Chapter 7

For several years the Ring continued their robberies of the treasury, enriching themselves and bringing the city nearer to bankruptcy every year. Taxes increased, property was assessed for improvements that were never made, and the assessments were rigorously collected. Large sums were paid for cleaning the streets, which streets were kept clean only by the private subscriptions of the citizens residing in them, as the writer can testify from his personal experience. The burdens of the people became heavier and heavier, and the members of the Ring grew richer and richer. They built them palatial residences in the city, and their magnificent equipages were the talk of the town. They gave sumptuous entertainments, they flaunted their diamonds and jewels in the eyes of a dumbfounded public, they made ostentatious gifts to the poor, and munificent subscriptions to cathedrals and churches, _all with money stolen from the city_; and with this same money they endeavored to control the operations of Wall street, the great financial centre of the Republic. They built them country seats, the beauty and magnificence of which were duly set forth in the illustrated journals of the day; and they surrounded themselves with every luxury they could desire--all with money stolen from the city. Did any man dare to denounce their robberies, they turned upon him with one accord, and the whole power of the Ring was used to crush their daring assailant. They encouraged their adherents to levy blackmail upon the citizens of New York, and it came to be well understood in the great city that no man, however innocent, arrested on a civil process, could hope to regain the liberty which was his birthright, without paying the iniquitous toll levied upon him by some portion of the Ring. Even the great writ of Habeas Corpus--the very bulwark of our liberties--was repeatedly set at defiance by the underlings of the Ring, for the purpose of extorting money from some innocent man who had fallen into their clutches.

The Ring was all-powerful in the great city, and they there built up an organized despotism, the most infamous known to history. No man's rights, no man's liberties were safe, if he ventured to oppose them. They even sought to strike down freedom of speech and the liberty of the press. Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, in the speech from which we have quoted before in this chapter, makes this distinct charge against them. He says: "Mr. Evarts went to Albany last year, and carried with him my protest against the passage of the law giving to the judges a power unknown in the jurisprudence of this State--unknown in the jurisprudence of the United States for the last thirty years--_whereby it was secured that any member of the City Government that might be offended_, _could put his hand upon the city press_, _and suppress its liberties and freedom of speech_."

How long all this would have continued, it is impossible to say, had it not pleased God that there should be jealousies and dissensions amongst the members of the Ring strong enough to break even the infamous bonds that had so long bound them together.

The citizens of New York had for some time been slowly coming to the conclusion that they were losing their rights and property, and had been seeking for some legal means of attacking and overthrowing the Ring. Their great necessity was absolute and definite proof of fraud on the part of certain individuals. This was for a long time lacking, but it came at length. In July, 1871, a former prominent member of the Ring, having quarrelled with the Ring over a claim of three or four hundred thousand dollars, which Mr. Tweed had refused to allow, avenged himself by causing the publication of a series of the public accounts, transcribed from the books of the Comptroller. These accounts showed the millions that had been fraudulently paid away for work which had never been done, and furnished the first definite evidence of fraud on the part of the members of the Ring that had been given to the public. The press, with the exception of a few unimportant sheets owned or controlled by the Ring, denounced the frauds, and demanded an investigation of the public accounts. Mayor Hall, William M. Tweed, Richard B. Connolly, and all the greater and lesser magnates of the Ring were implicated in the terrible story told by the published accounts. The respectable citizens, without regard to party, at once joined in the demand, and expressed their determination to put an end to the power of the Ring. The whole land--nay the whole civilized world--rang with a universal cry of indignation. The temper of the citizens was such as admitted of no trifling.

