Transcript

10.23.26 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. This is Radio Eye's history program and
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Speaker 1: I'm your host and reader for today, Joseph Bolt. Happy
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Speaker 1: to be with you for this time. And before we
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Speaker 1: begin today's program, as always, we need to remind you
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Speaker 1: that Radio Eye is listener driven. That means you. And
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Speaker 1: so if you have comments or suggestions, and in particular
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Speaker 1: about any history topic you want covered, please call us.
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Speaker 1: and suggest at 859-422-6390. Let us know what you are thinking.
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Speaker 1: Radio Eye is a reading service intended for people who
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Speaker 1: are blind or have other disabilities and make it difficult
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Speaker 1: to read printed material. I'll cite the sources at the
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Speaker 1: end of today's reading, so let's get started. In the
0:56
Speaker 1: years following the Civil War, A former street brawler and
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Speaker 1: Lower East Side political fixer named William M. Tweed became
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Speaker 1: notorious as Boss Tweed in New York City. Tweed never
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Speaker 1: served as mayor. The public offices he held at times
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Speaker 1: were always minor. Yet, Tweed, hovering on the fringe of government,
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Speaker 1: was by far the most powerful politician in the city.
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Speaker 1: His organization, known to insiders simply as The Ring, collected
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Speaker 1: millions of dollars in illegal graft. Tweed was ultimately brought
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Speaker 1: down by newspaper reporting, mainly in the pages of the
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Speaker 1: New York Times. But a prominent political cartoonist, Thomas Nast,
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Speaker 1: of Harper's Weekly, also played a vital role in keeping
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Speaker 1: the public focused on the misdeeds of Tweed and the Ring.
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Speaker 1: The story of Boss Tweed and his stunning fall from
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Speaker 1: power can't be told without appreciating how Thomas Nast depicted
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Speaker 1: his rampant thievery in ways anyone could understand. The New
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Speaker 1: York Times published bombshell articles based on leaked financial reports,
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Speaker 1: which began the downfall of Boss Tweed in 1871. The
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Speaker 1: material revealed was astounding, yet it's unclear whether the solid
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Speaker 1: work of the newspaper would have gained as much traction
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Speaker 1: in the public mind if it hadn't been for Nast.
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Speaker 1: The cartoonists produced striking visuals of the Tweed's ring, perfidy,
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Speaker 1: In a sense, the newspaper editors and the cartoonists, working
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Speaker 1: independently in the early 1870s, supported each other's efforts. Nast
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Speaker 1: had first gained fame drawing patriotic cartoons during the Civil War.
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Speaker 1: President Abraham Lincoln considered him a very useful propagandist, particularly
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Speaker 1: for drawing published prior to the election of 1864, when
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Speaker 1: Lincoln faced a serious re-election challenge from General George McClellan.
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Speaker 1: Nast's role in bringing down Tweed became legendary, and it
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Speaker 1: has overshadowed everything else he did, which ranged from making
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Speaker 1: Santa Claus a popular character to making much less amusingly,
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Speaker 1: viciously attacking immigrants, especially Irish Catholics, whom Nast openly despised.
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Speaker 1: In New York City, in the years following the Civil War,
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Speaker 1: things were going fairly well for the Democratic Party machine
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Speaker 1: known as Tammany Hall. The famed organization had started decades
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Speaker 1: earlier as a political club, But by the middle of
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Speaker 1: the 19th century, it dominated New York politics and essentially
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Speaker 1: functioned as the city's real government. William M. Tweed was
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Speaker 1: born on Cherry Street in Lower Manhattan on April 3, 1823.
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Speaker 1: There is a dispute about his middle name, which was
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Speaker 1: often mistakenly given as Marcy, but which was actually Magir,
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Speaker 1: his mother's maiden name. In newspaper accounts and official documents
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Speaker 1: during his lifetime, his name is usually printed simply as
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Speaker 1: William M. Tweed. As a boy, Tweed went to a
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Speaker 1: local school and received a typical education for the time
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Speaker 1: and then apprenticed as a chairmaker. During his teens, he
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Speaker 1: developed a reputation for street fighting. Like many youths in
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Speaker 1: the area, Tweed became attached to a local volunteer fire company.
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Speaker 1: In that era, neighborhood fire companies were closely aligned with
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Speaker 1: local politics. Fire companies had illustrious names, and Tweed became
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Speaker 1: associated with Engine Company 33. whose nickname was Black Joke.
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Speaker 1: The company had a reputation for brawling with other companies
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Speaker 1: that would try to outrace them to fires. Rising from
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Speaker 1: local politics in a working-class neighborhood along the East River,
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Speaker 1: Tweed was a large man with an even larger personality.
