William 'Boss' Tweed | The New York City Draft Riots | 3

It's after dark on July 18th, 1871 in Lower Manhattan. On Park Road, the New York Times building is buzzing with activity as reporters, clerks and typesetters rush to get tomorrow's edition of the paper ready for print.

The night is hot and everyone's sweating as they work. Editor Lewis Jennings is slightly removed from the chaos, sat behind his desk in a wood-paneled office.

A pen in his right hand, he strikes through an unnecessary phrase then pushes the page to the side. He's about to start reading through another article when there's a knock at the door.

Without looking up, he gestures to the visitor to come in, skimming through the lead paragraph in front of him. After a few quiet moments, the man clears his throat and Lewis finally looks up at his guest.

Jimmy O'Brien is 30, has a receding hairline and down turned eyes. His shoulders push forward, making his belly seem slightly less round beneath his suit. By way of introduction, he remarks on the weather, it's a hot night, he says.

Lewis tries not to roll his eyes, but it's difficult. Jimmy O'Brien is a long time member of Tammany Hall. He even won the race for Sheriff a couple of years back, thanks to the organization's endorsement.

Now he's here in Lewis' office, talking about the temperature? Everyone knows that the New York Times is a Republican paper.

And for almost a year now, Lewis has been waging a war against William Tweed, the absolute ruler of the state's Democratic political machine, Tammany Hall.

Bill and his cronies have corrupted the city's government to pocket god-only-knows-how-much money, and Lewis is determined to bring them down. So he's suspicious of why Jimmy has come to see him.

As if in answer to Lewis' unasked question, Jimmy brings it up himself. He tells Lewis that he's had a tough fight lately. Him and Thomas Nast both.

A cartoonist for Harper's Weekly, Nast has been portraying Tweed and his cronies as corrupt for years. Lewis nods and agrees it's been a long slot. That's when Jimmy slaps a heavy envelope down on the desk.

You had a tough fight, he repeats. Had. Past tense.

Speaking quickly, he explains that the envelope contains evidence to back up every accusation The Times has made.

Inside are copies of pages from the city's ledgers that show just how much money has been siphoned from the coffers and who's been getting it. It should be more than enough to bring down Bill Tweed.

Then, without another word, Jimmy O'Brien straightens up and walks out of the room. Alone again, Lewis reaches out and slides the envelope across the desk.

He pulls out the thick stack of papers running a finger along his neat mustache as he scans the first document. Looks like an ordinary page from a ledger book.

But as he flips through to check out the rest, Lewis notices a pattern emerging, and he starts to realize that if these records are legit, then it's everything Jimmy O'Brien promised. It's gonna take down Bill Tweed.

From Airship and Evergreen Podcasts, I'm Jeremy Schwartz, and this is American Criminal. The Society of St. Tammany was formed in the final years of the 18th century.

It was born as a small political organization to help give a voice to underrepresented middle and working class voters in New York. It was a simple, pure goal centered around a desire for a stronger democracy. But over time, things changed.

Eventually, Tammany grew into a much larger group that embraced the vast numbers of immigrants arriving in the city every day. They helped them with housing, gave them food, and even found them work.

In return, the newly arrived Americans voted for Tammany's candidates come election day. This system made the organization stronger year after year, as more working class families received support from the group and its newly elected officials.

By the time William Tweed joined Tammany in the 1840s, it was cemented as one of the city's dominant political forces.

But corruption had crept in, with Tammany's leaders accepting bribes and graft payments from contractors, and sometimes employing street gangs to control the outcome of municipal elections.

Tammany men who won office often gave lucrative government jobs to those who supported them, setting up an insidious political machine that would dominate New York for decades.

This was the organization Bill joined, one with a history of doing good for New York's working class families, but that simultaneously offered its leaders the chance to get rich at the public expense.

And after some 20 years working in the Tammany machine, Bill started to get closer to the top job, which afforded him more chances for control and plenty of opportunity to make money.

