the fungi which had been clinging to the city treasury in the form of sinecure offices; reduced all expenditures to the lowest point consistent with a safe administration of the finances; brought order out of chaos ; and very soon saved large sums to the city.
Almost the first action of the Committee of Seventy Tas to procure an injunction from Judge Barnard, re- straining, for the present, the payment of all moneys out of the city treasury. This order, however, was subse- quently modified, so as to allow the payment of the labor- ers on the public works, and the progress and completion of permanent works, such as the receiving and distributing reservoirs, and the laying of mains, but forbidding the use of the moneys raised for such purposes for the ordinary expenses of the department. At the same time some of the largest banks-such was the confidence felt in the integrity of Andrew H. Green-advanced nearly a million a dllars with which to meet the more pressing claims against the city, and enable the wheels of government to roll more smoothly.
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The next step of the Committee was to present the Mayor for indictment before the Grand Jury. Here again the " Ring" endeavored to suborn justice, for it was presently discovered that the jury had evidently-as the technical phrase is-been " packed," from the foreman down, with relations and personal intimates of the person to be indicted. Upon this fact being brought to the no- tice of Judge Barnard, he immediately dismissed the jurors and ordered another "panel." The new "panel," however, failed, from lack of sufficient evidence, to bring in an indictment against the Mayor.
Proceeding in the work they had undertaken, the Committee next called upon the Governor of the State, and requested him to appoint Charles O'Conor to assist the Attorney-General in prosecuting the most prominent officers of the city government for malfeasance in office. In reply, the Governor stated that he had no power to take such action, but he would recommend that course to the Attorney-General. Thereupon the latter wrote a letter to Mr. O'Conor, empowering him to act for the State, and to employ such associates as he might deem proper. Hon. William M. Evarts, Wheeler H. Peckham, and Judge Emott were thereupon chosen by Mr. O'Conor as associates.
Mr. O'Conor and his associates at once went actively to work. On the 26th of October, William M. Tweed was arrested on the affidavit of Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, and held to bail in the sum of one million of dollars .*
* Divested of all legal forms, the facts set forth by Mr. Tilden in his affida- vit were as follows: By the City Tax-Levy of 1870, section 4, the Mayor, the Comptroller, and the President of the Board of Supervisors were made a special Board of Audit, to decide upon all outstanding claims against the county of New York. Instead of auditing the claims, the Board delegated the duty of auditing the bills to Auditor James Watson, and directed the payment of whatever bills either Mr. Tweed or Mr. Joseph B. Young should certify as cor- The bills were collected, amounting to $6,312,541.37, and were paid accordingly ; the whole amount going to the immediate personal friends and
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Meanwhile the State election for members of the Leg- islature, State officers, and Judges of the Supreme Court of the city took place on the 7th of November. Perhaps never in the city's history-excepting the ones held in 1768 and in the spring of 1800, when New York city decided the fate of John Adams *- had an election taken
associates of Mr. William M. Tweed, nearly the whole of it upon vouchers which were indorsed by Andrew J. Garvey, James H. Ingersoll, under the style of " Ingersoll & Company," or " E. A. Woodward." As each set of war- rants was paid, Mr. E. A. Woodward, who acted throughout as the confiden- tial agent of Mr. Tweed, deposited to the account of Tweed in the National Broadway Bank his share of spoils. When the warrants were paid to Inger- soll or Garvey, they uniformly made a payment of a large part of the money to Woodward ; and a large part of this again wasimmediately deposited to the credit of Mr. Tweed. As this was done again and again, on twenty-six differ- ent days, and as all the transfers were made by drafts upon the same bank, the evidence was absolutely complete that Tweed shared in the proceeds of these fraudulent vouchers, audited and indorsed by him ; and the amount of stolen money thus directly traced from the public treasury to the pockets of this one person, through the transactions of this ad interim Board alone, is no less than one million of dollars.
* The election of 1800, alluded to in the text, was probably the most bitter, personal, and hotly contested election that New York city has ever witnessed -and it was on this occasion that the remarkable spectacle was presented of Hamilton making speeches at the polls, and Burr dictating the Republican legislative ticket. The contests between the Federalists and the Republicans in the charter elections had gradually increased in bitterness, and the Federalists began gradually to lose ground. Thus, in the election of the preceding spring (1799), the Sixth and Seventh Wards were carried by the Federalist party ; and, elated by their success, the victors put forth renewed efforts in the elec- tion of this year. "To evade the property qualification, requiring every voter to be a landholder, an association of thirty-three young men purchased a house and lot in the Fifth Ward, jointly on the principle of a Tontine, and hav- ing thus rendered themselves eligible according to law, presented themselves at the polls as Republican voters. The same scheme was adopted in the Fourth Ward by a club of seventy-one members. The election returns showed four wards for the Republicans and three for the Federalists; the Fifth Ward being carried in favor of the former by a majority of six, and the Fourth Ward by thirty-five. This result was at once contested by the Federalists, on the ground of illegal voting by the Tontine Association, and, on being submitted to the decision of the retiring board, the majority of which belonged to that party, was pronounced null and void, and the balance of power restored to the hands of the Federalists. The State election having been decided in favor of the Republicans by the election of ex-Governor George Clinton, Edward Living- ston, the brother of the well-known Chancellor of that name, received the appointment of Mayor of New York," and the vote of one majority in the
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place that was attended with more acrimony or greater excitement. Turning, as it did, on the frauds of the Tam- many Ring, all classes of citizens, irrespective of party, were aroused. Merchants, almost to a man, closed their stores; and thousands who had not voted for years exer- cised on this occasion the right of franchise. Republicans and Democrats united to crush one of the wickedest con- spiracies ever aimed against municipal integrity and life. The result was an overwhelming defeat of the "Ring." General Franz Sigel was elected Register by a majority of twenty-five thousand votes. All of the anti-Tammany judges were elected ; and only one (Wm. M. Tweed) of the five Tammany Senators was successful. Of the twenty-one Assemblymen sent to the Legislature by the city, Tammany elected but seven ; while all the anti-Tam- many Aldermen were elected but two. Of the twenty- one Assistant Aldermen chosen, a majority were pledged to reform.
