Tammany Hall Quotes

In the local and congressional elections of 1918, the boss of New York's Tammany Hall placed restrictions on how political opponents could be attacked, while backing a fusion ticket:

The political machine of New York City, unlike most others in the Northeast were supporters of the Southern position on slavery. They had strong economic relations with the Southern planters and wanted to keep the federal government far away from state and local affairs.

Tammany Hall was the political machine that controlled New York City in the first half of the 20th century.

La Guardia was a very short man and he had gone up to the much larger “poll watcher” and ripped his official button off his coat. The Tammany Hall political machine would appoint thugs as poll watchers to intimidate the voters. If the poll watcher was an "official" voters thought that they might have access to the ballot information and know whether or not they voted for the machine candidates. Their presense was often sufficient intimidation to assure party line voting by most people.

In 1913 New York Governor Sulzer decided to try and reform the political corruption and control of Tammany Hall over New York State's political system. In response, the Tammany-dominated legislature impeached Sulzer for campaign fund irregularities. After he was removed from office, the only governor in New York State history to suffer such a fate, a disappointed, angry crowd gathered outside the governor's mansion, calling for a speech. The ex governor was presented with a loving cup with the following inscription engraved: “Presented to Hon. William Sulzer by citizens of Albany in Loving Remembrance of Duties Well Performed. A Martyr to the Cause of Honest Government.” The phrase that "no question is ever settled until it is settled right" seems to have originated in another poem. See Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Tammany Hall was the name given to the New York City Democratic political machine. While it was, by modern standards, quite corrupt, the main source of its power was what it delivered to the general mass of New York City citizens. And Tammany Hall was unsurpassed in its delivery of public works to the city. Bridges, subways, parks, and other amenities were conceived of, financed and built by government. Although each of these projects had funds skimmed by the politicians, the projects were constructed to an extent and scale that was previously unknown in politics. In that sense, Tammany Hall was one of the major early instances of the liberal notion of government development of urban areas.

Noting that Tammany Hall had been defeated in the previous election over the issue of reform:

Roosevelt’s first gubernatorial term was shaken by the Stock Market Crash and the Failure of the Banks 1929 and the passivity of the Herbert Hoover administration in Washington in coping with the economy and the Great Depression. Reform of Tammany Hall and other State problems took a back seat to trying to create jobs and stabilize the state economy. The Republican candidate Tuttle could not argue against FDR’s economic policies as he would then have to defend President Hoover who was becoming exceedingly unpopular. So he went after the corruption of the Tammany Hall Machine and Roosevelt’s relative passivity. The voters were ok with FDR’s priorities.

Tweed was the powerful boss of New York City’s corrupt political machine—Tammany Hall. The newspapers had been attacking Tweed and Tammany Hall for several years but they never resonated with the public. The cartoons of Thomas Nast however were not only understood by illiterates, but the cartoons caused an emotional reaction against Weed and his organization which led to their downfall.

When Aaron Burr—with the aid of Tammany Hall—won political control of New York City from Alexander Hamilton and the moneyed aristocracy, Hamilton was greatly impressed by the new methods: carriages for the sick and infirm and elderly on election day, for example. He concluded that his own party, the Federalists:

As a relatively political unknown, he took the opportunity to tell the press and the public that he was a part of the New York Tammany Hall Machine. At the time most NY politicians saw this as a political assurance to the voters—as opposed to the reformers who might change things. Political machines were mostly affiliated with the Democratic Party in the large cities. The corruption tended to b Republican outside the cities, except in the South where all government was Democratic in reaction to the Civil War Republican role. When the Democrats strove to eliminate racial discrimination in the 1960s. the racists of the South persuaded the Whites to shift to the Republican Party which then dominated most of the South. The people who controlled the corrupt machines however did not change. The corruption of the Southern machines just became Republican labeled.