Then, in 1861, war erupted in the United States, bringing with it uncertainty, fear and anger. Within New York City, the Civil War led to the expected profiteering from politicians and businessmen like Bill.

But it also led to something no one expected, blood in the streets. This is episode 3 in our four-part series on William Boss Tweed, The New York City Draft Riots. It's a Monday evening, sometime in 1862, at Tammany Hall's Manhattan headquarters.

The building is a stately colonial with several large meeting rooms and an enormous hall on the ground floor. Tonight, the group's membership is gathered for a nominating convention.

The state's Democrats need to decide which candidates will be running in the upcoming election cycle. On a stage at the front of the room, William Tweed stands behind a lectern to call the delegates to order.

As the newly appointed chair of the Democratic General Committee, it's 39-year-old Bill's role to preside over these conventions, though he often appoints someone to stand in his place. Not tonight, though.

Tonight, Bill has a candidate he wants to make it to the ballot with a full endorsement of the Democrats, so he needs to keep a close eye on things. Bill's a powerful man within his party.

Sometimes, a handshake and a brief remark from him is all it takes to change a man's mind.

He can dangle promises of government positions for their friends and family members, or make deals to see that this guy gets nominated for a judgeship next time, and that guy makes it onto the ballot for sheriff.

I mean, it's all a game, and it's one Bill is very good at. Over the years, he's had men nominated for, and often elected to, positions, including alderman, district attorney, and even judge for the state Supreme Court.

But tonight, he knows that he's lost. As the secretary calls out the role, Bill does some quick math and realizes his pick for the nomination is outnumbered. He's influential for sure, but he's not the only man with an opinion here.

And there are too many delegates aligned behind another choice this time. Of course, if Bill let the opinions of other, lesser men dictate his life, he'd never have gotten to where he is now.

So he turns to the secretary and has him make a motion to dispense with the calling of the role altogether. With his next breath, he announces that his choice of candidate has been selected by the committee.

Then, before half of the assembly realizes what's happened, Bill adjourns the meeting and leaves the stage. As outraged men cry out in defiance, insisting that the convention be reopened, Bill strides through the crowd and out the door.

He doesn't have time to deal with complaints, they'll only slow him down. By the time he's made chairman of New York's Democratic General Committee, Bill Tweed has held a lot of different positions.

He's been a chair maker, a bookkeeper, a fireman, an alderman, a county supervisor and grand sachem of Tammany Hall. In 1861, he added another job to his resume, lawyer. This was at a time when you didn't have to go to law school to earn that title.

Plenty of people, almost always men, simply study under lawyers or judges who teach them up and then send them off to take the bar exam. Luckily for Bill, he helped at least one man get elected to the bench.

And in 1861, Judge George Barnard declared that Bill Tweed was a lawyer, basically anointing him. If anyone had a problem with that, they didn't bring it up to either man's face.

So Bill happily set up his law office at 95 Duane Street in lower Manhattan. Bill doesn't need any legal training to perform the kind of services he offers his customers though.

No record exists of him ever making an appearance in a court room on behalf of a client. But there are plenty of records of him billing people and corporations for quote unquote legal services. So what does Bill do for his clients?

Well, it varies depending on the problem. But mostly, he's in the business of solving people's problems.

Having assembled a vast network of contacts in New York's government, he knows exactly which strings need pulling to make just about anything happen.

He can make council votes go your way, ensure building permits are approved, tell you who to talk to about making a bid for a government contract. And all he asks in return is a modest payment.

After a few months at this game, Bill decides to try and expand his involvement with the law by running for sheriff. He ran as the Democratic candidate with the backing of Tammany Hall, which was a great starting point.

But even in the 19th century, American politics is an expensive industry. Bill sank everything he had into his campaign, spending something like $100,000.

To put that number into context, a family of four living in New York at that time could get by on $15 a week, which would include their rent. But even after spending so much, Bill lost the election and his entire fortune with it.

