Tammany Hall
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Tammany Hall was the name given to the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in New York City politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. It was a dominant player from mayoral victory of Fernando Wood in 1854 through the election of Fiorello LaGuardia in 1934.
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History
1790-1850
The Tammany Society of New York City was founded in the 1780s as a social club; one goal was to improve the image of Native Americans. The name "Tammany" is that of a Native American leader of the Lenape and the society adopted many Native American words and customs, going so far as to call its hall a wigwam. By 1798, however, the Society's activities had grown increasingly politicized and eventually Tammany, led by Aaron Burr emerged as the center for Jeffersonian Republican politics in the city. Aaron Burr built the Tammany society into a political machine for his election of 1800, in which he was elected Vice President. Without Tammany, historians believe, President John Adams might have won New York state's electoral votes and won reelection.
After 1839 Tammany became the city affiliate of the new Democratic Party, emerging as the controlling interest in New York City elections after Andrew Jackson's presidential victory in 1828. In the 1830s the Loco-Focos comprised a democratic, anti-monopoly faction that appealed to workingmen. Throughout the 1830s and 1840s the Society expanded its political control even further by earning the loyalty of the city's ever-expanding immigrant community, a task that was accomplished by helping newly-arrived foreigners obtain jobs, a place to live, and even citizenship so that they could vote for Tammany candidates in city and state elections. The mass immigrant constituency primarily functioned as a base of political capital.
The Irish
Tammany is forever linked with the rise of the Irish in American politics. Beginning in 1846, large numbers of Irish Catholics began arriving in New York. Equipped with a knowledge of English, very tight loyalties, a genius for politics, and what critics said was a propensity to use violence to control the polls, the Irish quickly dominated Tammany. Thousands of Irish men became neighborhood political activists. In exchange for votes they provided money, food, jobs and other favors. From 1872 onward Tammany had an Irish "boss." They played an increasingly important role in state politics, supporting one candidate and feuding with another. The greatest success came in 1928 when a Tammany hero New York Governor Al Smith, won the Democratic presidential nomination.
Tweed Machine
By 1854 Tammany's lineage and support from immigrants had combined to make it a powerful force in New York politics. In that year, the Society elected its first New York City mayor. As its power grew, Tammany's "bosses", called the Grand Sachem, and their supporters enriched themselves through means legal and illegal. Perhaps the most famous boss of all was William M. "Boss" Tweed. Though not Irish himself, Tweed was elected with the support of Irish immigrants. His corrupt reign was overthrown and he went to prison, in a reform movement led by Democratic governor Samuel J. Tilden in 1872. Protestant minister Charles Henry Parkhurst publicly denounced the Hall in 1892, which led to a Grand Jury investigation, the appointment of the Lexow Committee and the election of a reform mayor in 1894.
1890-1950
Despite occasional defeats Tammany was consistently able to survive and, indeed, prosper and continued to dominate city and even state politics. Under leaders like John Kelly and Richard Crocker it controlled Democratic politics in the city. Tammany opposed William Jennings Bryan in 1896.
In 1901 the anti-Tammany forces elected reformer Seth Low, a Republican. From 1902 until his death in 1924 Charles F. Murphy was the boss. In 1932 the machine suffered a dual setback when Mayor James Walker was forced from office because of corruption and its opponent Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president. He stripped Tammany of its federal patronage--much expanded because of the New Deal and handed city patronage to Ed Flynn, boss of the Bronx. Roosevelt helped Republican Fiorello LaGuardia become mayor on a Fusion ticket, thus removing even more patronage from Tammany's control. Tammany never recovered, but it staged a small scale come-back in the early 1950s under the leadership of Carmine DeSapio, who succeeded in engineering the elections of Robert Wagner, Jr. as Mayor in 1953 and Averill Harriman as governor in 1954, while simultaneously blocking his enemies, especially Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. in the 1954 race for state Attorney General.
Eleanor Roosevelt organized a counterattack with Herbert Lehman and Thomas Finletter to form the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, a group dedicated to fighting Tammany. In 1961 the group helped remove DeSapio from power. The once mighty Tammany political machine, now deprived of its leadership, quickly faded from political importance and by the mid-1960s had ceased to exist.
Leaders
References
- Allen, Oliver E. The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall (1993)
- Erie, Steven P. Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840—1985 (1988).
- Finegold, Kenneth. Experts and Politicians: Reform Challenges to Machine Politics in New York, Cleveland, and Chicago (1995) on Progressive Era
- Mandelbaum, Seymour J. Boss Tweed's New York (1965) (ISBN: 0471566527)
- Moscow, Warren. The Last of the Big-Time Bosses: The Life and Times of Carmine de Sapio and the Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall (1971)
- Mushkat, Jerome. Fernando Wood: A Political Biography (1990)
- M. Ostrogorski; Democracy and the Party System in the United States (1910)
- William Riordan, Plunkett of Tammany Hall (1963) 1915 memoir of New York City ward boss
- Stave, Bruce M. , John M. Allswang, Terrence J. McDonald, Jon C. Teaford. "A Reassessment of the Urban Political Boss: An Exchange of Views" History Teacher, Vol. 21, No. 3 (May, 1988) , pp. 293-312
- Steffens, Lincoln. The Shame of the Cities (1904) muckraking expose of machines in major cities
- T. L. Stoddard, Master of Manhattan (1931), on Crocker
- Nancy J. Weiss, Charles Francis Murphy, 1858-1924: respectability and responsibility in Tammany politics(1968).
- M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall (1932)
- Harold B. Zink; City Bosses in the United States: A Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses (1930)
External links
Sources
Much of the text of this article was copied from the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site operated by the National Parks Service and placed into the public domain. The original authors cite the following sources:
- Kilroe, Edwin P. Saint Tammany and the Origin of the Society of Tammany, or Columbian Order in the City of New York . Washington, D.C.: George Washington University Microfiche, 1913, 48.
- Lash, Joseph. Eleanor, The Years Alone. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972, 274-276.pt:Tammany Hall