WILLIAM M. TWEED (1823-1878) and Tammany Hall
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This research paper traces the rise and fall of William Marcy (Boss) Tweed, who, as the political boss of the Tweed Ring and Tammany Hall, controlled the affairs of the city of New York and much else in the state of New York during the mid-1860s and until late 1871, examines his role in the context of his times and assesses his performance as a political leader. Boss Tweed had the personal qualities and political skills needed to establish and rule for a decade a highly personalized system of political corruption and monolithic machine politics which was itself the product of the ethos and circumstances of urban life and politics in America during its Gilded Age. An unscrupulous individual, driven largely by his extraordinary greed and lust for power, Tweed planted the seeds of his own destruction by flaunting his power so blatantly, yet he was also one of the first of the nation's politicians to understand and exploit mass psychology and urban discontent. Tweed and his henchmen accomplished little, if anything, of lasting value, beyond self-aggrandizement; however, the political machine he built and his modus operandi, if not his flamboyant style of manipulating the levers of power, had a lasting impact on the politics and governance of New York City. Tweed stands as a reminder of just how rotten municipal politics can become when the upper echelons of society neglect their civic duties and fail to respond to the needs of the populace.
. . .
a fair election in the city of New York" (Ellis 328).
After 1865, the Tweed Ring became more brazen in its contempt for the electoral process. It graduated from transporting "repeaters" from precinct to precinct to cast their bogus votes and intimidating or roughing up suspected opponents on election day to direct ballot box stuffing and false counting of the votes.
During Hoffman's campaign for re-election as mayor in 1868,
his crooked judges naturalized 60,000 aliens in 20 days, as
compared with 70,604 in the previous 12 years (Lynch 292). In
that election, the total number of votes counted exceeded by 8 percent the number of registered voters (Lynch 72). Tweed
later told an investigating committee: "The ballots made no
result; the counters made the result" (Werner 130).
Tweed's Political Skills
Tweed was a classic behind-the-scenes wheeler-dealer and political operative. According to Reeves, "he excelled in the personal politics of the smoke-filled room; the jovial story, the pat on the back, the midnight supper, the personal pledge of loyalty, the quiet threat" . . . "He rarely made a public speech, avoided the press, worked in private" (45). According to Bergamini, "the mastermind of this brazen, yet
. . .
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Approximate Word count = 3521
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)
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