Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [507]
Gang warfare reflected and exacerbated conflicts between old-timers and newcomers. Some groups took ethnic chauvinism or blustering nativism as a raison d’être. Others avoided straight-out trials of strength with evenly matched opponents, preferring to prowl the streets singling out victims to bash (as in an 1840 assault on German immigrants).
The emergence of a vigorous two-party system drew the gangs into politics as well. Democrats, especially, sought the services of well-organized and well-muscled groups. Many Tammany ward and district leaders were on familiar terms with gang members, being proprietors of the Bowery saloons where they congregated. It was easy enough, therefore, especially in straitened times, to hire men to strong-arm party opponents and to guard, steal, or stuff ballot boxes.
Some of these outfits had political ambitions of their own. Mike Walsh, brought over from Ireland as a child, was a lithographer and journalist by trade. A militant defender of the city’s workers, Walsh was hugely popular for his vitriolic and hilarious speeches excoriating assorted elites as “curs,” “grub-worms,” and “vultures.” An effective fighter as well as eloquent speaker, Walsh formed the Spartan Band, one of the city’s most effective gangs, in 1840. In elections that year, he and his men, forty or fifty strong and armed with clubs, invaded Whig headquarters, assaulting all present. In the November 1841 election, Walsh’s Spartan Band, with three hundred members, became something of a loose cannon when he and his shoulder-hitters strong-armed their way into Tammany’s precincts and forced the Democratic General-Committee to put Walsh’s name on their ticket.
Captain Isaiah Rynders, for whom politics was strictly a business, was more typical of the new breed of gang leaders who tied up with Tammany. The Captain had earned his tide commanding a Hudson River sloop, then headed west, where he became a celebrated gambler and knife fighter, working the Mississippi River steamboats. Back in New York by the late 1830s, he opened half a dozen groceries and Bowery saloons. In 1843 Rynders organized the Empire Club, a group of bruisers who operated out of the Arena saloon at 28 Park Row—recruiting immigrants, breaking up Whig meetings, doing whatever Tammany called for.
At the same time some gang leaders were forging fateful partnerships with New York politicians, others were dedicating their energies to criminal enterprise. Complaints of robberies and muggings increased rapidly during the depression years. “The property of the citizen is pilfered, almost before his eyes,” declared a special committee of the Common Council in 1842. “Dwellings and warehouses are entered with an ease and apparent coolness and carelessness of detection which shows that none are safe.”
“A civic ARMY”
New York’s patriciate had long tolerated crowds rather than maintain a “standing army” of professional police. As late as the rowdy Callithumpian processions of the 1820s, some gentlemen had still considered the occasional civil disorder to be compatible with civic order. No longer. Crowds had gotten too big, too unruly, too organized, too Irish, and (Hone feared) “will ere long be difficult to quell.”
They were already difficult to quell. In the riots of the 1830s, mayors attempting to overawe crowds with the majesty of their office had been unceremoniously trampled on. Nor, given existing instrumentalities for maintaining law and order, did reliance on physical force work much better than relying on social deference.
The police force was not inconsequential, to be sure. Jacob Hays, appointed high constable back in 1802, was a seasoned enforcer of the law. During the 1830s disturbances he had plunged gamely into the thick of a crowd, armed only with his staff of office, and seized rioters with a viselike grip. Hays, moreover, was backed by an expanded cadre of peace officers. By day these consisted of two dozen elected constables (two per ward) and scores of mayorally appointed marshals. By night hundreds of watchmen