The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall Essay

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Introduction

Tammany Hall was well known as a Columbian order hall, founded in the year 1786 by Tammany cultural group. Immigrants and political activities were controlled majorly through Tammany hall, which had all powers over any arising issue within the city. Apart from political control and helping Irish immigrant society, Tammany hall was a governance hall recognized especially when it took place in the elections that were held in the year 1854, which made Fernando Wood – a member of the Democratic Party, to be nominated to the government as the head of the New York state. However, the Columbian hall got an attack when Fiorello La Guardia- one of the Republican aspirants, won the seat as the head of the New York state in the year 1950. It took Fiorello ten years to weaken the rise of Tammany Hall, seizing the Columbian order hall completely in the year 1960.

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History of Tammany Hall

Tammany cultural group was named after Tamanend, who was a Democratic-Republican Politian from America. He was the leader of Lenape group that originated from India dominating the entire Columbian society within the city of New York in the early 19th century. However, Tammany Hall grew into a strong territory, characterized by political forces and dominating from the year 1789. Tammany hall was the strong and politically revolving center, consisting of fifteen hundred members. The party dominated its strongholds within New York City but it was faced with a high level of corruption, poor governmental control systems and deception within its members.

Fernando Wood was the first mayor to be elected in the Tammany hall to carry out the activities that were taking place in New York City. Meanwhile, the Tammany hall was faced with corruptions cases, headed by Senator Boss Tweed, who was in action in the year 1868 together with Tweed Ring defrauding millions of dollars meant to develop and promote development activities within New York City. It was believed that Boss Tweed died in jail after he was found the quality of stealing a huge amount of money from the New York government amounting to two hundred US dollars.

The increase of corruption cases dominated strongly within the city under the leadership of leaders such as Honest John, Richard Croker and Charles Murphy. In 1932, James Walker made a resignation from his Tammany hall office due to the allegation that was represented by Samuel Seabury to the city magistrate. This led to the collapse of Tammany Hall, Making Fiorello La Guardia to be elected as mayor in the year 1933 that encouraging the rise of the Tammany Hall period. In the 1950s, Politian Carmine DeSapio tried to regain the stronghold that was associated with New York politics but he did not make it.

Boss Tweed early life

Boss Tweed was the son of an Irish chair-maker, born in the year 1823. He spends some of his life in the street of cherry becoming a bookkeeper by professional and working as a brush maker. In 1849, his friends naming it as the Big Six Company elected Tweed as a company supervisor from the company they had jointly created. The company worked as a volunteer company, with a snarling red tiger symbol giving a lot of competition to the other company in the same field and this led Tweed to lose his supervision position. However, he decided to recognize his political aspiration when he participated in the 1850 election by one of the strongest parties in the world –the Democratic Party. He never wasted his time since the following year he participated in the election and won the race, representing the house of the United States. After some time in the United States politics, Tweed joined the New York politics board and through his efforts, he was elected as the New York state senate in the year 1867.

Immigrant support

Tammany hall was dominated by Politian and supported by immigrant constituency, which had an outstanding public welfare system within the city of New York. Tammany system helped immigrants since most of their people lived poverty lives and they received less assistance from the government to support their living standards and health. However, through the initiative of the Tammany system, immigrants received various staffs from the Tammany hall such as food, coal and jobs for their survival hence becoming intermediary governance between the immigrants and the unfamiliar state.

Tammany Hall and Irish Political Participation

The Tammany hall working system in New York City, under the leadership of Tweed, led to the introduction and the growth of the Irish in American politics. As politics was dominating its roots in New York City, Irish Catholics arrived in the city in early 1845 with the aim of controlling polls since they were well conversant with the English language. The growth of the Irish community in New York City affected politics within the area since Irish people had money, using them to interrogate candidature positions to either lose or win his political seat in the government. This is eligible as seen through Al Smith who won the seat through the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the new governor in the year 1928.

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Tammany Hall had the strongest domination in the city of New York and this was eligible during the election period. The Tammany system of governance continued helping immigrants and slums dwellers’ families, by helping them in any way, solving their problems, which brought about high repetitive ruling within the city from Tammany politicians (Allen, 1993).

Tweed participated in various activities in New York including; charitable and religious activities as well as donating basic things and money to political prisoners, something he did within a period of two years in the Tammany governance. Democratic Party denominated strongly within the city, neutralizing and weakening the growth of the Republican Party to come in the existence. Being at the top of politics, Tammany systems with Tweed in leadership introduced the use of the Tweed machine, which was a tool for controlling businesses, politics and law enforcement within the city. Tweed machine had a system with an influence of Tweed dominating all votes from their workers as an exchange deal. However, the tweed machine fails to works allowing Franklin Roosevelt to win the election of 1932.

In 1954, Herbert Lehman and Thomas succeeded by fighting back the Tweed machine – one of the systems used by Tammany Hall to win elections. However, the Tweed machine ceased to exist after the formation New York Committee for Democratic voters defeated DeSapron, removing him from powers.

Imprisonment, escape, and death of Boss Tweed

Corruption in the Tammany governance was high which forced the court to order the arrest of Tweed in the year 1879. He was allegedly condemned to have taken over two hundred US dollars without an audit showing how he used the money, and therefore convicted and put on trial in the year 1873. Unfortunately, Boss Tweed was found the quality and was sentenced to twelve years. However, it did not take time for Tweed to stay in prison by deciding to escape from the prison, and decide to go to Spain to work as a seaman on the shore of Spain.

It did take time for the Tweed to stay in Spain whereby he was arrested by the American government. In 1878, Tweed suffered from severe pneumonia while he was at New York City prison serving his sentence and unfortunately, he died on the second day of April that year. From the look of the city, Tweed was administered from his works as a governor despite his failure to manage the government funds. The city of New York had buildings all over the Manhattan streets with wide broadways. Tweed was a legend among the Irish community since through his governance he changed the lives of many people through the provision of jobs, charities and encouragement of religious denominations (William, 1963).

Conclusion

Boss Tweed is a legendary who had his own way of governance, installing Tweed machines that boosted their political aspirations. Many social communities liked the Tammany system of governance since it improved the living standards of Irish communities as well as developed the city leading to the growth of the economy. The war between Democratic Party and Republican Party was harsh since every party tried to outlaw each other for governance. This forces each party to use its own tactics to ensure that it wins elections. However, the government did not work efficiently since the influence of corruption emerged among the leaders failing to distribute funds within the city.

References

Allen, O. (1993).The Tiger: The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall. New York: Da Capo Press.

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William L. (1963). Plunkitt of Tammany Hall: A Series of Plain Talks on Very Practical Politics. New York: E.P. Dutton publisher.

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IvyPanda. 2022. "The Rise and Fall of Tammany Hall." January 4, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-rise-and-fall-of-tammany-hall/.

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