Money he'd spent most of his adult life building through a combination of business know-how, political bribes and kickbacks. The silver lining to the gutting defeat was that Bill wasn't the only loser in the 1861 election.

Fernando Wood, a three-time mayor of New York City, lost his bid for a fourth term after his rampant corruption of the office was exposed in the media and the courts.

The list of lines that Wood crossed is long, but there's a couple of choice examples.

First, he sold spots on his political group's election ticket, giving his endorsement to two lawyers who paid him $5,000 each in the hopes of winning seats on the state Supreme Court.

Second, he awarded a company street sweeping contract worth $279,000 a year, even though another company bid on the job for 195 grand. And wouldn't you know it, it turns out that his brother was a part owner of the winning company.

In the end, it's estimated that Fernando Wood stole something in the region of $250,000 of city funds during his third term. Understandably, the news was a blow to his bid for re-election. But his base remained pretty committed to him.

So his enemies in the Democratic Party had to take drastic action to bring him down. Bill, through Tammany Hall, nominated a spoiler candidate, a Democrat of his choice to run against Wood and the Republican candidate, George Updike.

Come election day, voters were almost evenly split among the three candidates, but Updike won by a razor thin margin. Interestingly, he was the only pro-war candidate in the field.

His opponents were both copperheads, a term for Democrats who opposed the US Civil War, which had finally begun in April of that year. Put another way, almost 50,000 of the 75,000 voters in New York City cast their ballots for anti-war candidates.

Keep that in your brain, it's something to remember. Immediately following the election, though, Bill was mostly concerned with his bank account, not war.

Any other person who just self-financed a losing campaign to the tune of a hundred grand might be inclined to wallow for a while. Maybe re-evaluate their life choices. Not Bill Tweed.

He might have emptied his coffers, but he knew he could bounce back quickly, thanks to his law office shenanigans, bribes from his county supervisor position, and the steady stream of money he was already receiving from the people he's helped secure

government jobs over the years. So many men tithe their earnings to the Church of Tweed that builds back to his old self within the year.

Pretty quickly, he's using his wealth to make himself even richer, with a little war profiteering at the taxpayers' expense. Here's how he does it.

Sometime towards the end of 1862, a community hall in Harlem is sold, with the plan for it to become a church. Everything inside the hall is put up for auction, and Bill purchases nearly 300 wooden benches at a cost of five bucks apiece.

So, he's paid a little under $1,500. Adjusted for inflation, that'd be about 49 grand today. It's a lot of money, right?

Well, from there, Bill either gives or sells the benches to furniture firm Ingersoll and Company. He knows the owner of Ingersoll through his father. They used to be chairmakers together.

That connection proves to be a profitable one, because a little while later, New York County comes calling, looking to buy some furniture for its armories. Ingersoll and Company sells them the second-hand benches for $600 each.

That's an astronomical markup. And don't forget, Bill is a member of the County Board of Supervisors, so it's not a coincidence that the body chose Ingersoll to help outfit the armories. That was almost certainly Bill's doing.

And we can assume that Ingersoll shared the $168,000 of profits with Bill. Easy money for a guy with no scruples. And as the war continues into its third year, the opportunities for shameless cash grabs only increase.

Businesses bill New York County for upkeep on armories and barracks, charging sky-high prices for work that never gets done, or never needed doing in the first place.

Those inflated bills are authorized by the supervisors, who then receive healthy chunks of that extra money as kickbacks from their companies. And New York's residents have no idea that it's happening.

Though even if they did, they might not have the bandwidth to be concerned about it at just this moment. The Civil War is not a popular cause in New York.

The state's economy is largely tied to exports to the South, and there's a general fear that freeing enslaved people will flood the local job market with cheap labor.

So the chief reasons for people opposing the war are economic, but I won't tell you that there aren't other elements swirled in there. Like I said last time, it's a complex issue.

