William+Tweed

Tammany Hall was as old as the republic itself, founded in 1788, the same year George Washington was elected president for the first time. It was named after a legendary Delaware Indian chief, and although members called their headquarters the "wigwam" and sometimes dressed up like "braves," the Society of St. Tammany did not include Indians. Nor did it have rich men like George Washington among its members.

Tammany Hall was a political club. Most of its members were Irish-American workingmen and craftsmen closed out of the city's more exclusive clubs. Slowly, Tammany men took over the local Democratic Party and turned their club into a political "machine." If people voted for, or gave money to, Tammany politicians, they were rewarded with jobs, city services, and/or building contracts with the city.

The organization had always been a bit corrupt -- taking bribes, giving city contracts to members, and stealing funds from the city treasury -- but during and after the Civil War, Tammany's corruption reached new heights. Tammany Hall became so corrupt that the name is now used to describe deceitful behavior.

In 1863, Tammany elected a new leader named William "Boss" Tweed. A former fireman, Tweed entered government in his 20s and came to hold many posts: county supervisor, state senator, commissioner of public works. Soon he added another title to that list: crook.

The headline in the July 22, 1871 edition of THE NEW YORK TIMES screamed "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed." The story running under it was even more shocking. The people who had been hired to build the city's new courthouse -- the "forty thieves," as they came to be called -- were stealing the cities money by the barrelful.

At a time when the average workman made a dollar a day, contractors charged the city $400,000 for safes, $175,000 for carpets, and $7,500 for thermometers. Altogether, the courthouse cost over $13 million -- or more than twice what the United State paid for Alaska four years earlier!

The leader of the "ring" -- William "Boss" Tweed -- was not so worried about the headlines. It was the cartoons that got to him. Drawn by Thomas Nast (the same cartoonist who first drew Santa Claus the way we picture him) and printed in Harper's magazine, they depicted Tweed as a vulture, and worse.

Tweed was right to fear the cartoons. Convicted on 204 criminal counts, he escaped from jail twice. The second time, he got as far as Spain, but was caught when police there recognized his face from Nast's drawing. Tweed died penniless in jail 1878 and the mayor refused to fly the City Hall flag at half-mast in honor of his passing.

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