Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [657]
Such men rose to power not from boardrooms or drawing rooms but from the intensely maculinist working-class streets. Rising politicians like William Magear Tweed often developed personal followings—as the gentry once had—by displaying their courage and generosity in leading volunteer fire companies. Tweed, born in 1823 to a Protestant, third-generation Scottish-American family, grew up on Cherry Street, studied bookkeeping, worked in the brushmaking business in which his father owned stock, then joined the family chairmaking firm. A brawny young man with clear blue eyes, an amiable smile, and a fabulous memory for names and faces, Tweed was a gregarious chap (and a good dancer to boot). In 1847 he enlisted in the International Order of Odd Fellows; he was later initiated as a Mason and in 1849 joined some friends in organizing a fire company. He seems to have chosen its name—the Americus Engine Company, Number 6 (more popularly known as “Big Six”)—and its symbol as well, a snarling red tiger. In 1850, Big Six’s seventy-five red-shirted, intensely clannish members elected him foreman, and Tweed, dashingly attired in white firecoat, led his loyal men in “running with the machine” to battle blazes. Unfortunately they also battled other companies, and in 1850 chief engineer Alfred Carson, who personally accused Tweed of leading an ax-wielding assault on rivals, managed to get him expelled. Still, his exploits had provided a stepping-stone into politics, by bringing the vigorous and ambitious twenty-six-year-old businessman to the attention of Seventh Ward Democratic politicians. In 1850 they ran him for assistant alderman. It was a Whig year, and Tweed lost, but the following year he ran for alderman and won, embarking on a fateful career.
Like fire companies and saloons, gangs were important recruiting grounds for party activists. Candidates for ward offices were chosen at wide-open, walk-in primaries, held in local saloons and hotels. These meetings also selected the ward’s delegates to nominating conventions, which in turn proposed candidates for state offices, county offices, city departments, city judgeships, the U.S. Congress, and the mayoralty—at a time when nomination was often tantamount to election. Those intent on dominating these gatherings—held during August and September, when respectable folk were out of town—simply packed them. For the requisite muscle, political entrepreneurs turned to “shoulder-hitters,” the same men who for a price would keep opponents from the polls and guard (or stuff) ballot boxes.
Political gangs were, in their own way, open to talent. In the late 1840s John Morrissey, a Troy ironworker, came down to New York, walked into Captain Rynders’s Empire Club, and offered to fight any man in the house. He was immediately beaten to a pulp, but Rynders—Tammany boss of the Sixth Ward—admired his bravado and offered him a spot as a shoulder-hitter and emigrant runner (a task that involved meeting immigrants at the docks, getting them naturalized, and finding them homes and jobs, in return for their votes).
Boss Tweed as foreman of “Bix Six.” Engraved portrait. (© Museum of the City of New York)
The Whig Tribune was correct in claiming that Democrats regularly rigged elections with the aid of “a dozen of beastly ruffians in each ward, hired to do the voting and knock down any one who should presume to interfere with the play.” But Whigs too turned to gang leaders, like “Butcher Bill” Poole, a celebrated brawler and eye gouger who ran his own Ninth Ward gambling and drinking place. A nasty piece of work, whom even his friends considered deceitful and bloodthirsty, Poole periodically set his thugs to contesting Morrissey’s men at the polls, until his assassination in Stanwix Hall in 1855, which some suspected Morrissey of masterminding.
Once successful, an alderman had much more