Editing Tammany Hall (section)

===Fernando Wood era===
[[Fernando Wood]] attempted several small business ventures in the city during the 1830s while simultaneously increasing his involvement with Tammany Hall. These early business attempts failed, but by 1836, at the age of 24, he became a member of the Society and became known for resolving the dispute between the Loco-Focos and the conservatives of the Hall. At the age of 28, in 1840, Wood was put up by Tammany Hall for a U.S. congressional seat, which he won. After Wood's service in Congress, he became a successful businessman through real estate dealings and was elected mayor of New York City in 1854. William Tweed said of Wood, "I never yet went to get a corner lot that I didn't find Wood had got in ahead of me." In his first term as mayor, Wood ensured the police force was responsive to his needs and convinced commissioners to allow him to fire officers not performing their duties. He was then accused of only hiring Democrats to replace those fired officers.

Wood defied tradition and ran for a second term as mayor in 1856, which irked some of his Tammany associates. During the campaign, his police force acted as his henchmen and Wood took a portion of their salary for his war chest ($15 to $25 for captains and a lesser amount for patrolmen). On election day, he gave his policemen some time off to vote, during which time his affiliated [[Dead Rabbits]] gang protected polling places. Wood won his second term. The Republicans, who made gains upstate, created a new state charter for New York City in response to this concentration of power in one man, which included more elected (instead of appointed) city department heads and officers. The Republicans also consolidated a separate police force, the Metropolitan Police, from the police forces of Kings, Richmond, and Westchester counties. The Republicans in the state legislature also moved the city mayoral elections to odd years, making the next election for mayor in December 1857. A [[New York City Police riot|power struggle]] followed between Wood's Municipal Police and the newly created Metropolitan Police, as well as between [[Dead Rabbits riot|the Dead Rabbits and the nativist Bowery Boys]]. Tammany Hall did not put Wood up for reelection in December 1857 in light of the [[Panic of 1857]] and a scandal involving him and his brother, [[Benjamin Wood (American politician)|Benjamin Wood]].<ref name="allen5276">Allen pp. 52–53, 63, 67–76</ref>

====Mozart Hall====
As a result of the scandal, Fernando Wood left or was expelled from Tammany in 1858 to form a third party, the Mozart Hall Democracy, or '''Mozart Hall''', named after their building at the corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street. Wood ran for mayor in 1859, with the backing of [[James Gordon Bennett Sr.|James Gordon Bennett]]'s ''[[New York Tribune]]'', as the champion of workingclass Irish and German immigrants against the "kid glove, scented, silk stocking, poodle-headed, degenerate aristocracy."<ref name=gotham862 /> The Republicans attempted to combine their efforts with Tammany, but the deal could not be consummated, making it a three-candidate race, which Wood won with 38.3% of the vote. It was Wood's second and last term as mayor, serving until 1862.<ref name=allen5276 /><ref name=gotham862>Burrows & Wallace, p.862</ref><ref name=mozenc />

Mozart Hall was a major player in city politics through the 1860s and was successful in getting additional school wards for German communities. During the [[American Civil War|Civil War]], Democrats were divided between "[[War Democrat]]s" &ndash; who wanted victory on the battlefield but objected to what they considered radical Republican legislation and the erosion of civil rights by [[Abraham Lincoln]] &ndash; and "[[Copperhead (politics)|Peace Democrats]]", who favored the restoration of the Union as it existed before the war with slavery in place, or, alternately, peace without reunion (espoused by an extreme faction). [[William M. Tweed]], most of Tammany's politicians, and many prominent businessmen were in the "War" faction, while Mozart Hall was the center of the "Peace" Democrats in New York. While the division between Tammany and Mozart had worked in Wood's favor in 1859, in 1861 it caused Republican [[George Opdyke]] to be elected, over Wood and Tammany's [[C. Godfrey Gunther]], with barely more than a third of the vote.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, p.865</ref><ref name=mozenc />

After the war, Mozart Hall aligned itself more closely with Tammany, and gradually lost influence. It disbanded in 1867.<ref name=mozenc>Bradley, James "Mozart Hall" in {{cite enc-nyc2|page=861}}</ref><ref>{{cite gotham|pages=862,885}}</ref>