The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History by Edward Robb Ellis

Author:Edward Robb Ellis [Ellis, Edward Robb]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, State & Local, Middle Atlantic (DC; DE; MD; NJ; NY; PA), Military, Revolutions & Wars of Independence
ISBN: 9780465030538
Google: 3o03BAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2011-09-20T16:06:02.473745+00:00

Chapter 26

THE TWEED SCANDALS

WILLIAM MARCY TWEED was a huge man. He stood 5 feet 11 inches tall, and his weight varied from 280 to 320 pounds. Like some other fat men, he was light on his feet, and the ladies said that he waltzed divinely. His head was big and rather pointed. He had coarse features, a prominent nose, a ruddy complexion, a brown beard, and bright blue eyes, which twinkled when he was amused. When angered, he could stare down almost anyone—even a rowdy who held a gun against his potbelly.

Tweed laughed easily. A man of enormous appetite, he consumed gargantuan meals. Endowed with almost limitless energy, he worked most of the time. He was fond of power and money and canaries and flowers and women. Happily married and proud of his wife, Tweed also was devoted to his eight children. Nonetheless, he had two mistresses. One was a tiny blonde who didn’t reach to his shoulder. Tweed lavished $1,800,000 on his kept women, but this meant nothing to a politician who cheated the city out of $5,500,000 in a single morning. Fond of massive jewelry, he wore a huge diamond in the front of his shirt.

Tweed was rough in manners and humor, spouting profanity in basso profundo. His speech was so thick that it was sometimes difficult to understand him. He drank heavily until a doctor said that he was endangering his health. Tweed never smoked and often moralized about the evils of nicotine. Although he quit school at the age of fourteen, Tweed bent college graduates to his iron will. He liked to breed dogs and confusion. He was the first city politician in the United States to be called the Boss. He enslaved New York City and the state of New York, and he planned to put America into one of his huge pockets.

Tweed became the third largest property owner in the city, lived in baronial splendor in a Fifth Avenue mansion, and kept a country house, whose mahogany stables were trimmed in silver. Devoid of religious faith, he believed in just two things—himself and power. He owned a yacht and some people’s souls. He radiated animal magnetism, was a genius at making friends, and remained loyal to them regardless of what they did. He thoroughly understood the mass mind. Tweed looked a little like Falstaff and acted a lot like Captain Kidd, and if he had not been such a monster, he might have been a great man. The complete cynic, he said:

The fact is that New York politics were always dishonest—long before my time. There never was a time when you couldn’t buy the board of aldermen. A politician coming forward takes things as they are. This population is too hopelessly split up into races and factions to govern it under universal suffrage, except by the bribery of patronage or corruption. . . . I don’t think there is ever a fair or honest election in the city of New York.

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