 An 1870 portrait of William Magear "Boss" Tweed.Public Domain / LIFE Photo Archive Show
The book “Boss Tweed” by Kenneth D. Ackerman chronicled that he was no more corrupt than many of those prosecuting him. The book I have enjoyed most over the summer of 2018 was “Boss Tweed” by Kenneth D. Ackerman (Carroll & Graf Publishers), which profiles the rise and fall of the most corrupt politician in New York history. It has been out for a number of years. Despite his corruption, however, Tweed (1823-1878) was also a man ahead of his time who understood the power of the working man to effect huge political change. Tweed also essentially created Tammany Hall, the greatest political machine in American history. The foot soldiers of Tammany Hall were the hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants who streamed into New York after the Famine desperate for work and shelter. Unlike others who demonized the Irish, Tweed embraced them, giving them jobs and places to live. In return for that, they voted en masse for Tammany candidates, thus providing Tweed with complete control over mayors, governors, and every other elected official in New York State. Using the Irish as levers, Tweed built the greatest political machine in history. The Irish were the Mexican illegal immigrants of their day — only worse. The ruling class hated them because they were dirty, drunkards, and unruly, and they allowed interlopers like Tweed to gain power. Tweed was incredibly corrupt, but probably no more so than the robber barons of his day who tried to corner gold markets on Wall Street, ran massive scams on railroad stock, and stole blind from everyone around them. Tweed and his cohorts robbed everyone blind too, but in the process, they also created massive public work programs and created the infrastructure of New York City as we know it today. Ackerman says that Tweed “conceived the soul of modern New York.” His mistake was to move far beyond the usual “honest graft” of some of his predecessors but to begin stealing too much at the time.
History facebook IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group. Yet he might have gotten away with it were it not for one Irishman named Jimmy O’Brien that he crossed, one newspaper, The New York Times, that was just emerging as a force, one anti-Irish cartoonist, the German-born Thomas Nast of Harpers Weekly, and the Orange riots that occurred when Catholic Irish tried to stop Orangemen marching down Eighth Avenue in triumph on July 12, 1871. The Orange march in 1871 was originally banned by Tweed and his lackey, Mayor Oakey Hall, who feared violence on a massive scale because of tensions building up between the Irish groups. The Famine Irish were in no mood to tolerate the hated oppressors of the Orange Order marching through their neighborhood. Tweed understood that. However, Governor John Hoffman, a Tweed nominee who saw himself as a future president but who needed to distance himself from Tweed to run, saw his opportunity to ingratiate himself with Tweed’s enemies. He ordered the parade to go ahead, and on the day panicked troopers, who included Nast in their ranks, faced a huge Irish Catholic mob determined to stop their hated antagonists from marching. The troops fired into the crowd, and some counts put the fatalities at 130 including women and children. After the smoke had cleared and the national outcry had commenced the powers that be decided that the Irish and Tammany were fully to blame and must be put in their place. Louis Jennings, the English-born editor of The New York Times, decided that getting rid of Tweed and the hated Irish would be his life’s work, and he redoubled his efforts to do so. Nast, for his part, turned his poison pen on Tweed and the Irish. His cartoons featured “horrific hordes of Irish brutes with torches, clubs, and pistols facing heroic guards and police,” as Ackerman writes. “The Irish want more money and less work and fewer Protestants and cheaper whiskey,” wrote E.L. Godkin in The Nation, one of the leading publications of the time. Amid the fury, The New York Times received the scoop of a lifetime. O’Brien, the former Irish-born sheriff of New York who had fallen out with Tweed over an unpaid bill, decided to part with incriminating documents that he had received. He sensed his opportunity after the Orange Day killings to bring Tweed down. O’Brien’s documents came from inside the controller’s office, also run by an Irishman, Dick Connolly. The documents laid out chapter and verse the fake contracts, massive payoffs, and bogus sets of books that Tweed and his ring were maintaining. The Times broke the story with their first-ever three-column headline under the title “The Secret Accounts.” The story was a sensation and made The New York Times, then just another New York newspaper, the leading paper of that day then and ever since. Somewhere O’Brien, the original “Deep Throat,” was laughing. Tweed was doomed, and though he fought the charges he was eventually jailed and died in prison in April 1878. His death brought to the end an incredible chapter in New York history. If you like New York history and the Irish role in it, you will love this book. * Originally published in 2018. William