Editing Tammany Hall (section)

===1870–1900 {{anchor|1870-1900}}===
Tammany did not take long to rebound from Tweed's fall. Reforms demanded a general housecleaning, and former county sheriff [[John Kelly (New York politician)|"Honest John" Kelly]] was selected as the new leader. Kelly was not implicated in the Tweed scandals and was a religious Catholic related by marriage to Archbishop [[John McCloskey]]. He cleared Tammany of Tweed's people and tightened the Grand Sachem's control over the hierarchy. His success at revitalizing the machine was such that in the election of 1874, the Tammany candidate, [[William H. Wickham]], succeeded the unpopular outgoing reformist incumbent, [[William F. Havemeyer]] (who died shortly thereafter), and Democrats generally won their races, delivering control of the city back to Tammany Hall.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, p. 1027</ref> A noted statue of John Kelly is located in the hall, the work of Irish sculptor [[Robert Cushing (sculptor)|Robert Cushing]].<ref name="nyt">{{Cite news |date=29 March 1896 |title=ROBERT CUSHING'S ART; WORK OF THE AGED SCULPTOR WHO HAS JUST PASSED AWAY. One of the Originators and Leaders of the Profession in This Country -- His Sudden Dentil, of Which Few Knew -- Works Which Will Hand His Name Down to Fame -- Ward and Macdonald Contemporaneous with Him. | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1896/03/29/archives/robert-cushings-art-work-of-the-aged-sculptor-who-has-just-passed.html |pages=26 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=10 April 2022}}</ref>

====1886 mayoral election====
The [[1886 New York City mayoral election|mayoral election of 1886]] was a seminal one for the organization. Union activists had founded the [[Central Labor Union|United Labor Party]] (ULP), which nominated [[political economist]] [[Henry George]], the author of ''[[Progress and Poverty]]'', as its standard-bearer. George was initially hesitant about running for office but was convinced to do so after Tammany secretly offered him a seat in Congress if he would stay out of the mayoral race. Tammany had no expectation of George being elected but knew that his candidacy and the new party were a direct threat to their own status as the putative champions of the working man.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, p. 1099</ref>

Having inadvertently provoked George into running, Tammany now needed to field a strong candidate against him, which required the cooperation of the Catholic Church in New York, which was the key to getting the support of middle-class Irish American voters. [[Richard Croker]], Kelly's right-hand man, had succeeded Kelly as Grand Sachem of Tammany, and he understood that he would also need to make peace with the non-Tammany "Swallowtail" faction of the Democratic Party to avoid the threat that George and the ULP posed, which was the potential re-structuring of the city's politics along class lines and away from the ethnic-based politics which had been Tammany's underpinning all along. To bring together these disparate groups, Croker nominated [[Abram Hewitt]] as the Democratic candidate for mayor. Not only was Hewitt the leader of the Swallowtails, but he was noted philanthropist [[Peter Cooper]]'s son-in-law and had an impeccable reputation. To counter both George and Hewitt, the Republicans put up [[Theodore Roosevelt]], the former state assemblyman.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1103–06</ref>

[[File:Tammany Hall interior for the national convention 1868 crop.jpeg|thumb|350px|Tammany Hall decorated for the [[1868 Democratic National Convention]]]]

In the end, Hewitt won the election, with George out-polling Roosevelt, whose total was some 2,000 votes less than the Republicans had normally received. Despite their second-place finish, things seemed bright for the future of the labor political movement, but the ULP was not to last, and was never able to bring about a new paradigm in the city's politics. Tammany had once again succeeded and survived. More than that, Croker realized that he could use the techniques of the well-organized election campaign that the ULP had run. Because Tammany's ward-heelers controlled the saloons, the new party had used "neighborhood meetings, streetcorner rallies, campaign clubs, Assembly District organizations, and trade legions –  an entire political counterculture"<ref>Burrows & Wallace, p. 1100</ref> to run their campaign. Croker now took these innovations for Tammany's use, creating [[political club]]houses to take the place of the saloons and involving women and children by sponsoring family excursions and picnics. The New Tammany appeared to be more respectable, and less obviously connected to saloonkeepers and gang leaders, and the clubhouses, one in every Assembly District, were also a more efficient way of providing patronage work to those who came looking for it; one simply had to join the club, and volunteer to put in the hours needed to support it.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1106–08</ref>

Hewitt turned out to be a terrible mayor for Croker, due to his nativist views, and in 1888 Tammany ran Croker's hand-picked choice, [[Hugh J. Grant]], who became the first New York-born Irish American mayor. Although Hewitt ran an efficient government, Croker viewed Hewitt as being too self-righteous and did not grant Croker the patronage jobs he was expecting from a mayor. Hewitt had also offended Irish voters by deciding not to review a St. Patrick's Day parade they requested of him.<ref>Allen p. 175</ref>

