Amerika

It seems as if Tammany Hall, the most well-known example of a “political machine,” has faded into the void at the center of mass consciousness, but history shows us that we shouldnot forget the machine that ran New York and through it, the national vote.

At first, Tammany Hall resisted the war between the states, but later got on board with the Lincoln agenda and in fact pushed radicals to implement his crazy notions like the 14A. Without Tammany Hall, Abraham Lincoln would never have gotten his war:

The Tammany Society’s headquarters, known as the Wigwam or Tammany Hall, functioned as the meeting place of the organizing committee of the New York County Democratic Republicans, thus the committee itself and ultimately the executive function of the Democratic Party in New York City was referred to as Tammany Hall. The Tammany Society in New York continued as a fraternal organization dominated by Democrats, while Tammany Hall simultaneously became the political machine of New York Democrats. Milestones in Tammany Hall’s rise in prominence included city hall coming under its control with the election of Fernando Wood as mayor in 1854, and William M. Tweed’s consolidation of power through his elevation to the leadership role of both Tammany Hall and the Tammany Society in 1863. “Boss” Tweed would become synonymous with the political machine of Tammany Hall, and infamous for his influence in New York politics and patronage. Stephen A. Douglas was made a member of the Tammany Society in 1851 and Tammany Hall supported his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1860 Democratic National Convention. Following secession, Tammany Hall advocated compromise, proposing the use of the Confederate constitution as a guide for amending the U.S. Constitution. In the immediate aftermath of the attack on Fort Sumter, Tammany Hall joined Republicans in opposing the Confederacy, and the Tammany Society formed a regiment from amongst its members.

It seemed on the surface like politics was defined by the candidates, but the fundamental truth of democracy is that it is a form of oligarchy where whichever organization or person has the most money, buys the most votes, oftentimes simply through the power of advertising.

This means that the bosses who can deliver votes behind the scenes are essential. They can save a candidate money so that he can spend it somewhere else and therefore get enough votes, or in many cases they simply provide “the fix is in” services to whoever pledges to work for them once in office.

Tammany Hall took over New York politics, and with it much of national politics, by using the Irish diversity swing vote as a weapon against the native Anglo-Saxons:

The Society of Tammany was incorporated in 1805 as a benevolent body; its name derived from a pre-Revolutionary association named after the benevolent Indian chief Tammanend. The group became identified with the city’s Democratic Party. The makeup of the society was substantially altered in 1817 when Irish immigrants, protesting Tammany bigotry, forced their right to membership and benefits. Tammany later championed the extension of the franchise to white propertyless males. Nevertheless, the society’s appeal to particular ethnic and religious minorities, the doling out of gifts to the poor, and the bribing of leaders of rival political factions, among them the notorious boss William Magear Tweed, made the name Tammany Hall synonymous with political corruption.

Interestingly, Tammany Hall supported all sorts of minorities, so they easily switched from pretending to care about the poor Southerners to seeing an opportunity to run America on the back of the African vote. Important note: Lincoln not only did not investigate Tammany Hall, but apparently always saw them as part of his plan.

It would be foolish to assume that Tammany did not have a finger in the creation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, later enshrined in law as the 14A, which forced government to intervene in all transactions public or private to enforce the civil rights agenda, massively strengthening government and Tammany Hall.

In the next century, efforts were made to pretend to investigate Tammany Hall, but these somehow exonerated the group because FDR needed its votes:

In the summer of 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then governor of New York, faced a dilemma. His presidential ambitions depended on a precarious alliance with Tammany Hall, the political machine that ruled New York City. Though eager to separate himself from the corrupt Tammany bosses, he needed their support to win his home state, the largest in the nation.

Two years earlier, he’d made a show of independence by initiating a limited state investigation into allegations of bribery by city officials. But the man he chose to lead the investigation, an imperious former judge named Samuel Seabury, uncovered something more sinister—a conspiracy to frame innocent women for prostitution. After one of Seabury’s witnesses, Vivian Gordon, was murdered, outraged New Yorkers demanded a full investigation of Tammany Hall.

Bowing to the political pressure, FDR reluctantly expanded Samuel Seabury’s authority. With his new powers, the tenacious investigator pursued the trail of graft up the political hierarchy, ultimately uncovering a million-dollar slush fund controlled by New York City’s flamboyant, wise-cracking mayor, Jimmy Walker.

Again the oligarchy triumphed. It did so by inducing the guilty to resign, which saved FDR from having to complete his sham investigation. Instead, like the KGB would do years later, Tammany Hall managed to convince the world it had lost at the peak of its victory.

Tammany Hall was responsible for FDR’s presidency:

Seabury’s stunning allegations magnified Roosevelt’s predicament. As governor, he had the authority to remove Walker for corruption, but deposing the popular mayor would infuriate Tammany’s bosses. He deferred his decision until after the Democratic national convention in Chicago, which allowed him to secure enough Tammany delegates to win the presidential nomination. But, when he returned to Albany, he could no longer avoid the predicament.