Still, New York State is officially on the side of the Union, and plenty of men enlist to join the war effort. But more soldiers are needed. And in March of 1863, two years into the war, Congress passes the Enrollment Act.

This sets quotas for each state and congressional district. If those quotas aren't met by voluntary enrollment, then conscripted soldiers will need to make up the difference.

So, as spring gives way to summer, the threat of the first national draft blooms over New York City. When it finally arrives in July, the reaction will be bigger, bloodier and deadlier than anyone could have possibly expected.

It's the morning of Saturday, July 11th, 1863, at the corner of New York's 3rd Avenue and 46th Street.

17:47

It's been eight days since the Union victory at Gettysburg. 23,000 Union soldiers died in the battle, and at least as many Confederates. But already, Washington is demanding the Northern states send more men to support the war effort.

Now, a large crowd of people are gathered outside the enrollment office, watching a large wooden wheel spin.

A corporal from the Union Army oversees the draft process, calling out the numbers to the waiting crowd and watching another man write them into a ledger. A squad of soldiers stands nearby, weapons at the ready.

They're all members of the Invalid Corps, men wounded in battle. Some 500 of them are stationed here for services in New York City.

For months, New York Governor Horatio Seymour has been sending letters to President Lincoln, urging him to call off the planned conscription. In the press, Seymour has decried the whole thing is illegal and vowed to fight it in court.

His campaign against the draft has made one thing clear. New Yorkers won't stand for this. But despite the smell of unrest on the wind, none of the locals stir throughout any part of the lottery.

They watch, they listen, and when it's all done, they go home without a fuss. Hearing reports of the day's success, Union Army officials breathe the sigh of relief. Seymour's grandstanding has amounted to nothing, they think.

New York will do her part. But they're wrong. Today was just the calm before the storm.

The Empire State is about to fight back. On Sunday, July 12th, the names of the first conscripted men appear in New York's newspapers. For many, this is the moment when the reality of the situation hits.

And they're understandably pissed off. Because there's an economic imbalance written into the Enrollment Act of 1863, which allows conscripted men to pay a fee instead of serving.

It's $300, which might not sound like a lot, but that's as much as, if not more than, an entire year's salary for most working class families. People don't just have that kind of money lying around, unless they're pretty damn wealthy.

In New York City, a place of some 800,000 residents isn't wealthy. Sure, there are some richies, but about half of the population are immigrants, still finding their footing in their new home.

Plus, there are untold numbers of laborers who are literally building the town from the ground up and getting paid about a dollar a day for the privilege.

These same men are told they might have to fight and die in a war that many of them don't support. And the wealthy could just buy their way out of it? Yeah, no.

New York City's draft is scheduled to begin again on Monday. Thousands of men failed to show up to work that morning.

It's clear there's been organization taking place because they gather at strategic points around the city, ready to make themselves heard. Some of them post up on second and third avenues to stop the men driving horse cars up and down the roads.

About a mile uptown, another group of men surround the enrollment office, using axes to cut down the building's telegraph poles. Then they sit and wait. By 9 a.m., local police have been informed what's happening, but they're too few a number.

There are already thousands of men marshaling on the streets. In contrast, there are just about 1100 officers for the whole city.

As for reinforcements, there are those 500 soldiers from the Invalid Corps, plus about 300 more soldiers stationed at local forts in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's less than 2000 people to hold the line against a force that's only growing larger.

A little after 9, 50 men from the Invalid Corps show up to the enrollment office at 46 and 3. It's pretty clear that they didn't get a warning about what to expect.

The waiting mob have already broken into the building and chased off the handful of police guards who were there. So as the mostly injured soldiers arrive, they're surrounded by civilians, outnumbered at least 20 to 1.

Their commanding officer orders them to fire a round of blanks, hoping to get the crowd to back up a bit. But whether it happens deliberately or by mistake, some of the soldiers fire live rounds, killing 3 civilians.