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Speaker 1: In the 1850s, he served a term in Congress, which
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Speaker 1: he found utterly necessary. He happily fled Capitol Hill to
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Speaker 1: return to Manhattan. During the Civil War, he was widely
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Speaker 1: known to the public, and as a leader of Tammany Hall,
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Speaker 1: he knew how to practice politics at the street level.
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Speaker 1: There's little doubt Thomas Nash would have been aware of
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Speaker 1: Tweed But it wasn't until later in 1868 that Nast
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Speaker 1: seemed to pay any professional attention to him. In the
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Speaker 1: election of 1868, the voting in New York City was
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Speaker 1: highly suspect. It was charged that Tammany Hall workers had
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Speaker 1: managed to inflate vote totals by naturalizing a huge number
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Speaker 1: of immigrants, and were then sent to vote for the
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Speaker 1: Democratic ticket. And observers claim that repeaters, or men who
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Speaker 1: would have traveled the city voting in multiple precincts, were rampant.
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Speaker 1: The Democratic presidential nominee that year lost to Ulysses S. Grant,
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Speaker 1: but that may not have mattered much to Tweed and
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Speaker 1: his followers. In more local races, Tweed's associates succeeded in
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Speaker 1: putting a Tammany Hall loyalist into office as governor of
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Speaker 1: New York, and one of Tweed's closest associates was elected mayor.
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Speaker 1: The U.S. House of Representatives formed a committee to investigate
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Speaker 1: Tammany's rigging of the 1868 election. Tweed was called to testify,
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Speaker 1: as were other New York political figures, including Samuel J. Tilden,
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Speaker 1: who would later lose a bid for the presidency. in
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Speaker 1: the controversial election of 1876. The investigation didn't lead anywhere,
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Speaker 1: and Tweed and his associates of Tammany Hall continued as always.
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Speaker 1: By 1870, the newspapers were referring to Tweed as Boss Tweed,
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Speaker 1: and his power over the city's political apparatus was nearly absolute. Tweed,
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Speaker 1: partly due to his personality and his penchant for charity,
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Speaker 1: was very popular with the common people. Voter fraud and
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Speaker 1: rigged elections were rampant, and Tweed elected many of his
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Speaker 1: friends to other influential positions. To enforce his rule, Tweed
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Speaker 1: would use the muscle of gangs throughout the city, Tweed,
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Speaker 1: partly due to his personality and his penchant for charity,
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Speaker 1: was very popular with the common people. However, the star
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Speaker 1: cartoonist at Harper's Weekly, Thomas Nagel, began to take special
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Speaker 1: notice of Tweed and his associates. Nast published a cartoon
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Speaker 1: lampooning the election fraud, and over the next few years
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Speaker 1: he would turn his interest in Tweed into a crusade.
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Speaker 1: Thomas Nast became a hero for his crusade against Boss
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Speaker 1: Tweed and the Ring, but it should be noted that
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Speaker 1: Nast was often fueled by his own prejudices. As a
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Speaker 1: fanatical supporter of the Republican Party, he was naturally opposed
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Speaker 1: to the Democrats of Tammany Hall. And though Tweed himself
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Speaker 1: was descended from immigrants from Scotland, he was closely identified
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Speaker 1: with the Irish working class, which Nast intensely disliked. And
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Speaker 1: when Nast first began to attack the ring, it probably
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Speaker 1: appeared to be a standard political fight. At first, it
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Speaker 1: seemed that Nast didn't really focus on Tweed. His cartoons
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Speaker 1: he drew in 1870 seemed to indicate that Nast believed
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Speaker 1: Peter Sweeney, one of Tweed's closest associates, was the real leader.
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Speaker 1: In 1871, it became clear that Tweed was the center
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Speaker 1: of power in Tammany Hall. and thus New York City itself.
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Speaker 1: And both Harper's Weekly, mostly through the work of Nast,
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Speaker 1: and the New York Times, through mentions of rumored corruption,
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Speaker 1: began to focus on bringing down Tweed. The problem was
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Speaker 1: an obvious lack of evidence. Every charge Nast would make
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Speaker 1: via cartoon would be shot down. And even the reporting
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Speaker 1: of the New York Times seemed to be flimsy. Well,
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Speaker 1: all that changed on the night of July 18, 1871.
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Speaker 1: It was a hot summer night, and New York City
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Speaker 1: was still disturbed from a riot which had broken out
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Speaker 1: between Protestants and Catholics the previous week. A man named
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Speaker 1: Jimmy O'Brien, a former associate of Tweed, who felt he
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Speaker 1: had been cheated, possessed duplicates of city ledgers, which documented
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Speaker 1: an outrageous amount of financial corruption. And O'Brien walked into
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Speaker 1: the office of the New York Times and presented a
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Speaker 1: copy of the ledgers to an editor by the name
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Speaker 1: of Lewis Jennings. O'Brien said very little during the brief
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Speaker 1: meeting with Jennings, but when Jennings examined the contents of
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Speaker 1: the he realized he had been handed an amazing story.
