Tammany Hall: Boss Tweed and the Political Machine

Tammany Hall was a political powerhouse in New York City from its 1789 inception to mayoral campaigns as recently as the 1950s. Its leadership was frequently aligned with the Democratic party, and it was a major or controlling faction in the party from 1821-1872 and then again from 1905-1932, which included infamous Tammany bosses such as William “Boss” Tweed, Richard F. Croker, and Charles F. Murray.

Tammany Hall’s Appeal to Immigrants

Although many New Yorkers suspected that Tammany Hall was a breeding ground for graft and corruption, Tammany’s popularity and remarkable longevity resulted from its willingness to help the city’s poor, particularly newly-arrived immigrant populations.

Irish immigrants forced Tammany Hall to admit them as members in 1817, and the Irish thereafter never lost their support of Tammany Hall politicians.

William Boss Tweed

Perhaps the most notable of the Tammany leaders was Boss Tweed, who first served as a U.S. Congressman representing New York’s 5th District, when he took office in March of 1853. At the height of his corrupt influence, Tweed was the third-largest landowner in New York City, holding directorships with the Erie Railroad, the Tenth National Bank, the Harlem Gas Light Company and more.

His reign over New York politics unraveled in 1877 when he was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen’s committee at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers, while later estimates ranged as high as $200 million. Unable to make bail, he escaped from jail once but was swiftly returned to custody. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail on April 12th, 1878 at 55 years of age.

Reform political parties periodically took power away from the Tammany Hall crowd, but for many years it always made a comeback, until anti-Tammany mayor Fiorello La Guardia, with the help of Franklin D. Roosevelt, was able to weaken the machine’s power on a permanent basis. Despite La Guardia’s efforts, Tammany Hall retained some of its local power base, until John V. Lindsay became mayor of New York in 1966.