Without Tammany Hall, he would never have made it to the presidency, which is why he never opposed it. Similarly, Lincoln depended on the power of Tammany Hall to maintain order in the area where not only did he get his votes, but he also recruited most of his army!

Tammany Hall bought the votes that transitioned the North from opposing the war because it might help Black people to desiring the war because of the resource they could seize. Tammany Hall also suppressed rioting with its political expertise:

By the hot summer of 1863, New York City was a smoldering cauldron of racial, class, religious, and political resentments. The incident sparking the rampage in mid-July was the implementation of a military conscription law passed by Congress on March 3, 1863. Members of the Peace wing of the Democratic Party (nicknamed “Copperheads”) were incensed by the draft law, which they denounced as a violation of civil liberties, an unfair burden on workingmen (rich draftees could hire substitutes for $300), and a threat to white supremacy.

The latter sentiment arose from President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. Many Northern whites concluded that the combined policies of emancipation and conscription meant that they would be forced to risk their lives in a war to free black slaves. In addition, Democratic politicians and newspapers convinced their constituents, including many Irish immigrants, that emancipation would allow the freedmen to move North to take their jobs and marry their daughters.

Following the riot, President Lincoln appointed General John Dix, a War Democrat, to ensure that the military draft was implemented and that the city remained at peace. The prosecuting district attorney, Abraham Oakey Hall, and the presiding judge, John Hoffman, both Tammany Hall Democrats, earned praise from all sides for conducting rigorous yet fair trials. 67 of the indicted rioters were convicted, although few received long sentences.

One wonders if Tammany Hall supported Lincoln, or whether it chose him well in advance and then pretended otherwise until it was time to spring the surprise on the voters. Tammany Hall may have simply wanted tariffs and selected a president who would achieve them:

Yet it is precisely the issue of tariffs that offers any reasonable explanation of motives, Northern and Southern. It is on the issue of tariff where the expertise of Adams as a tax scholar illuminates the discussion of causes. Particularly brilliant in this regard is his treatment of how Northern popular sentiment toward secession, which was largely sympathetic, suddenly and dramatically flipped during the month of March, 1861 (p62ff).

Several vital dates in this month occurred in rapid succession: The Morrill Tariff became law on March 2; Lincoln gave his First Inaugural speech to Congress on March 4; Treasury Secretary John A. Dix resigned on March 6; the Confederate Constitution mandating a low tariff was adopted on March 11, and the South enacted its first low tariff schedule on March 15, followed by the second on March 21.

Of course the fact that the Morrill Tariff came after seven states had seceded is cited by would-be debunkers of the tariff motive, including J.S. Mill. The objection doesn’t hold up because months before secession the Republican platform advocated not revenue tariffs but what Adams calls “prohibition tariffs” (p65) for the protection of Northern manufactures, and the tariff issue was widely discussed in newspapers before and during the November, 1860, election (p25, p95). Also, “Lincoln was a Northern leader from an exclusively Northern political party” – the first sectional party in the nation’s history (p89). In his Inaugural he vowed to re-take the many forts that the South had seized without real Northern opposition after his election, and he vowed that he would have his tariff revenue.

The North wanted to make a Pullman Town — a company town where the company store was the only source of supplies and sold them at high prices — out of the South.

Pullman’s motives were pragmatic and, on the surface, altruistic, but the rents he charged his workers were more than those for similar housing in Chicago and he made a profit on gas and water he supplied to their houses. In fact, everything he had decided to provide for his employee/ tenants—including the use of the library—had a price, and all charges were docked directly from their paychecks. There was very little money left for workers to buy food for their families.

Its tariffs would bankrupt the South, forcing it to sell textiles to the North at low prices, benefiting the textiles industry headquarted in New York City, where Tammany Hall controlled all of the power. Most people now cannot conceptualize the vast influence of Tammany Hall‘s organized crime:

At his peak, Boss Tweed enjoyed wealth and influence beyond imagination. He owned a 5th Avenue mansion, an estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, and two steam-powered yachts. In addition to his position as the Commissioner of Public Works, Tweed was the director of a bank, a railroad company and a publishing house.

Then the New-York Times finally caught up with him. The newspaper got its hands on a “smoking gun,” a secret Tammany Hall ledger detailing how Tweed and his “Ring” stole hand-over-fist from the city. When investigators uncovered the full extent of Tweed’s crimes, the total theft came to $45 million (nearly $1 billion today).

Imagine someone stealing a billion dollars of government funds. This was the system that elected Lincoln, since the New York City vote was essential for any candidate to win, and Tammany Hall ran the city like a gulag:

By the late 1860s, the finances of the city were essentially being overseen by Tweed, with a percentage of nearly every transaction being kicked back to him and his ring. Though he was never elected mayor, the public generally regarded him as the true leader of the city.