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Speaker 1: He immediately took the material to the editor of the newspaper,
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Speaker 1: George Jones. Well, Jones quickly assembled a team of reporters
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Speaker 1: and began examining the financial records closely. They were stunned
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Speaker 1: by what they saw. A few days later, the front
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Speaker 1: page of the newspaper was dedicated columns of numbers showing
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Speaker 1: how much money Tweed and his cronies had stolen. The
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Speaker 1: late summer of 1871 was marked by a series of
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Speaker 1: articles in the New York Times detailing the corruption of
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Speaker 1: the Tweed Ring. And with actual evidence being printed for
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Speaker 1: all the city to see, Nast's own crusade, which had
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Speaker 1: to that point been based mostly on rumor and hearsay,
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Speaker 1: took off. It was a fortunate turn of events for
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Speaker 1: Harper's Weekly and Nast. Up until that point, it appeared
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Speaker 1: that cartoons Nast drew, mocking Tweed for his lavish lifestyle
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Speaker 1: and apparent gluttony, were little more than personal attacks. Even
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Speaker 1: the Harper brothers, owners of the magazine, expressed some skepticism
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Speaker 1: about Nast at times. Thomas Nast, through the power of
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Speaker 1: his cartoons, was suddenly a star in journalism. That was
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Speaker 1: unusual for the time, as most news stories were unsigned,
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Speaker 1: and generally only newspaper publishers such as Horace Greeley or
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Speaker 1: James Gordon Bennett really rose to the level of widely
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Speaker 1: known to the public. With the fame came threats. For
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Speaker 1: a time, Nast moved his family from their house in
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Speaker 1: Upper Manhattan to New Jersey, but he was undeterred from
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Speaker 1: skewering Tweed. In the famous duo of cartoons published on
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Speaker 1: August 19, 1871, Nast made a mockery of Tweed's probable
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Speaker 1: defense that someone had stolen the public's money and No
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Speaker 1: one could tell who that was. In one cartoon, a
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Speaker 1: reader who resembled New York Tribune publisher Greeley is reading
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Speaker 1: from the New York Times, which has a front-page story
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Speaker 1: about the financial chicanery. Tweed and his associates are being
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Speaker 1: quizzed about the story. And in a second cartoon, members
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Speaker 1: of the Tweed Ring stand in a circle, each gesturing
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Speaker 1: to each other and answer questions To a question from
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Speaker 1: the New York Times about who stole the people's money,
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Speaker 1: each man is answering, quote,' Twas him, end quote. The
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Speaker 1: cartoon of Tweed and his cronies all trying to escape
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Speaker 1: blame was a sensation. Copies of Harper's Weekly sold out
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Speaker 1: on newsstands, and the magazine circulation suddenly increased. The cartoon
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Speaker 1: touched upon a serious issue. It seemed unlikely that the
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Speaker 1: authorities would be able to prove the obvious financial crimes
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Speaker 1: and hold anyone accountable in court. A fascinating aspect of
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Speaker 1: Boss Tweed's downfall is how quickly he fell. In early 1871,
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Speaker 1: his ring was operating like a finely tuned machine. Tweed
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Speaker 1: and his cronies were stealing public funds, and it seemed
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Speaker 1: like nothing could stop him. In the fall of 1871,
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Speaker 1: things had changed drastically. The revelations in the New York
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Speaker 1: Times had educated The reading public and the cartoons by Nast,
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Speaker 1: which had kept coming in issues of Harper's Weekly, had
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Speaker 1: made the news easily digestible. It was said that Tweed
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Speaker 1: complained about Nast's cartoons in a quote that became legendary.
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Speaker 1: The quote read, I don't care a straw for your
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Speaker 1: newspaper articles. My constituents don't know how to read, but
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Speaker 1: they can't help seeing them damned pictures. End quote. As
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Speaker 1: the position of the ring began to collapse, some of
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Speaker 1: Tweed's associates began to flee the country. Tweed himself remained
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Speaker 1: in New York City. He was arrested in October of 1871.