Tweed was born in New York on April 3, 1823. His father was a chair manufacturer. Tweed left school to learn chair making at the age of 11. At 13 he was apprenticed to a saddlemaker; at 17 he became a bookkeeper in a brush business, at 19 joined the firm, and at 21 married the daughter of the firm's chief owner. But Tweed, "full of animal spirits, " as one contemporary described him, found greater excitement in New York's volunteer fire department. In 1850 he became foreman of the celebrated "Americus No. 6" company, which, a year later, helped elect him Democratic alderman. In Tammany Hall politics there were at least two classic routes to power—hard work combined with loyalty, or aggressiveness and luck. Tweed followed the latter. After serving as an alderman, he was in the U.S. Congress for a term (1853-1855); not only did this experience destroy Tweed's appetite for national politics but it put him out of touch with New York politics. But Tweed soon gained power in party and city affairs. His official positions included membership on the city board of supervisors, state senator, chairman of the state finance committee, school commissioner, deputy street commissioner, and commissioner of public works. During the 1860s Tweed parlayed political influence into hard cash. Despite meager legal knowledge, he opened a law office to dispense "legal services" to such corporations as the Erie Railroad. He bought a printing company that monopolized city contracts, and a marble company that sold materials for the new courthouse at exorbitant prices. By 1867 Tweed was a millionaire and moved his family to a fashionable neighborhood. The following year he became grand sachem of Tammany. The Tweed ring began in 1866, tightening operations in 1869, when "Boss" Tweed and others arranged that all bills to the city would henceforth be at least one-half fraudulent, a proportion later raised to 85 percent. The proceeds went equally to Tweed, to the city comptroller, to the county treasurer, and to the mayor. A fifth share was used to bribe officials and businessmen. The boss rallied diverse groups behind his regime by providing "something for all." Tweed was well suited by temperament and personality for this. Almost 6 feet all, a ruddy 300 pounds, he combined coarse good fellowship with practiced suavity, becoming a favorite of all, including, for a time, some of New York's "best people." Like a good 19th-century entrepreneur, he maximized short-run profits, which were massive. The county courthouse cost $12 million; two thirds was fraudulent. Between 1866 and 1871 (when the ring was exposed) the Tweed ring's services cost the city between $40 and $100 million. The reform coalition that exposed the ring included city patricians, the New York Times, and assorted political enemies within both parties; motives varied. The battle ended with imprisonment for Tweed and several associates. Initially sentenced to 12 years, Tweed went free in 1875. Rearrested on further charges, he was reimprisoned following a sensational escape to Spain. He died in jail on April 12, 1878. A century later, his grotesquely dishonest career seems a significant chapter in the urban crisis, social and governmental, which Americans have not been able to solve.
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William M. "Boss" Tweed (April 3, 1823 – April12, 1878) was an American politician and head of Tammany Hall, the name given to the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in the History of New York City politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. He was convicted and eventually imprisoned for embezzling millions of dollars from the city through political corruption and graft. Political careerTweed left school at the age of 11 to learn his father’s trade of chair making. At 13 he was apprenticed to a saddle maker, at 17 he worked as a bookkeeper for a brush company, and at 19 joined the firm; he later went on to marry the daughter of the firms chief owner. Tweed also joined the volunteer fire department. In 1850 he became the foreman of the Americus NO. 6 company, also know as the Big 6. One year later with their help, Tweed was elected Democratic alderman. In 1852, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and served one term. Tweed's focus was then switched to local politics. His official positions included membership on the city board of supervisors, state senator, chairman of the state finance committee, school commissioner, deputy street commissioner, and commissioner of public works. Tweed managed to provide legal services to corporations such as the Erie Railroad despite his limited knowledge of the law. Financiers Jay Gould and Big Jim Fisk made Boss Teed a director the Erie Railroad and Tweed in turn arranged favorable legislation for them. Tweed and Gould became the subjects of political cartoons by Thomas Nast in 1869. In April 1870, Tweed secured the passage of a city charter putting the control of the city into the hands of the mayor (A. Oakey Hall), the comptroller and the commissioners of parks and public works, he then set about to plunder the city. The total amount of money stolen was never known. It has been estimated from $25 million