Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [410]
For white men. Suffrage for women was not on the agenda, and the same convention that emancipated poor whites disfranchised most blacks. Indeed ardent Democrats took the lead in drawing the color line, because African-American voters had long supported the Federalists. This was hardly surprising, given that the 1799 abolition law had been enacted by a Federalist legislature and signed by a Federalist governor, but Democrats chose to assume that Federalists (or their Clintonian successors) would continue to command black votes because the freedmen were dependent, illiterate, and easily manipulated by their former masters. “If we may judge of the future by the past,” one Democratic militant cautioned the 1821 convention, “I should suppose that there was some cause for alarm, when a few hundred Negroes of the city of New York, following the train of those who ride in their coaches, and whose shoes and boots they had so often blacked shall go to the polls of the election and change the political condition of the whole state.” Northern Democrats, moreover, had been moving toward an alliance with slaveholding southerners, a strategy that only enhanced their desire to bar blacks from the polls.
In the end, Peter A. Jay, an abolitionist like his father, John Jay, prevailed on the convention’s majority not to exclude all black men but only those who didn’t pay taxes on $250 worth of property. This proved acceptable, as Democrats were quite confident that the provision would effectively exclude African Americans. They were right. In 1826, of a total black population of 12,499 in New York County, only sixty were taxed at all, and of these only sixteen qualified to vote. New York was to remain a republic—or a democracy, as it was now increasingly called—of white males.
TAMMANY DEMOCRACY
The Democratic Party, which now unequivocally defined all European immigrants as “white,” vigorously cultivated newcomers. It established a “naturalization bureau” to hurry new voters into being; held special meetings for Irish, French, and German immigrants; placed influential Irishmen on local tickets, and dispensed patronage to ethnic supporters. Within a few years, an estimated one-third of Democratic voters would be of foreign birth, and Philip Hone would be complaining that Irishmen “decide the elections in the city of New York.”
In 1828 Tammany solidified its position by helping make Andrew Jackson president. Jackson had received the largest number of electoral votes for the presidency in 1824. However, failing of a majority, he had been defeated in the House of Representatives, which elected John Quincy Adams in what Democrats charged was a “corrupt bargain.” Tammanyites itched to support the popular war hero in the 1828 rematch but were at first dissuaded by the fact that his biggest supporter in New York was De Witt Clinton. Eventually Martin Van Buren, his eyes on national prizes, made peace with Clinton and swung the Democrats behind Jackson. Clinton’s unexpected death that year removed any remaining reservations.
During the campaign, Tammanyites sponsored elaborate dinners to commemorate the Battle of New Orleans—packing sixteen hundred into the Long Room and holding smaller affairs in all the wards. They established Hickory Clubs throughout the city, which ceremonially planted hickory trees (Jackson was known as Old Hickory) and then retired to local taverns to toast the general’s health. They reminded Irish audiences that Jackson was their compatriot and had humiliated their British oppressors. New York (city and state) went for Jackson and also sent Martin Van Buren to the governor’s mansion, a position he soon resigned to become Jackson’s secretary of state.
Though Tammany trumpeted Jackson’s election as the triumph of democracy, some of the demos thought otherwise, pointing to the fact that the commanding heights of the Democratic Party were occupied by the mercantile elite itself. In truth, the Tammany Society, the party’s inner sanctum, embraced many well-connected attorneys, merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurial craftsmen.