Tweed pioneered a certain system of politics that came to be known as “bossism.” Though seeming to exist at the outer fringe of New York City politics, Tweed actually wielded more political clout than anyone in the city. For years he managed to keep a low public profile, working behind the scenes to orchestrate victories for his political and business allies—those who were part of the Tammany Hall “machine.” During this time, Tweed was mentioned only in passing in the press as a fairly obscure political appointee. However, the highest officials in New York City, all the way up to the mayor, generally did what Tweed and “The Ring” directed.

During the era that Lincoln got into power, Tammany Hall was an essential ally, and Tammany Hall had an odd habit of surviving any investigations that looked into its power. It did this by sacrificing members, hiding its real leadership behind the veil of anonymity.

Consider how FDR investigated Tammany Hall only to close the investigation when a key figure resigned:

Roosevelt first came to public attention starting in 1911 as a reformer persistently fighting Tammany, a reform stance that cost him the 1914 Democratic U.S. senatorial nomination. After that, he held Tammany Hall at arm’s length, but avoided direct confrontations. He soon came to feel that the touch of Tammany was not always poisonous, and become a dedicated supporter of Al Smith, a progressive and effective governor but a Tammany man.

The New Deal helped alter the demographic landscape of New York by making people less dependent on Tammany for jobs and assistance, and the election of anti-Tammany reformer and Roosevelt protege Fiorello LaGuardia removed City Hall from Tammany’s immediate control. Still, it retained some of its power and Roosevelt maintained a nuanced position towards it – being essentially in opposition to the machine but not holding the fact of membership in Tammany against otherwise-qualified people.

FDR later stated:

The fact remains that tens of thousands of people in New York City voted the Democratic ticket and tens of thousands of people are members of Tammany Hall. I do not think they are all objectionable for that reason!

So much for the “reform” of the political machine; FDR simply entered into an alliance with it.

Most likely, Tammany saw a way to get its fingers into international banking with the WW2 narrative of freedom guys versus terrible tyrants. By styling the West as altruistic, Tammany was able to make it impossible to resist Western intervention, since it was easy to justify war against tyrants.

Interestingly enough, even what look like honest previous efforts to rein in Tammany Hall were defeated by the usual habit of political machines: offer up a sacrifice, move to the next level of obscurity.

As mayor, Cleveland exposed city corruption and earned such a reputation for honesty and hard work that he won the New York gubernatorial race in 1882. Governor Cleveland used his power to take on the Tammany Hall, the political machine based in New York City, even though it had supported him in the election. Within a year, the Democrats were looking to Cleveland as an important new face and pragmatic reformer who might win the presidency in 1884.

Eleanor Roosevelt expressed dismay at how thoroughly the Tammany Hall machine ran the country:

What I found, and what numbers of Americans found, horrifying was the fact that the choice of a presidential candidate, the fundamental and basic right of every American citizen, was no longer a result of public thinking or an expression of the wishes of the majority of the people of the country; that, instead, it represented the decision of the party bosses.

How was it possible that in the 1960 conventions the choice of candidates was made without regard to the wishes of the American citizens? The answer lies in boss rule. The effect of local organizations on the choice of a presidential candidate is, unless checked, a strangle hold.

It works like this. The delegates to a convention are appointed by the state machinery. Generally a caucus is held of the delegates of each state and they are told that the leaders have decided they are to support a certain candidate. And why do the delegates supinely do as they are told? Because most of them hold some kind of public office and do not want to risk their positions.

During the 1960 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, a large box of telegrams was handed to Mr. Prendergast. He opened one or two, saw they were in favor of Adlai Stevenson, and threw the box away.

Perhaps her husband did not mention his new alliance, or perhaps it was an old alliance and she was covering for it. Eisenhower expressed similar dismay at the electoral control exercised by the political machine:

Eight years later, however, January 20, 1961 was a fairly depressing day for Ike. He didn’t mind leaving the presidency so much as having to turn it over to whom he regarded as that young, whippersnapping, big spending Democrat, John F. Kennedy. Kennedy irked him. Ike considered him too young and inexperienced to deserve the presidency. He felt the election was bought by JFK’s father Joseph Kennedy and that once a Kennedy got into the White House the family would establish a political machine far greater than even Tammany Hall. He became particularly upset when Kennedy claimed during the campaign that Ike was responsible for a missile gap with the Soviets. Ike knew that was an outright lie. The U-2 over-flights had proven that if there was a missile gap, it was one that was by far in favor of the US.

American history seems to be a history of political machines that either defeat or co-opt their reformers. It would be foolish to imagine that anything is different these days, or that it is not still run from New York or its surrounding areas.

Tags: abraham lincoln, boss tweed, franklin delano roosevelt, john f. kennedy, political machine, tammany hall, thomas nast