to $200 million. Over a period of two years and eight months, New York City’s debts increased from $36 million in 1868 to about $136 million by 1870, with little to show for the debt. Tweed was now a millionaire and the third largest land owner in Manhattan. Tweed’s motto was “something for everyone.” He used this philosophy to corrupt newspaper reporters and to persuade union and Catholic Church officials to go along with his plans for civic improvement. Tweed defrauded the city by having contractors present excessive bills for work performed, typically ranging from 15 to 65 percent more than the project actually cost. As operations tightened Tweed and his gang saw to it that all bills to the city would be at least one-half fraudulent which later reached 85 percent. The proceeds where divided equally among Tweed, the city comptroller, county treasurer, the mayor with one-fifth set aside for official bribes. The most excessive overcharging came in the form of the famous Tweed Courthouse, which cost the city $13 million to construct. The actual cost for the court house was about three million, leaving about ten million for the pockets of Tweed and his gang. The city was also billed $3,000,000 for city printing and stationery over a two-year period. With the purchasing of the printing and marble companies, this enabled Tweed to further his control of the cities operations by providing the materials used in the building of the new courthouse. While he was known primarily for the vast corrupt empire, Tweed was also responsible for building hospitals, orphanages, widening Broadway along the Upper West Side, and securing the land for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The public works projects where needed to provide services to the massive influx of European immigrants. Tweed's arrest and subsequent flightTweed-le-dee and Tilden-dum The New York Times published editorials raising questions about how Tweed and those associated with him where able to acquire such a vast amount of wealth. For a time, the newspaper lacked hard evidence. But, this would soon change. Tweed's demise was evident when one of the plunderers, dissatisfied with the amount of money he received, gave The New York Times evidence that conclusively proved that stealing was going on. The informant provided copies of a secret book that detailed the level of corruption. This evidence was reported to the public in the November 20, 1873 edition of the paper. The newspaper was apparently offered five million dollars to not publish the evidence. In a subsequent interview about the fraud, Tweed’s only reply was, “Well what are you going to do about it?” However, accounts in The New York Times and political cartoons drawn by Thomas Nast and published in Harper’s Weekly, resulted in the election of numerous opposition candidates in 1871. Tweed is attributed with what the papers say about me. "My constituents can’t read, but damn it, they can see pictures!” In October 1871, when Tweed was held on $8,000,000 bail, Jay Gould was the chief bondsman. The efforts of Political reformers William H. Wickham (1875 New York City mayor) and Samuel J. Tilden (later the 1876 Democratic presidential nominee) resulted in Tweed’s trial and conviction in 1873. He was given a 12 year prison sentence, which was reduced by a higher court and he served one year. He was then re-arrested on civil charges, sued by New York State for $6,000,000 and held in debtor’s prison until he could post $3,000,000 as bail. Tweed was still a wealthy man and his prison cell was somewhat luxurious. Tweed was allowed to visit his family on a daily basis and on December 4, 1875, Tweed escaped and fled to Cuba. His presence in Cuba was discovered by the U.S. Government and he was held by the Cuban government. Before the U.S. Government could arrange for his extradition, Tweed bribed his way onto a ship to Spain serving as a common seaman. Before he arrived, the U.S. Government discovered his eventual destination and arranged for his arrest as soon as he reached the Spanish coast. The Spanish authorities identified him, purportedly recognizing him from one of Nast’s cartoons and extradited him. He was delivered to the authorities in New York City on November 23, 1876. Ironically he was incarcerated at the Ludlow Street Jail just a few blocks from his childhood home. He died two years later after being very ill on April 12, 1878, at the age of 55. During Tweed's illness he offered to disclose everything he knew about Tammany Hall in exchange for his release but, was denied. He was buried in the Brooklyn Green-Wood Cemetery. Trivia
Tweed was a member of an organization called The Society of Saint Tammany, which was founded in 1789 and took its name from the chief of the Delaware Indians. It began as a charitable organization created by tradesman who where not allowed to join the clubs of the wealthy. The society provided food, shelter and jobs for the less fortunate. ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
External linksAll links retrieved October 4, 2020.
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Who was william tweed? answer in one to two sentences.
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