The controversy over the last Presidential election, and more recently the New York mayoral election, are part of a long tradition of electoral fraud in America. Historically, this is best documented by Gustav Meyer’s rigorous and self-published: History of Tammany Hall.
The ‘Sons of Saint Tammany’ began as a nativist ridicule of the pre-revolutionary royalist St. George, St. Andrew and St. David societies. After the Revolution, the anti-democratic electoral property franchise, pushed by the likes of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, swung the political pendulum back in favor of the landed aristocracy. To counter this Tammany Hall was reconstituted, as a political organization of the ‘Democrat Republicans’.
The three pillars of Tammany Hall were political manipulation, corruption and the ‘regular candidate”. From the beginning Tammany Hall was run by a tiny clique which chose the “regular candidate” in various municipal and State elections. This is really the foundation stone, as widespread political disengagement or superficiality meant that many took little, or no interest in local politics and voted for whoever was on the ticket as the “regular candidate” for their party of choice. While at first great men, such as Jefferson and Jackson led the popular party, this process slowly rotted out the body politic, from the base up, as corruption always works its way to the top.
The mercurial Aaron Burr was closely involved with Tammany in its early phase. Closely linked with Burr was Matthew L Davis who was Burr’s handler as much as his lieutenant. Of Davis, Myers says:
Davis’s influence on the early career of Tammany was second only to that of Burr himself. He was reputed to be the originator of the time-honored modes of manufacturing public opinion, carrying primary meetings, obtaining the nomination of certain candidates, carrying a ward, a city, a county or even a State. During one period of his activity, it is related, meetings were held on different nights in every ward in New York City. The most forcible and spirited resolutions and addresses were passed and published. Not only the city, but the entire country, was aroused. It was some time before the secret was known — that at each of these meetings but three persons were present, Davis and two friends.
Myers also writes: “besides Davis, Burr’s chief protégés, all of whom became persons of importance in early New York, were Jacob Barker, John and Robert Swartwout, John and William P. Van Ness; Benjamin Komaine, Isaac Pierson, John P. Hall and Jacob Hayes. Nearly every one of the Burr leaders, as will be shown, was guilty of some act of official or private peculation.” In 1840 scandals involving the Manhattan Bank, which Burr had played a signal and devious role in founding, were made public. Meyer wrote:
It was now shown that for years it had loaned large sums to Tammany leaders and to family connections of its directors and officials, and that it had spent other large sums for political purposes. The total of its worthless loans and political expenditures reached the enormous sum of $1,344,266.99.
However, these revelations had little impact on systemic corruption. Meyer observed:
The discoveries of gold in California and Australia created in all classes a feverish desire for wealth. …. Newspapers and magazines were filled with glowing accounts of how poor men became rich in a dazzlingly short period. The desire for wealth became a mania, and seized upon all callings. The effect was a still further lowering of the public tone; standards were generally lost sight of, and all means of “getting ahead” came to be considered legitimate. Politicians, trafficking in nominations and political influence, found it a most auspicious time.
What this phenomenon also suggests is that those, who might well punch you on the nose if caught stealing their wallet, considered public funds fair game. This indicates that significant part of the population had no conception of there being a public good or perhaps even of the abstract concept of the “public”, seeing the world purely in the terms of their own concrete needs and desires.
Choice of candidate soon became sale of candidatures, the proceeds of which paid for pork barrel politics. Those who brought their positions expected a return on their investment. Graft became the norm. A change of political party resulted in the wholesale turning out of office of those who had bought their positions and their replacement by new investors, a process still typical of American regime change. Meyers wrote:
If before 1846 nominations were sold it was not an open transaction. Since then the practice of selling them had gradually grown, and now the bargaining was unconcealed. Upon the highest bidder the honors generally fell. Whigs and Tammany men were alike guilty. If one aspirant offered $1,000, another offered $2,000. But these sums were merely a beginning; committees would impress upon the candidate the fact that a campaign costs money; more of the ” boys ” would have to be ” seen; ” such and such a “ward heeler ” needed ” pacifying”; a band was a proper embellishment, with a parade to boot, and voters needed persuading.” And at the last moment a dummy candidate would be brought forward as a man who had offered much more for the nomination. Then the bidder at $2,000 would have to pay the difference, and if the office sought was a profitable one, the candidate would be a lucky man if he did not have to disgorge as much as $15,000 before securing the nomination. Some candidates were bled for as much as $20,000, and even this was a moderate sum compared to the prices which obtained a few years later.
This uncertainty promoted making hay while the sun shone and with so much to lose, all means of ensuring re-election were resorted to. Of the first Jackson election Myers states:
Cases of fraud and violence had hitherto been frequent; but nothing like the exhibition at the primaries and polls in November 1827, had ever been known. Cart-loads of voters, many of whom had been in the country less than three years, were used as repeaters in the different wards. An instance was known of one cart-load of six men voting at six different places. Other men boasted of having voted three and four times. In an upper ward, where the foreign population had full sway, an American found it almost impossible to appear or vote at all. If he tried the experiment, he was arrested immediately, his votes were taken from him and Jackson votes put in his hands.