Unsurprisingly, that starts a bloody melee as the crowd surges forward and attacks. Some of the protesters grab the muskets from soldiers' hands and start beating them. Within minutes, two of them are dead and bloody on the ground.

With the rest doing whatever they can to escape. One of the soldiers is chased all the way out onto a rocky ledge over the East River. When his pursuers catch up to him, they throw the man down onto the rocks below.

Then heave heavy boulders over the edge to crush his already broken body. Back at the enrollment office, some of the remaining civilians set fire to the building, chasing the residents of the tenement upstairs out onto the street.

The adjoining structures soon catch fire, and blazes are set in other tenements across the road. By 1115, the federal government has gotten word through to the other enrollment offices in town to close up shop for the day.

But basically, the whole city is shut down already. The only people left on the street at noon are cops, a handful of soldiers, and thousands upon thousands of angry New Yorkers.

With every passing minute, this protest is looking more and more like a riot. Plenty of the men arrive armed with heavy tools from home.

Others simply pull up pavement stones from the sidewalk to hurl through windows at any police officers who get too close.

Elsewhere, weapons stores and gunsmiths who have been turning a nice profit during the war are ransacked and left with empty shelves.

At City Hall, Mayor George Opdyck sends messages to the members of the Common Council to attend an emergency meeting. But most are too scared to go outside. Eventually, the mayor is moved to the St.

Nicholas Hotel in case the mob decides to take their anger out on him. By late afternoon, New York's wealthy are heading for the hills.

Rioters have already started tearing up train tracks in the upper part of the city, so those with the means to do so board ferries, yachts and carriages to find safety.

With the gilded homes empty, rioters break in, ransacking them and sometimes setting them on fire.

A haze of smoke turns the sunset into a dirty smear that evening, with at least 40 fires burning across the city and no end in sight to the mob's violent anger.

One group of rioters head to 43rd Street, making for an orphanage for non-white children, screaming that they're gonna burn it down.

If I had to guess why they picked this target, I would say it's because they see the plight of enslaved black people as the root cause for the draft. In their minds, attacking black orphans is a valid way for them to vent.

Luckily for the 255 children at the orphanage, the staff already realized they weren't safe and managed to evacuate long before flames touched the building.

As nearby fire brigades rush to try and do their duty, the mob holds them at bay until the orphanage is little more than ashes. Elsewhere, New York's few other black residents are targeted for more extreme violence.

Several men are lynched, with at least one man hung from a tree, while his killers build a celebratory bonfire nearby.

After the man is dead, a police officer arrives to cut the body down, but the crowd disarm him and order him to return to the station or face punishment of his own. It's almost midnight when the day's violence is finally over.

Around 11.30, rain settles over the city, extinguishing the fires and washing the smoke from the air. As most of the rioters finally go home, one group remains where they are, the mob standing guard over the lynched man's body.

They stand in the rain for hours, refusing to allow anyone to remove their horrific handiwork. And that's just day one. The following morning, Governor Horatio Seymour arrives in the city by boat.

26:44

He's been vacationing in New Jersey with his family and took his sweet time making his way back to New York.

He's greeted at the harbor by Bill Tweed, who spent most of yesterday speaking with community leaders and organizers, passing information to the police and trying to quell the unrest.

Now, he boards the governor's carriage and rides through the streets, both of them waving to the men who've taken up arms once more. The cheering of the crowd is mostly for Bill, though.

Governor Seymour is a fierce opponent of the draft, and he's been pelting President Lincoln with letters for weeks, urging him to halt plans for it here in New York. Still, locals seem angry that his efforts have failed.

But Bill, he's one of them, a true son of the city. And as the pair make their way to the St. Nicholas Hotel, words start spreading that Boss Tweed and the governor have arrived.

After speaking with the terrified mayor, Seymour heads for City Hall. There, on the steps of the building, Seymour addresses a waiting crowd of thousands.

He opens his remarks by calling the men, my friends, which seems a bit rich, considering he's addressing a crowd that hung men from lamp posts and set an orphanage on fire. But I don't know, maybe that's just me.

