USA > New York > History of the state of New York, political and governmental, Vol. V > Part 25
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LOUIS F. HAFFEN
Louis F. Haffen, born November 6, 1854 at Melrose, West- chester county; entered St. Johns college, Fordham, 1868, Niagara university, 1870; returned to Fordham and graduated, 1873; graduated from Columbia school of mines, 1879, as a civil engineer; worked in New York City and in the West; employed in the department of parks, New York City; elected commissioner of street improvements in the Bronx, 1893; dele- gate to constitutional convention of 1895; elected 1st borough president of the Bronx, 1897 and reelected for four terms, serv- ing in all 12 years.
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opment of the Society. The sagamore was a vigorous Jeffersonian. This was John Pintard, the Tammanyite of highest social position ; also a scholar. Pintard was editor of the Daily Advertiser, assistant- assessor of the City Council, and Assemblyman. Under his leadership the Society could lose no opportunity, and one presently offered, for making a fine impression on the public mind."
Wilson goes on to give a circumstantial account of the aid given by the Tammany Society in the reception of the Creek and Oneida Indians, which was regarded as of vast importance in paving the way to peace and stopping Indian aggressions. The Tammany men at- tended in Indian costume, deferred to the forms and ceremonies of Indian diplomacy, and wound up with smoking the pipe of peace. This history is not alone in giving the Willett-McGillvray Creek Indian reception incident a considerable value in fixing the relations of the settlers with the red men. It concludes the account with a reference to the President which verifies the as- sertion that the occasion was important :- "The cere- many ended with a song of peace in which all, including the President [Washington], joined. The Sons of St. Tammany, in costume, managed the business, and the Society had made its mark."
John Pintard's other activities dovetailed very effec- tively with his purposes and interests in connection with the Tammany Society. He took his prominent though strangely silent part in social, political, charitable, and civic movements of all kinds as fast as they were started, and even started many of them himself. The New York Historical Society was established in 1805, identified with it being such notables as Mayor DeWitt Clinton,
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Judge Egbert Benson, Samuel Bayard, Anthony Bleecker, Peter Gerard Stuyvesant, Rufus King, Daniel D. Tompkins, and all the clergymen of the city. Yet Mr. Pintard was undoubtedly the untiring force that brought it about, and his collection for the Tammany Museum, begun in 1789, was the nucleus of the one as- sembled by the new body. Lamb's "History of New York" groups Tammany's American Museum and that of the Historical Society together and says : "To Pintard is due the honor of originating both; indeed, he may with justice be pronounced the father of historical soci- eties in America." He was also the forceful pioneer in the establishment of the first savings bank in the city, as well as of the American Bible Society and the Theo- logical Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
Pintard's influence appears to have waned in the fol- lowing years as the Sons of St. Tammany became more and more interested and active in the politics of the city, State, and nation. He was unable to make any effective impression on his colleagues of the Society in favor of the Erie canal project, which he ardently championed from the very beginning. An admirer and warm friend of DeWitt Clinton, he possessed, as did that great man, the vision to foresee the value to the State and city of the water highway to link the Great Lakes and the sea. While Tammany was actively and aggressively against the canal and added to the opposition of its members in the Legislature a campaign of ridicule against "the big ditch," Pintard is credited by a contemporary, Dr. Francis, with distinguished service on the other side. He says : "The first meeting of our citizens in favor of
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this vast measure was brought together through the in- strumentality of John Pintard at a time when to give it any countenance whatever was sure to bring upon the advocate of the ruinous project the anathemas of certain of the political leaders of the day and official proscrip- tion. I remember well how cautiously and secretly many of these incipient meetings in favor of the contem- plated canal were convened, and how the manly bosom of Clinton often throbbed at the agonizing remarks of the opposition, muttered in his hearing, and the hazard to his personal security which he sometimes en- countered."
The record of the Tammany efforts to defeat the canal measure is undoubtedly one of the things that the protagonists of the organization would be glad to oblit- erate. While it mirrors accurately the purblind attitude of the majority and exactly reflects public opinion of the day, it is quite a stumbling-block in the way of the Wig- wam spellbinder who would claim that Tammany was ever and always at the front in public works that make for progress. There is no comfort to him or credit to the Tammany leaders of that time in the explanation that there was a good deal of small politics in their position. It was in part due to their antagonistic feel- ings toward DeWitt Clinton, against whom they waged many a bitter contest in the first two decades of the Nineteenth century. They recanted, though, when the canal was an accomplished fact, and vied with other political and civic organizations in the celebration of the completion of the great work in 1825. The members of the order were no inconspicuous feature of the cere-
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monies of that occasion, whose pomp and pageantry were the marvel of the time and whose poetic sentiment and the imagery of the union of the waters are stirring reading to-day.