Tammany, however, did not yield without a desperate struggle. All her old tactics of " ballot-stuffing," and intimidation at the polls, with which she was wont to be successful heretofore, were employed. "In this city," says the New York Tribune, in commenting upon the election, " the frauds on election day in Tweed's district are under- stood to have been enormous, and the intimidation of voters was without parallel in recent years. It is no exaggeration to say that the ballots for O'Donovan Rossa were kept out of the boxes by sheer ruffianism; and in many precincts it was literally unsafe to vote against the ' Boss.' Anti-Tammany voters were beaten and driven away from the polls, and there seems to be ground for charging that some of the police were in collusion with the assailants. If Tweed were allowed to take his seat in the
electoral college, consequent upon the result of the New York State election, gave the Presidency to Jefferson instead of to Adams.
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Senate on the strength of an election like this, the princi- ples of free republican government would receive a worse blow than from the theft of twenty millions of dollars."*
The effects of the election were soon apparent. Mem- bers of the Ring who, up to this time, had been defiant, became crestfallen ; several of the most prominent of them
* To the same effect, Mr. Melville D. Landon, a perfectly credible journal- ist, wrote the next day after the election, in the Commercial Advertiser, as follows :
" The disgraceful scenes, the ruffianly assaults, the dishonest repeating, fraudulent voting, and final surrender of the ballot-boxes in this Tweed ward cannot be described. I am not writing about what I heard or read in the news- papers, but I state what 1.saw with my own eyes.
" I saw drunken men come into the second voting precinct-not with Repub- lican votes, for such a man would have been assaulted in three minutes, but with the ticket of the Committee of Seventy, including O'Donovan Rossa, and lay them on the ballot-boxes.
"I saw Edward Coppers, a low, vulgar scoundrel, acting as inspector, snap these votes off, and before the eyes of Michael Costello, the only Republican who dared to stay in the room, deposit Tweed votes.
" I saw four policemen, among whom was a contemptible scoundrel of the , name of Francis O'Rourke, connive at these frauds.
" I saw thief after thief come in, whom Mr. Costello knew to be voting fraud- ulently, and their votes were received by their associate thief, Coppers, and deposited unchallenged.
" I saw brave Michael Costello challenge one brutal repeater, and then I saw five scoundrels assault him, and drag him to the ground, while four police- men stood by and saw it done.
" Then I saw Francis O'Rourke march this innocent brave Republican chal- lenger to the station-house, and falsely accuse him of assault, when he knew he was telling a villainous lie.
" Then I saw Michael Costello in a cold, damp, stone cell, looking, like & felon, out of an iron gate.
"Shall this scoundrel police officer, Francis O'Rourke, go free-shall he still remain on the police force ?
" After this I saw the ballot-boxes in the hands of thieves and repeaters. Every Republican vote was rejected unless it was disguised. Only Tweed votes were received.
" After this, H. G. Leask, of the 'Committee of Seventy,' sent Patrick Elliff to take Michael Costello's place. He was assaulted and driven away from the polls, and Mr. Leask's son was also abused and struck. The mob of thieves and roughs now attacked Mr. Leask's store, which was defended by police.
"To this the writer proposes to testify when Win. M. Tweed asks for his .seat in Albany next winter. This morning I see this voting precinct gave 346 votes for Tweed and only 42 against him, when it cast 48 Republican votes for Woodford in 1870."
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hastened to hand in their resignations of important posi- tions which they held; and, finally, on the 20th of November, Richard B. Connolly resigned his office as Comptroller in favor of Andrew H. Green, who was at once appointed to the vacancy by the Mayor .* With this mem- orable election the curtain fell upon the play which Tam- many had so long kept upon the political boards, to rise again under very different management.
On the 25th of November ex-Comptroller Connolly was arrested on substantially the same charges as his colleague in public office, William M. Tweed, and was also held to bail in the same sum; but, not so fortunate as the latter, he was unable to obtain the requisite amount of bail, and, on the 29th of November, was committed to the Ludlow Street Jail, where he remained until the last day of the year. On the 16th of December the Grand Jury indicted William M. Tweed for felony. On his way to the Tombs, however, he was rescued by a writ of habeas corpus ; and, upon being taken before Judge Barnard, was released on
* Undoubtedly, one of the principal results of the election will be the creating of a new charter for the city. In framing one, the leading idea, says the New York Times, should be so " to reduce the profits of office-holding, that the professional politicians and place-hunters will be forced to abandon their corrupt and corrupting avocation. Every officer under the City Government should receive a fixed salary, and in no case should he be allowed to pocket any of the fees connected with his office. So far as possible all fees should be abolished, and, wherever they are collected, they should be promptly turned over to the City Treasury. As for the subordinate offices, such as clerkships and the like, it would be well if they could be made permanent and independ- ent of political changes. Civil service reform is now agitating the minds of the best men in the country of both parties, and is looked forward to as the cure for the worst evils of our politics. The Republican Party now adminis- tering the National Government has taken the initiative in this much-needed reform. Why should not the same party, which will have entire control of the next Legislature, second the efforts of their representatives in the General Government, and anticipate them in making a practical trial of the experi- . ment ? No better place could be found to test the virtues of civil service reform than the City of New York ; for nowhere else have the evils of the old system wrought such wide-spread corruption, and produced such demoraliza- tion of political parties as here."
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