In his placating speech, Seymour urges the rioters to return peaceably to their homes, assuring them that their protest has been heard and that he will do everything in his power to make sure Washington takes heed.

As ever, Bill stands conspicuously at Seymour's side, lending credibility to his words. It's an anointing moment for the man they call Boss. The sight of him helps steady the volatile crowds.

For now. The New York City draft riots are not over after Governor Seymour's speech. For the next couple of days, the streets are crowded with men who refuse to go to work.

In his role as Deputy Street Commissioner, Bill effectively orders about 1200 of the city street workers to volunteer to help move the protesters along. It's not until Thursday that any real progress is made, though.

That's when five local regiments from the Union Army arrive back in town following the Battle of Gettysburg. They bolster the ranks of Bill's volunteers, and within hours, New York City is back to its old self.

Reports of how many people were killed and injured during the draft riots vary wildly. At least one historian puts the combined number at 1000. More conservative estimates put the number at about 120 killed.

Numerous public and private buildings sustain damage during the riots. And most of Manhattan's black population will leave the city after being targeted by the mob. As the dust finally settles, though, there's still one question left unanswered.

What about the draft? Bill and his colleagues on the County Board of Supervisors meet to discuss the matter. They know there's no way the federal government will exempt their city from conscription.

And besides, the rioters aren't the only people with opinions about the war. Plenty of New Yorkers are angry that Governor Seymour seemed to capitulate to the violent mob's demands.

Meanwhile, Mayor Obdike and the city's aldermen are bickering about the solution to the problem, bringing all other government matters to a halt. That leaves the bipartisan Board of Supervisors to find a compromise. And Bill takes the lead.

Aside from a general lack of enthusiasm for the war, the biggest sticking point with the draft has been that the wealthy can easily buy their way out of it. So Bill goes to the Board's leading Republican voice.

And together, they take a plan to the mayor. And here's what they come up with. The city is going to establish a fund to pay the $300 commutation fee for men who don't want to serve.

But to ensure that the state meets its quotas, these men must find a replacement. That man will receive the $300. Any men who agree to fight when they're called up will also be paid $300.

Additionally, poorer workmen whose families will be destitute without them will be allowed to apply for exemption on a case-by-case basis. Mayor Opdyck sends Bill to Washington, where he sells the plan to Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary of War.

When the draft starts up again in New York that August, the new system is in place, thanks in no small part to Bill Tweed. And the people won't easily forget that. They can't.

Leaders from Tammany Hall are at every enrollment office for each conscription lottery. That's because the people trust Tammany more than the federal government. And Tammany Hall trusts Bill Tweed.

What more could a man ask for? Well, in this specific instance, even more power. Over the next couple of years, Bill gathers around him a core group of men to help guide the future of Tammany Hall.

They meet for lunch most days to discuss their plans for Tammany, the Democratic Party and for New York.

The members of this exclusive group are the latest mayor, John Hoffman, city comptroller Richard Connolly, and former district attorney Peter Sweeney. People call them the Lunch Club.

It's a cute name for a group of men who will very soon control all of New York City. It's early June 1865, about a month after the end of the Civil War.

32:49

42-year-old Bill Tweed walks along a busy New York City sidewalk. All around him, workmen clog the streets as they erect vast new buildings in the expanding city. Another new addition to the landscape troubles Bill.

For the past several weeks, young men have been appearing on the street corners, returned veterans living with visible injuries from the war.

Back home with their families, these men might have been working on the buildings they sit in front of, if only they were physically able. Instead, they sit on blankets, tin cups and trays of shoelaces in front of them.

As he draws closer to his destination, City Hall, Bill notices another of these veterans just across the street. Forgetting his busy schedule for a minute, he hurries over to the man and drops a couple of coins into his cup.