The record of Tammany during all this time of fruit- less opposition to the canal and of factional strife for office and influence in the city government is far from being devoid of constructive effort and accomplishment. An interesting example is furnished by the story of the contest over the adoption of the Constitution of 1821. That instrument was the result of long striving, and Tammany's part in securing through it the admitted boon of manhood suffrage is very interesting. The cul- mination of the efforts is so ably treated of by Hon. Robert Ludlow Fowler that nothing more enlightening could possibly be written on the subject. Judge Fow- ler's contributions on the Constitutional and Legal His- tory of New York in the Wilson Memorial History are recognized as among the most valuable and interesting in that four-volume work. He says :
"During the entire period between the enactments of the State Constitutions of 1777 and 1821 there was great dissatisfaction with those provisions of the former document which related to the property qualification of electors and with the other provisions which vested such transcendent powers in the Judges of the great courts of record. The popular dissatisfaction for some time took the usual form of pro- tests in the newspapers of the day. But in August, 1820, Tammany Hall, as the representative of the dissatisfied element of the population, initiated a movement for a convention to amend the State Constitu- tion. The subsequent legislative bill providing for the convention promptly met with the disapprobation of a majority of the Council of Revision, who vetoed it, Chancellor Kent writing the opinion for the
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Council with all the conservatism of a trained lawyer. No veto in the history of the State has met with greater censure than this action of the Council of Revision. The Council was openly accused of wishing to defeat the will of the people, and of conspiring to retain the State in the hands of the lawyers and landholders who, from its foundation, had carefully guided its political fortunes."
Judge Fowler's other references to the constitutional provisions which provoked so much dissatisfaction are added to make plain the great importance of this action of the Tammany Society. He says :
"While this Contsitution [1777] contained a most explicit state- ment of the rights of popular sovereignty, the practice was not coex- tensive with the enunciation, the suffrage being confined to such as were freeholders in the Province or freemen in the cities of New York and Albany. It was reserved for a later day to give fuller effect to the political emancipation declared by the American Revolution."
Further and fully to understand the important and far-reaching effect of this successful agitation of the Tammany Society and its potent tendency toward real government by the people, it should be recalled that in the year 1790, out of 13,330 males resident in the city of New York only about 1,303 appear to have had suffi- cient property to qualify them to be electors for State Senators under the State Constitution of 1777. At that time, it is said, there were 93 freemen of the city (prob- ably included in the 1,303). Continuing with Judge Fowler, the study of the old Constitution sheds even brighter light on the action of Tammany.
"The main provisions of the fundamental charter of the new gov- ernment bore an astonishing resemblance to the former crown govern- ment, except in the source from which the political authority emanated. That was the new political institute, but one long dreamed of by philosophers and at last realized. The realization was the
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legitimate inheritance of those who had left old institutions and worn- out forms for the politically formless regions of the world. It is true that it had been said by political writers of ancient Greece that all forms of government proceed in cycles, and are constantly changing from free forms to forms less free or from absolutism to anarchy, and that no form of government is stationary, entirely novel, or perfect. The new form of government of New York, however, contained several features new to the history of political societies-absolute religious toleration, and the declaration, rather than the realization, of a complete popular supremacy absolutely unalloyed with difference in status, for no mention was made of African slavery in the Constitu- tion, and its total abolition was evidently contemplated by the founders of the new State.
"The Constitution of the new State did not indulge in a triumph- ant denunciation of the past, nor did it destroy those old and well- worn forms which experience had demonstrated could coalesce with liberty. On the contrary, it perpetuated those institutions of the Province and of the common law of all English-speaking people which had been fully consistent with equality, liberty, order, and justice. The only revolution was in the source of political power, which was declared to be founded on the will of the people. How great this single revolution indicated was, it took some generations to compre- hend; for at first the force of the ancient legal formula and the tyr- anny of custom rendered the political emancipation to some extent a phrase, and it was not until subsequent to 1800, when a new genera- tion of lawyers had come upon the scene, that the State entered on the phase of really popular institutions. The effect of the change in the common law wrought by a combination with republican institutions then became more apparent."
That this early and typical action of Tammany went right to the seat of the principles of popular govern- ment and vitally concerned the foundation and future of the State and the United States, is again shown by Judge Fowler's masterly analysis of the legal effect of the American Revolution upon the question of the sov-
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ereignty which Tammany did so much to crown the whole people with.