The publication of the Comptroller's accounts, which revealed the stupendous system of fraud they had practised so successfully, burst upon the Ring like a clap of thunder from a clear sky. It not only surprised them, but it demoralized them. They were fairly stunned. At first they affected to treat the whole matter as a partisan outburst which would soon "blow over." Some of the more timid took counsel of their fears and fled from the city, some even quitting the country. The more hardened endeavored "to brave it out," and defiantly declared that the citizens could not molest them. All the while the wrath of the people grew hotter, and the demand for the publication of the Comptroller's accounts became more urgent. Comptroller Connolly, conscious of his guilt, met this demand with vague promises of compliance. Mayor Hall set himself to work to prove that the whole affair was a mistake, that no money had been stolen, that the City Government had been unjustly assailed, and by his ill-advised efforts drew upon himself a larger share of the public indignation and suspicion than had previously been accorded to him. The great object of the Ring was to gain time. They meant that the Comptroller's accounts should not be published, and to accomplish this they began the attempt to get possession of the Comptroller's office, the records of which contained the evidence of their crimes. With this important department in their hands they could suppress this evidence, or, if driven to desperation, destroy it. A council of the leaders of the Ring was called, at which it was resolved to get Mr. Connolly out of the Comptroller's office, and to put in his place a creature of their own. They did not dare, however, to make an effort to oust Connolly, without having some plausible pretext for their action. They feared that he would expose their mutual villainy, and involve them in his ruin, and they wished to prevent this. Still, they resolved to get rid of him, and their plan was first to crush him, and thus prevent his exposing them. We shall see how their plan worked.

Meanwhile the public indignation had been growing stronger daily. On the 4th of September, 1871, a large and harmonious meeting of citizens, without regard to party, was held at Cooper Institute. At this meeting it was resolved to compel an exposure of the frauds practised upon the people, and to punish the guilty parties; and committees were appointed, money subscribed, and the best legal talent in the city retained for that purpose. A reform movement to carry the November elections in the interest of the citizens and tax-payers was inaugurated, and the power of the courts was invoked to put a stop to the further expenditure of the city funds. The popular sentiment was too strong to be mistaken, and some of the leading officials, and several journals which had previously supported the Ring, took the alarm and entered the ranks of the party of Reform. The Democratic party of the State repudiated the Ring, and it was plain that the Tammany ticket would be supported only by the lowest classes of the city voters. The members of the Ring were now thoroughly aroused to the danger which threatened them; but, true to their corrupt instincts, they endeavored to meet it by fraud. They appointed a Committee of Aldermen to act with the Citizens' Committee in the investigation of the alleged frauds, and then withheld from them all evidence that could be of service to them.

The Comptroller's office contained not only the accounts of moneys paid out, but also the vouchers for all sums expended, properly signed and sworn to by the parties receiving the money, and these vouchers constituted the principal proof of the frauds. On Monday, September 11th, the city was startled by the announcement that the office of the Comptroller had been forcibly entered during the previous day, Sunday, and that the vouchers covering the principal transactions of the Ring had been stolen. It was a bold deed, and was so thoroughly characteristic of the Ring, that the public at once attributed it to that body. The Ring on their part endeavored to produce the belief that the Comptroller had stolen the vouchers to screen himself. Mayor Hall immediately wrote a peremptory letter to Mr. Connolly, asking him to resign his position as he (the Comptroller) had lost the confidence of the people. Mr. Connolly was not slow to perceive that the Ring were determined to sacrifice him to secure their own safety, and he declined to become their victim. He not only refused to resign his position at Mayor Hall's demand, but set to work vigorously to discover and bring to light the persons who had stolen the vouchers. To have stolen the vouchers himself, or to have countenanced the robbery, would have been worse than folly on the part of the Comptroller. It would have damaged him fatally with the citizens, who were disposed to deal lightly with him if he would aid them in getting at and punishing the villainies of his former confederates. There was no reason why he should seek to screen the Ring, for they made no secret of their intention to destroy him. In view, therefore, of the facts as at present known, it seems certain that the theft was brought about by the Ring for the purpose of throwing the suspicion of the crime upon the Comptroller, and thus giving them a pretext for crushing him.