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Speaker 1: Just prior to a critical local election, he remained free
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Speaker 1: on bail, but the arrest didn't help at the polls. Tweed,
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Speaker 1: in the November 1871 election, retained his elected office as
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Speaker 1: a New York State Assemblyman, but his machine was battered
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Speaker 1: at the polls, and his career as a political boss
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Speaker 1: was essentially in ruins. In mid-November 1871, Nast drew tweed
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Speaker 1: as a defeated and demoralized Roman emperor, flabbergasted and seated
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Speaker 1: in the ruins of his empire. The cartoonists and the
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Speaker 1: newspaper reporters had essentially Finished. Boss Tweed. By the end
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Speaker 1: of 1871, Tweed's legal problems were just beginning. He would
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Speaker 1: be put on trial the following year and escape conviction
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Speaker 1: due to a hung jury. But in 1873, he would
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Speaker 1: finally be convicted and sentenced to prison. As for Nast,
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Speaker 1: he continued to draw cartoons depicting Tweed as a jailbird,
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Speaker 1: and there was plenty of fodder for Nast, as important
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Speaker 1: issues as what happened to money swindled by Tweed and
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Speaker 1: the ring remained a hot topic. The New York Times,
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Speaker 1: after helping to bring down Tweed, paid honor to Nast
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Speaker 1: with a highly complimentary article on March 20, 1872. A
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Speaker 1: tribute to the cartoonist described his work and career and
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Speaker 1: included the following passage attesting to his perceived importance. His
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Speaker 1: drawings are stuck upon the walls of the poorest dwellings
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Speaker 1: and stored away in the portfolios of the wealthiest connoisseurs.
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Speaker 1: A man who can appeal powerfully to millions of people
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Speaker 1: with a few strokes of the pencil must be admitted
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Speaker 1: to be a great power in the land. No writer
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Speaker 1: can possibly possess a tenth part of the influence with Mr.
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Speaker 1: Nass's exercises. He addresses the learned and the unlearned alike.
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Speaker 1: Many people cannot read leading articles. Others do not choose
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Speaker 1: to read them. Others do not understand them when they
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Speaker 1: have read them. But you cannot help seeing Mr. Nass' pictures.
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Speaker 1: And when you have seen them, you cannot fail to
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Speaker 1: understand them. When he characters a politician, the name of
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Speaker 1: that politician ever afterwards recalls the countenance of which Nast
22:14
Speaker 1: has made him a present. An artist of that stamp,
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Speaker 1: and such artists are very rare indeed, does more to
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Speaker 1: affect public opinion than a score of writers, end quote.
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Speaker 1: Tweed's life would spiral downward. He escaped from prison, fled
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Speaker 1: to Cuba and then Spain, was captured, and returned to prison.
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Speaker 1: He died in New York City's Ludlow Street Jail in 1878.
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Speaker 1: He was buried in an elegant family plot at Greenwood
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Speaker 1: Cemetery in Brooklyn. As for Thomas Nast, in the late 1870s,
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Speaker 1: Nast seemed to hit his peak as a cartoonist. He
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Speaker 1: had played a role in taking down Boss Tweed and
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Speaker 1: and his cartoons, rather, depicting Democrats as donkeys in 1874
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Speaker 1: and as Republicans as elephants in 1877, would become so
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Speaker 1: popular that we still use those symbols today. By 1880,
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Speaker 1: Nast's artwork was in decline. News editors at Harper's Weekly
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Speaker 1: sought to control him editorially, and changes in printing technology,
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Speaker 1: as well as increased competition for more newspapers, that could
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Speaker 1: print cartoons, presented challenges. In 1892, Nass launched his own magazine,
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Speaker 1: but it was not successful. He faced financial difficulties. Nass secured,
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Speaker 1: through the intercession of Theodore Roosevelt, a federal post as
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Speaker 1: a consular official in Ecuador. He arrived in the South
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Speaker 1: American country in July of 1902, but contracted yellow fever
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Speaker 1: and died on December 7, 1902, at the age of 62.
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Speaker 1: Nast's artwork has endured, and he is considered one of
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Speaker 1: the great American illustrators of the 19th century. Sources for
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Speaker 1: this article came from the website ThoughtCo.com, biography of William
24:27
Speaker 1: Boss Tweed, American politician, Robert McNamara, written in June of 2019.
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Speaker 1: And again, ThoughtCo.com, Thomas Nast's campaign against Boss Tweed, written
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Speaker 1: by Robert McNamara in May of 2025. And AllThat'sInteresting.com, The
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Speaker 1: Rise and Fall of Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall, written by
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Speaker 1: Amy L'Amour in September of 2019. And finally, again, from ThoughtCo.com,
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Speaker 1: article entitled Thomas Nast, written by Robert McNamara in April
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Speaker 1: of 2017. Well, that about does it for this chapter
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Speaker 1: of Radio Eye History. I sure hope you enjoyed the
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Speaker 1: program today. Thank you so much for listening and giving
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Speaker 1: me your time. I'm your host, Joseph Bolt, and I'll
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Speaker 1: be back next time with another chapter of Radio Eye History.
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Speaker 1: Until then, Happy trails to you.