"Successful rebellion always transfers the sovereignty from the unsuccessful to the successful. Thus, in the eye of the publicist, indi- viduals living in the Province of New York succeeded to the entire political authority of the former government in New York, and they also succeeded, in common with the warring people in all the other Colonies, to the subverted general authority of the crown in its rela- tions to the other seaboard Colonies. There was no question that the people of a particular Colony succeeded to the former sovereignty over that Colony; the real question related to the manner in which they succeeded to certain imperial prerogatives of the crown, of far more general extent. A close analysis will perhaps demonstrate that the subverted imperial authority was ultimately vested by the people of all the Colonies in the new general or Federal government, and that the subverted sovereignty of a particular Colony was transferred by its recipients to the new State government. If we may act on this rigid analysis, it may be said that the original Articles of Confedera- tion failed to express the real partition of the subverted political power, while the Federal Constitution of 1787 accurately expressed the rela- tions which the people in all the original Colonies antecedently bore to the new order of things."
So it may be truly said that it depended upon the Con- stitution of 1821, the movement for which was initiated by the Tammany Society of New York, to express the real partition of the subverted political power which was won from the crown in the war of the Revolution.
Three other conspicuous examples of Tammany's patriotism and public spirit shown in the first half of the century, were its action in paying reverence to the Prison Ship martyrs, its stirring part in the War of 1812 both before and after the outbreak of hostilities, and the abolition of imprisonment of debtors (1831).
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Its part as one of the great representative organiza- tions of the city in all the public functions, parades, celebrations, dinners, and what not need not be re- counted. Sufficient is it to say that none among these demonstrations would have been considered complete without Tammany, and a large proportion of the Sons of Tammany who participated in whatever was afoot were costumed as native American Indians and wore their distinctive badge of the bucktail. The occasions included the wonderful peace parades of the Revolution's end and at the close of the War of 1812, the Erie canal festivities, the celebration of Washing- ton's birthday anniversaries, Evacuation days, always the Fourth of July, as well as the Washington and Ham- ilton funeral processions and other public obsequies which were accompanied by any processional demon- stration.
The Tammany Society had tried in vain to make a national concern of the care of the relics of the Prison Ship martyrs and the erection of a suitable memorial. An appeal to Congress invited the cooperation of the people of the whole country, and various efforts were made to collect funds for the purpose by voluntary sub- scriptions. Then the Society took the work upon itself and furnished the means to build a vault, the original corner-stone of which, bearing the inscription, is now in the keeping of the Long Island Historical Society. With solemn ceremonials the memorial was dedicated on the 6th of April, 1806. The honored relics of the Prison Ship martyrs are now at rest on the Heights of Fort Greene (Washington Park) in Brooklyn. A plaza,
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terraced masonry, and a dignified and impressive stone column mark the spot and seem destined to form a memorial with everything of permanency that human effort can insure. The members of the Society of Tam- many paraded in full force on the occasion of the dedi- cation of the beautiful new monument, November 14, 1908, and President-elect William H. Taft, the orator of the day, paid them a graceful compliment for their appearance and eulogized the Tammany men who, a century before, had first performed the patriotic duty of doing honor to those heroic dead.
Another instance of the spirit which manifested itself in patriotic effort was in 1814, when the War of 1812 was drawing to its close. Tammany took the lead in the voluntary work of the citizens in erecting the much needed fortifications in Brooklyn to supplement the de- fenses of New York. This movement was a repetition of similar activity, in which Tammany was equally prominent, during the war scare in 1794 when hostilities with England were expected to break out again. The work then was done at Governor's Island.
Tammany's record in connection with the establish- ment of the first free school in New York is of special interest, showing alike the progressive attitude of the Society on the great question of public education, its high standing in the community, and the status of its personnel in the best business and social circles. John Pintard, of course, was a leading spirit in the enterprise that marks the beginning of the work-the organization in 1805 of "the Society for establishing a Free School in the City of New York, for the education of such poor
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children as do not belong to or are not provided for by any religious society." This school was conducted in quarters donated, rent free, in Bancker (now Madison) Street, and accommodated forty pupils. It soon proved inadequate to the demands, and Colonel Henry Rutgers, a member of Tammany, generously donated a site for a new building in Henry Street. The city also presented a site to the Society, and both were in time utilized. In Bourne's "History of the Public School Society" the importance of this first step toward our school system is recognized by the publication of the names of all who contributed to the erection in 1809 of the pioneer free school building. In the list are included nine members of the Tammany Society: Henry Rutgers, Josiah G. Pierson, Thomas Smyth, John Youle, Forman Cheese- man, J. Sherred, William Post, Ebenezer Bassett, and Peter Fenton, Jr.
The Tammany Society took an equally prominent part in membership in the Public School Society of the City of New York, the successor to the Free School Society and the real parent of the public school organi- zation of our day with its 550 school-houses, 24,000 teachers, and 800,000 pupils. In March, 1826, the free schools having increased in number to six and grown away from any distinctive charitable purpose, the Leg- islature at the request of the school trustees incorporated the Public School Society. Here were the public schools as we know them open to all without regard to any distinctions of circumstances, religious belief, or nationality. Here, again, the historians have felt called upon to record the names of the "original corporators,"
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and among them are found the following members of the Society of Tammany : Samuel Russell, Samuel Torbert, William Boyd, Benjamin Egbert, Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchell, Mayor DeWitt Clinton, Brockholst Livingston, Jacob Morton, Daniel D. Tompkins, John Pintard, William Johnson, and Adrian Hegeman.