Then he selects a pair of shoelaces from the tray, tips his hat and carries on with his morning. He's done his part. By the time the Civil War ends in May 1865, Bill Tweed is a millionaire.

Thanks to years of bribes, graft payments and tithes from the men he's helped win elections. And although he holds on to most of that money for himself and his family, he also recognizes that altruism will benefit the community and his own image.

So as soon as injured veterans start selling shoelaces on street corners, Bill doesn't walk past a single one without putting money into their cup. That still leaves him plenty of money, though.

By 1866, the Tweeds live in a stylish brownstone on 36th Street. Like all the towns wealthy, they keep their own carriages and spend weekends away from the city. Not that Bill makes much time for his wife and kids.

He's got a city to rule, contracts to approve, and a political party to lead. Every now and then, some reporter or other emerges to make accusations of corruption, but nothing ever sticks to Bill, even when there's clearly something fishy going on.

Take the New County Courthouse. When the project was first costed out in 1858, the final bill was estimated to be around $250,000. But by the end of 1868, the cost of the courthouse has ballooned to 3.2 million.

That's around 13 times the initial estimate, and the thing's not even finished. The New York Citizens Association lodges complaints alleging overspending on the courthouse, but official investigations don't turn up any evidence of wrongdoing.

Either because Bill's covered his tracks really well, or because he's got control over the people doing the investigating.

My money's on the ladder, because by the time of the second complaint, Bill's not just involved in city politics, he's been elected to the New York State Senate. And it's in Albany, where Bill's power really becomes apparent.

After some two decades pulling strings and making deals, he holds sway over everyone. People he can't convince to side with him, he bribes to skip votes.

And so, if anyone in the legislature has something they want passed for their home district, they come to Bill Tweed. Boss. Now, you might expect that he'd get some kind of payment in exchange for his help.

But Bill tells a lot of his fellow lawmakers that his are simply the actions of a friend. Of course, friends sometimes ask for favors in return. See, Bill wants his buddy, Mayor John Hoffman, to be New York's next governor.

If he can make that happen, he'll have the state's most powerful politician in his pocket. And Hoffman's a popular guy. There's talk he could turn a successful governorship into a run for the White House.

And the first step for any of that to happen is securing the nomination from the Democratic Party. Hence, Bill's willing assistance with senators struggling to make headway in Albany. He's just teeing things up for his next act.

In July 1868, the Democratic National Convention is held in New York City. And where does the DNC select for this event? The brand new Tammany Hall Meeting House on Union Square.

John Hoffman secures his nomination for the governorship at the convention just as Bill planned. But as the state barrels towards election day, it's becoming clear that Hoffman won't win. Short, New York City is overwhelmingly Democrat.

But voters upstate and in smaller towns tend to lean Republican and they outnumber the city folk. But Bill won't be defeated by numbers. He remembers a nifty little trick that former mayor Fernando Wood pulled during one of his elections.

Facing defeat, Wood sent about 4,000 newly arrived immigrants to friendly judges with a request. Make them citizens before polls open. Now, Bill's got more judges in his debt than Wood ever did.

So with the election just weeks away, he sends requests to his friends to naturalize as many people as possible. He needs to overwhelm the upstate Republicans.

That October, the New York Supreme Court churns through something like 1,600 naturalizations a day. And in November, John Hoffman is elected governor.

And it should be noted that an investigation will later show that there were about 8% more votes cast in New York City than there were actual voters that year. So it's not just Bill's citizenship plan. There's corruption everywhere you look.

And one guy decides that he has the power to do something about it. Around the time of the 1868 election, cartoonist Thomas Nast publishes a piece in the illustrated magazine Harper's Weekly.

38:55

The image depicts Mayor Hoffman as a drawing on a screen, which is being used to hide a large box labeled City Treasury. A horde of faceless men are reaching in to grab bags full of money from the box.

Nast's cartoon suggests that a group called The Ring is calling the shots at City Hall, and that they want to move their screen, that is the popular John Hoffman, to Albany, where they can get an even bigger pot of money.