Wisely for himself, Mr. Connolly determined to let the Ring shift for themselves, and throw himself upon the mercy of the Reform party. He withdrew from the active discharge of the duties of his office, and appointed Mr. Andrew H. Green--an eminent citizen, possessing the respect and confidence of all parties--his deputy, with full powers, and avowed his determination to do his utmost to afford the Citizens' Committee a full and impartial investigation of his affairs. The Ring made great efforts to prevent his withdrawal, or, rather, the appointment of Mr. Green. Says Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, who was the real cause of this action on Mr. Connolly's part, and who was the acknowledged leader of the Reform Democracy during the contest:

"When Mr. Connolly came to my house on that morning on which he executed an abdication in favor of Mr. Green, he was accompanied by two counsel, one of whom was half an hour behind time, and I learned, not from him, but from other sources, that he spent that half hour at the house of Peter B. Sweeny. When the conference went on, he said, not speaking for himself individually, but still he would state the views taken by other friends of Mr. Connolly as to what he should do. He said he was assured that some respectable man would be put in the office of Comptroller, and that then he would say to Mr. Booth, of the Common Council Committee, and to the Committee of Seventy: 'I am competent to make every necessary investigation myself.' And that then everything that would hurt the party would be kept back; and that was the consideration presented to Mr. Connolly in my presence, and in the presence of Mr. Havemeyer and the two counsel. I told Mr. Connolly that the proposition was wrong, and would fail, and ought to fail; that no man had character enough to shut off the injured and indignant citizens from the investigation desired; and if he attempted to do it, it would ruin everybody concerned in it, and plunge him in a deeper ruin. That his only chance and hope was in doing right from that day, and throwing himself upon the charity and humanity of those who had been wronged."

Failing to prevent the appointment of Mr. Green, the Ring endeavored to ignore it. The Mayor professed to regard the Comptroller's withdrawal from his office as a resignation of his post. He at once announced his acceptance of this resignation, and proceeded to appoint a successor to Mr. Connolly. Here, however, the Ring met with another defeat. During the early part of 1871, Mr. Connolly had some idea of visiting Europe, and, in order to keep prying eyes from his official records, had procured the passage of a law by the Legislature, authorizing him to appoint a Deputy-Comptroller, who "shall, in addition to his other powers, possess every power, and perform every duty belonging to the office of Comptroller, whenever the said Comptroller shall, by due written authority, and during a period to be specified in such authority, designate and authorize the said Deputy-Comptroller to possess the power and perform the duty aforesaid." Mr. Connolly thus had the legal power to appoint Mr. Green, and the Mayor's refusal to recognize the appointment was mere bombast. The best legal talent in New York sustained Mr. Connolly, and the Mayor's own law officer advised him that he must respect the appointment; and so the statute that had been framed for the protection of the Ring was unexpectedly used for their destruction.

[Picture: THE ROBBERY OF THE VOUCHERS]

Still another discomfiture awaited the Ring. A few days after the appointment of Mr. Green, a servant girl employed in the family of the janitor of the new Court House, unexpectedly revealed, under oath, the manner in which the vouchers were stolen from the Comptroller's office, and the names of the thieves. Her sworn statement is as follows:

"_City and County of New York_, _ss_.--Mary Conway, being duly sworn, doth depose and say: I have lived with Mr. and Mrs. Haggerty, in the County Court-House, for over fourteen months, as cook; for about three or four months I did general housework; on Sunday morning, September 10th, I got out of bed with the child that slept with me, wanting to get up; I don't know whether it was half-past six or seven o'clock; Mrs. Haggerty came into the room in her night-dress; and said to me, 'it is too early to get up yet;' I said to her, 'being as I am up I guess I will dress myself;' as I was dressed I went out into the hall; I heard a knocking down stairs; I said to Mrs. Haggerty, 'it sounds as if it was at the Comptroller's door;' I went over to the kitchen, unlocked the kitchen door, and went down stairs to the head of the stairs that leads to the Comptroller's hall; I saw Charley Baulch knocking at the Comptroller's door, and calling, 'Murphy, are you there?' Murphy is a watchman; I came up stairs and went back to the kitchen; shortly after I went down stairs again and saw Charley Baulch with the door of the Comptroller's office open, he holding it back on the outside, and I saw Mr. Haggerty come out of the door with bundles of papers in his arms and bring them up to his bedroom; the door where he came out is at the foot of the stairs, where the glass is broken, going into the County Bureau; I came back, and did not go down any more; each bundle of papers was tied with either a pink tape or a pink ribbon round them; the next thing, I went over from the kitchen out into the hall for a scuttle of coal; in this hall Mr. Haggerty's bedroom door faced me; I saw a man with gray clothes going in there with another bundle of papers like what Mr. Haggerty had; then I brought back the coal to the kitchen, and put it on the fire; the next I saw was this man with the gray clothes going down with a pillow-case on his back, full, that looked as though filled with papers, shaped like the bundles Mr. Haggerty had; at the same time he went down the stairs Charley Baulch said to him, 'This way;' I kind of judged there was something up, and I went to look in the drawer where the pillow-cases were, and I missed one of the linen pillow-cases; I did this soon afterward; soon after the man went down with the pillow-case, Mrs. Haggerty came into the kitchen, giving me a key, and telling me to go over to the drying-room; that is a room separate from the bedrooms; there was a chest there full of linen, table linen and bed linen, and silver right down in the bottom; she told me to get a nut-picker and bring it over, as Mr. Haggerty wanted one; I took all the clothes out of the trunk, and got the nut-picker and brought it back to her, and before I got into the kitchen I said to Mrs. Haggerty, 'What is the matter? The kitchen's all black with smoke, and the dining room's all black with smoke.' She said, 'Mr. Haggerty wanted these papers burned, I told him not to put them in, but he wants them burned;' I went over to the range to cook some eggs for breakfast; it was full of burned papers on the top and in the bottom; there lay a bundle of papers on the top that were about half burned, with a piece of pink tape around them; I put on the cover again; they were partly smothered, going out; Mrs. Haggerty had a poker stirring up the papers on the top and underneath, where the ashes were; the bottom of the range was full of burning papers, and Mrs. Haggerty had the poker stirring them up so that they would burn faster; from underneath the range and the top she took three or four pailfuls of burned papers and emptied them up stairs on the attic floor, in a heap of ashes.

"On Tuesday next, when Mrs. Haggerty came home from the market, she asked me if there was anything new about this robbery in the Comptroller's office; I told her I did not know; I didn't hear nothing, no more than a man came up stairs to-day, and asked me if I let anybody in on Sunday, or if I knew anybody to come into the building on Sunday; I told him I did not know who came in; I didn't attend to the front door; I was cooking, and had nothing to do with the front door; and I asked the man who sent him up stairs; and he said a man down in the hall sent him up stairs to inquire; next, I told Mrs. Haggerty that if I had known it was Charley Baulch sent him up stairs to find any information from me, I should have told the man to go down stairs, that Charley Baulch knew as much about it as I did, and more, for he was one of the men that helped to rob it; she said to me, 'Christ! If Charley Baulch knowed that, he'd run into the East River and drown himself--if he knowed you saw him;' this was on Tuesday night I told her this; Mr. Haggerty left town on Tuesday, saying he was going to Saratoga with Hank Smith, and he would be home on Thursday or Friday, and on Wednesday night he got home from Saratoga; Mrs. Haggerty told him the remarks that I made to her on Tuesday night about the robbery; that I saw all that passed; she told me on Thursday morning that she told Mr. Haggerty about it all, last night; that he was going to wash his feet, but he felt so bad over it; they sat up for two hours in the room talking, and he didn't wash his feet; on Thursday morning when Mr. Haggerty came into the kitchen, he came to me, running in, and said, 'Mary!' I said, 'Sir!' Said he, 'I don't want you to speak of what you saw passed here on Sunday morning; I don't want you to tell these old women or old men in the building; Charley Baulch done it for me, and I done it for another man;' I said, 'I haven't told it to anyone;' He said, 'You did tell it to Kitty' (his wife); I said, 'She knew as much about it as I did; she saw the papers burning;' on next Friday of that same week I saw Mark Haggerty, Mr. Haggerty's brother, who is a detective in the Mayor's office, I think; I called him up stairs and asked him to come in; he said, 'No, I am afraid to come in; I am afraid of Ed.,' that is, Mr. Haggerty; they have not been on speaking terms in a year; I then told him the occurrences that happened in the Court-House on Sunday morning; I told him I didn't feel like staying there; that I was almost crazy about it; he told me to keep it still; that if anybody would hear about it outside they would be collared; I asked him would it be prison; he said certainly.