In regard to the immigrant vote, which later become central to Tammany’s power, Meyer observed that for a significant proportion of immigrant voters: To them political rights meant the obtaining of money or the receiving of jobs under the city, State or national government, in return for the marshalling of voters at the polls. Regarding issues, they bothered little, and knew less.
Of the ensuing Presidential election campaign between Jackson and the Bank’s ‘National Republicans’, Myers wrote:
Both sides were guilty of election frauds. Votes were bought at the rate of $5 each, most of the buying being done by the National Republicans, who were supplied with abundant resources. The National Republicans, moreover, had sought to bribe certain men with the promise of offices, and on the three election days they foisted upon the voters a Jackson electoral ticket containing forty-three names, instead of the legal number, forty-two, thereby invalidating each of these ballots voted. This trick, it was calculated, lost to Jackson more than a thousand votes. Of a total of 30,474 votes, Tammany carried the city by 5,620 majority. The Wigwam for many successive nights was filled with celebrating crowds. Jackson gave a conspicuously public display of his recognition of Tammany’s invaluable services, when, on the evening of June 13, 1833, he visited the society, attended by the Vice-President, Secretary Woodbury, Gov. William L. Marcy, the Mayor, and the members of the Common Council.
Of the following local elections. Meyer claims:
In the Fall election of 1838 the Whig frauds were enormous and indisputable. The Whigs raised large sums of money, which were handed to ward workers for the procuring of votes. About two hundred roughs were brought from Philadelphia, in different divisions, each man receiving $22. Gen. Robert Swartwout, now a Whig, at the instance of such men as Moses H. Grinnell, Robert C. Wetmore and Noah Cook, former Wigwam lights, who left the Hall because the ” destructionist ” Anti-Monopolists captured it, arranged for the trip of these fraudulent voters. After having voted in as many wards as possible, each was to receive the additional compensation of $5. They were also to pass around spurious tickets purporting to be Democratic. The aggregate Whig vote, it was approximated, was swelled through the operations of this band by at least five to six hundred. One repeater, Charles Swint, voted in sixteen wards. Such inmates of the House of Detention as could be persuaded or bullied into voting the Whig ticket were set at large. Merritt, a police officer, was seen boldly leading a crowd of them to the polls. Ex-convicts distributed Whig tickets and busily electioneered. The cabins of all the vessels along the wharves were ransacked, and every man, whether or not a citizen or resident of New York, who could be wheedled into voting a Whig ballot, was rushed to the polls and his vote was smuggled in. The Whigs were successful, their candidate for Governor, William H. Seward, receiving 20,179 votes, to 19,377 for William L. Marcy.
This blatant abuse of the electoral process lead to legislation requiring registration of voters in New York City. Meyer wrote:
… the Tammany ward committees declared against it on the pretexts that it
interfered with constitutional rights ; that it was an odious attempt to take from the poor man either his right of suffrage or to make the exercise of that right so inconvenient as practically to debar him from voting. The Common Council, on March 16, 1840, denounced the proposed law as inquisitorial, tyrannical and disfranchising in its effect, as well as unjust, because they (the Aldermen) ” know of no sin which she (New York City) has committed to make her worthy of the signal reproach now sought to be cast upon her.
Subsequently, when Tammany was in control of the State legislature, the Act was annulled.
Ostensibly Tammany was the ‘party’ of the people but Meyer observed:
That neither Tammany nor the Native Americans had enacted any competent reforms in the matter of the taxation of property, was conclusively shown in an Aldermanic report of 1846. It appeared from this report that thirty million dollars’ worth of assessable property escaped taxation every year, and that no bona fide efforts were being made by the officials to remedy this state of affairs.
On the other hand, Tammany did nothing to extend suffrage or act in matters of pressing interest for the working class, such as imprisonment of debtors. With little job security and pawnbrokers interest often at 25%, it was working people who bore the brunt of imprisonment without trial, many being imprisoned for minor debts. Tammany did nothing about this until the founding of the rival ‘Workingman’s Party’ by Dale Owens. Tammany saw of the Workingman’s party, by fomenting divisions within the Workingman’s Party, so that at the next election, there were three Workingmen’s parties on the field. Tammany subsequently allowed an amendment to the legislation it had proposed, which excepted debts below $50, rendering the legislation irrelevant to the working class.
Tammany Hall was formed to organize the opposition to the aristocratic land-owners, matching up the latter’s superior resources with a political machine. However, it came to function as a political block which dominated the popular political landscape and acted vigorously to quash any real opposition. For this service, the ruling class was prepared to look the other way when it came to Tammany’s corruption, as long as they stayed within bounds. When Boss Tweed got a bit too enthusiastic with his own remuneration, the New York Times published articles, miscreants fled or were prosecuted and Boss Tweed was followed by a more circumspect Boss.
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