It's the first truly worrying shot fired at Bill Tweed by the New York Press. The cartoon doesn't name anyone, but it's clear who Nast is aiming at.

Because Bill and his lunch club friends have earned themselves another name lately, The Ring, and there aren't many locals who don't know that. For now though, Bill isn't paying attention to cartoons and magazines.

With Hoffman heading to Albany to start his new job, New York City is in need of a replacement mayor. Bill nominates Oki Hall, a district attorney he helped win office several years ago.

Hall's an agreeable man, a politician with more style than substance, which makes him the perfect person to be mayor under Bill's thumb, and to take Hoffman's vacated seat within Bill's lunch club.

So as New York's new governor is sworn in, and New York City's new mayor takes office, everything is where Bill wants it. Both of these men owe him their positions, and he can use the powers at their disposal to enact his will upon the city.

It does not take him long. Within a year, Bill and his three accomplices, Richard Conley, Peter Sweeney and Oki Hall, are skimming 30% off the top of all bills paid by the city and county of New York. That money goes right into their pockets.

Now, not only is that, you know, illegal, it also results in massively inflated quotes from anyone wanting to do business with either government body.

Because not only do they have to account for the rings cut, they also need to allow enough to cover the cost of whatever job they're doing.

And if extra government money also flows into the pockets of merchants and businessmen, that's none of Boss Tweed's concern. He's already got his. Soon enough, though, he decides he wants more.

41:21

He wants full control of New York City. You might remember earlier in the series I told you that the state government has a lot of power over things that happened in the city.

They control their police force, the school board, the fire department, the docks and all of its budget.

With lawmakers from rural districts dominating the state legislature, plans to develop or improve conditions in Manhattan usually require hefty bribes to pass. And despite the irony here, Bill resents the way this group of men wield so much power.

So, in January of 1870, 46-year-old Bill meets with Peter Sweeney, who's been one of Tammany Hall's best strategists for years. Together, they draft a plan to bring home rule to New York City.

The full document takes a month or so to come together, but when it's done, the new proposed charter claws back municipal control from Albany. It apportions all of that power to four positions.

The mayor, the comptroller, the commissioner of parks, and the commissioner of public works. Bill and other members of the ring already occupy those roles or versions of them.

Bill's already street commissioner and he intends to fill the public works role. Hall is already the mayor and Connolly is the comptroller. Sweeney will take control of the parks department.

With the charter ready to go, all that's left is for the legislature to vote, and Bill throws everything he's got at this vote.

Some of his rivals within Tammany Hall are opposed to the new plan, because it's going to cut them out of the system of bribes and graft payments that have been in place for years.

Bill accuses them of bribing state assembly members and senators to vote against the charter, while he himself is also doling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes. In the end, the boss wins the day.

The charter is pushed through both chambers of the state legislature in early April, much to the delight of New York City's residents.

The night Governor Hoffman signs the charter into law, Tammany loyalists throw rockest celebrations in the streets, complete with fireworks, music and speeches. Finally, people are saying, New York City will be in control of its own destiny.

But they're wrong. There's only one man in charge of New York City now. BOSS TWEED.

From Airship, this is Episode 3 in our series on William Boss Tweed. On the next episode, Bill learns that all the money in the world can't buy the silence of a few dedicated journalists. We used many different sources while preparing this episode.

A couple we can recommend are Boss Tweed, The Story of a Grim Generation by Dennis Tilden Lynch, and Boss Tweed, The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Paul Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman.

This episode may contain reenactments or dramatized details. And while in some cases, we can't know exactly what happened, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Criminal is a co-production of Airship and Evergreen podcasts. It's hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Jeremy Schwartz. Audio editing and sound design by Sean Ruhl Hoffman.

Music by Thrum. This episode is written and researched by Joel Callen. Managing producers are Emily Burke and Sarah Willgrube.

Executive producers are Joel Callan and Lindsey Graham.