The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 was the occa- sion of a signal demonstration of the ever-ready national patriotism of Tammany. By its representation in the Board of Aldermen of the city of New York the organ- ization was supreme in the city's government. Nearly all the members of that body were Tammany men. On April 19, 1861, the board adopted a resolution appro- priating one million dollars toward raising and equip- ping troops for the war. Major-General Sickles, himself a member of Tammany, received this tribute of appreciation from President Lincoln a few days after- ward: "Sickles, I have here on my table the resolution passed by your Aldermen promising to do all in their power to support the government. I have their resolu- tions appropriating a million dollars toward raising men for the war. When they were handed to me I felt my burden lighter. I felt that when men break through party lines and take this patriotic stand for the govern- ment and the Union all must come out well in the end."
The impressive monument on the battlefield of Get- tysburg, with all that has been written about it, and the record of the Forty-second New York, make it a work of supererogation to devote space here to the story of Tammany's part in the Civil War. That regiment fought in thirty-six battles and engagements, Antietam
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and Gettysburg being the most notable both for their military results and the losses in life. The story of the Forty-second, however, makes up only part of Tam- many's record in the great conflict. Several other regi- ments and brigades were credited almost entirely to the organization. General John Cochrane's chasseurs, General Thomas Francis Meagher's brigade, General Corcoran's force, which included the Sixty-ninth regi- ment, and the Excelsiors (five regiments) of General Daniel E. Sickles are all classed as Tammany contribu- tions to the man power of the north in those dread times.
PART II ASPECTS OF RECENT HISTORY-SPIRIT AND CHARACTERISTICS
T HE story of the Tweed ring has already, with the greatest frankness, been adverted to as the story of the deep and dark disgrace of Tweed-Tammany corruption and robbery. Time and distance of stand- point, with the comparative effect of our every-day talk of figures of millions merging into billions, have taken away the impression of colossal looting that stunned the minds of the people of the early 'seventies. The varying estimates of from $30,000,000 to $75,000,000 do not stir the imagination much these days. But nothing can ever lessen the degree of the offense. It was a colossal crime-colossal in conception, colossal in audacity, colossal in insolence, and colossal in stupidity. It is hard to realize how any sane mind could expect, or even hope, that such a structure of fraud could endure. So much has been written concerning it, and the denuncia- tory campaign references to it are so continually with us, that it will be excusable to refer here to only one aspect. No one seems to recall in these latter-day allusions that even the Committee of Seventy appor- tioned the odium of the mess and did not put it all on Tweed and Tammany. To all fair-minded critics, but
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more especially to the self-righteous and the partisan poison-tongued and the confiding believers in the superior morality of up-State, a reading of the follow- ing utterance of that committee is commended :
"But you of the country [i. e., up-State] must help us. This is your city as well as our own. We are your factors and business agents. If we are overburdened with taxes, you have to pay us more for doing your business. The corruption 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 efforts to purify our political life, and the one efficacious 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 dominates among weaker villains by a mere magnitude of scoundrel- ism, he has found willing tools among the false representatives of dis- tricts where one year of his stealings would be regarded as enormous wealth."
Again, Samuel J. Tilden, recognized as the potent force in the activities which accomplished the downfall of the ring, made this point in his famous letter to the New York Times under the title, "The New York City 'Ring'-Its Origin, Maturity, and Fall Discussed" :
"It is but just to say that the Democracy are not responsible for this sort of statesmanship, which considers the equal division of official emoluments more important than the administration of official trusts or the well-being of the governed. In the Assembly of 1857, of the 128 members the Democracy had but 37, of the 32 Senators it had but four ; and it had not the Governor. In the thirteen years from 1857 to 1869 it never had a majority in the Senate, in the Assembly but once, and had the Governor but once. The Republicans had all the legislative power of the State during all that period, as they and their Whig predecessors had possessed it for the previous ten years. The 'Ring' was doubly a ring. It was a ring between the six Republican
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and the six Democratic Supervisors. It soon grew to be a ring between the Republican majority and the half-and-half Supervisors, and a few Democratic officials in this city. The Republican partners had the superior power. They could create such institutions as the Board of Supervisors, and could abolish them at will."
Another aspect of the post-Tweed days that is ignored in the partisan attacks on Tammany is the addition to its rolls and to its councils of many of those who were most active in bringing the ring malefactors to justice. That this would presage a reform in the organization as marked and as thorough as the reform that had been accomplished in the city government is so apparent that they studiously neglect to supply the premise. Com- pare the following lists drawn from the Society's roll of officials :
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