Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [486]
Leggett and friends also chopped away at municipal backing for literary and cultural institutions, which privileged the established vis-a-vis newcomers. They criticized government aid to asylums for the insane poor, preferring care by kin. They decried regulation of the medical profession as a ploy by conventional doctors to drive homeopathic, botanicalist, and patent medicine rivals out of business.
In 1835, after a year at the editorial helm during which he’d managed to alienate most of the city’s elite, Leggett proceeded to outrage the leaders of his own Democratic party. He denounced President Jackson for banning abolitionist literature from the mail: the editor disapproved of the antislavery group’s tactics, but he detested government censorship. Tammany in return cut off the paid announcements that the Evening Post received as a party organ, and the post office—which Leggett had urged be stripped of its monopoly and turned over to private enterprise—likewise canceled its advertising.
In early October the Hall read Leggett out of the party altogether, which galvanized Leggett’s antimonopoly supporters into action. They had been meeting as an informal faction at the Military and Civic Hotel (on Bowery and Broome). Now they decided to wrest the Democratic party from the faction led by bankers Gideon Lee and Preserved Fish, by taking control of the general meeting. On the appointed evening, however, canny Tammany men arrived early, entered by the back door, quickly organized the meeting, nominated a bank president as chair, and were about to ram their ticket through when the antimonopoly forces burst in and forced the Tammanyites out. As they left, departing Tammany men turned off the gas lights, plunging the hall into darkness. But this was an old trick—it had been used against Fanny Wright years before—and the antimonopolists had come prepared. Whipping out their “loco focos,” the new friction matches, they lit candles and completed their business, winning the nickname of “Loco Focos” in the process. In February 1836 they formally established the Friends of Equal Rights Party and started their own paper, the Democrat.
In the April 1836 mayoral elections—which the new organization considered a test of “whether the rich or the labouring classes, the few or the many, are to rule this wide Confederation,” the Equal Rights Party ran Alexander Ming for the mayoralty. He was opposed by the “Bank Democrats,” who chose the incumbent, Cornelius Lawrence, and the “Bank Whigs,” who selected Seth Geer. Both, in Loco Foco eyes, were agents of the “souless [sic], cadaverous, unmanly aristocracy of Wall Street.” A fourth entrant, Samuel F. B. Morse, entered on behalf of the Native American Party.
Democrats worked hard to recapture Loco Foco supporters by incorporating their issues and personnel, Tammany came out for government control of the banking system. It supported the GTU’s former president Ely Moore for congressman. Democrats also appealed to party (and local) loyalty, noting that favorite son Martin Van Buren was running for the presidency. In addition, the pressure for independent action by journeymen slackened when another upstate conspiracy trial reversed direction, acquitted some accused unionists, and ushered in a more prolabor climate.
The election, quiet and orderly, proved a triumph for the Democrats. Lawrence won easily, with 60.2 percent of the vote. The Whig, Geer, got 23.5 percent. Ming and Morse pulled down a mere 10.4 and 5.9 percent respectively. Whigs and Democrats split the Common Council equally, eight and eight. The Equal Rights movement had failed to establish itself as a serious rival of the major parties, but it had succeeded in pressuring the Democrats into adopting