Grant allowed Croker free run of the city's contracts and offices, creating a vast patronage machine beyond anything Tweed had ever dreamed of, a status which continued under Grant's successor, [[Thomas Francis Gilroy]]. With such resources of money and manpower – the entire city workforce of 1,200 was essentially available to him when needed – Croker was able to neutralize the Swallowtails permanently. He also developed a new stream of income from the business community, which was provided with "one stop shopping": instead of bribing individual officeholders, businesses, especially the utilities, could go directly to Tammany to make their payments, which were then directed downward as necessary; such was the control Tammany had come to have over the governmental apparatus of the city.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1108–09</ref>

Croker mended fences with labor as well, pushing through legislation which addressed some of the inequities which had fueled the labor political movement, making Tammany once again appear to be the "Friend of the Working Man" – although he was careful always to maintain a pro-business climate of ''[[laissez-faire]]'' and low taxes. Tammany's influence was also extended once again to the state legislature, where a similar patronage system to the city's was established after Tammany took control in 1892. With the Republican boss, [[Thomas C. Platt|Thomas Platt]], adopting the same methods, the two men between them essentially controlled the state.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1109–10</ref>

====Fassett Committee====
The 1890s began with a series of what would be three political investigations into Tammany operations, reminiscent of the early 1870s. Platt was the key organizer of most of these committees, the first of which was the [[Fassett Investigation|Fassett Committee]] of 1890. This first committee featured testimony from Croker's brother-in-law, revealing gifts of cash surrounding his hotel business. The recorded testimonies resulted in no indictments and the Democrats would not suffer in the elections of 1890 or 1892.

====1894 mayoral election and the Lexow Committee====
[[File:Rogers, W. A. (William Allen), Rogers A Cinch 1893 Cornell CUL PJM 1112 01.jpg|thumb|215px|A [[bird's-eye]]-view map of New York and Brooklyn (1893), titled "A Cinch. Says Boss Croker to Boss McLaughlin: "Shake!"<br />(The boss of Tammany Hall in New York, Richard Croker, and the boss of the Brooklyn political machine, Hugh McLaughlin, reach across the East River to shake hands in cooperation).]]

In 1894, Tammany suffered a setback when, fueled by the public hearings on police corruption held by the [[Lexow Committee]] based on the evidence uncovered by the Rev. [[Charles Henry Parkhurst|Charles Parkhurst]] when he explored the city's ''[[demi monde]]'' undercover, a Committee of Seventy was organized by Council of Good Government Clubs to break the stranglehold that Tammany had on the city. Full of some of the city's richest men – [[J.P. Morgan]], [[Cornelius Vanderbilt II]], [[Abram Hewitt]] and [[Elihu Root]], among others – the committee supported [[William L. Strong]], a millionaire dry-goods merchant, for mayor, and forced Tammany's initial candidate, merchant [[Nathan Straus]], co-owner of [[Macy's]] and [[Abraham & Straus]], from the election by threatening to ostracize him from New York society. Tammany then put-up Hugh Grant again, despite his being publicly dirtied by the police scandals. Backed by the committee's money, influence and their energetic campaign, and helped by Grant's apathy, Strong won the election handily, and spent the next three years running the city on the basis of "business principles", pledging an efficient government and the return of morality to city life. The election was a Republican sweep statewide: [[Levi Morton]], a millionaire banker from Manhattan, won the governorship, and the party also ended up in control of the legislature.<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1192–94</ref>

Croker was absent from the city for three years starting at the onset of the Lexow Committee, residing in his homes in Europe. Still, Tammany could not be kept down for long, and in 1898 Croker, aided by the death of [[Henry George]] – which took the wind out of the sails of the potential re-invigoration of the political labor movement – and returned from his stay in Europe, shifted the Democratic Party enough to the left to pick up labor's support, and pulled back into the fold those elements outraged by the reformers' attempt to outlaw Sunday drinking and otherwise enforce their own authoritarian moral concepts on immigrant populations with different cultural outlooks. Tammany's candidate, [[Robert A. Van Wyck]], easily outpolled [[Seth Low]], the reform candidate backed by the Citizens Union, and Tammany was back in control. Its supporters marched through the city's streets chanting, "Well, well, well, Reform has gone to Hell!"<ref>Burrows & Wallace, pp. 1206–08</ref>

[[File:New York's New Solar System2.jpg|thumb|left|300px|All politics revolved around the Boss. 1899 cartoon from ''Puck''.]]

====Mazet Investigation====
A final state investigation began in 1899 at the prompting of newly elected Theodore Roosevelt. This Mazet Investigation was chaired by Republican assemblyman Robert Mazet and led by chief counsel [[Frank Moss (lawyer)|Frank Moss]], who had also participated in the Lexow Committee. The investigation revealed further detail about Croker's corporate alliances and also yielded memorable quotes from police chief [[William Stephen Devery]] and Croker. This was also the committee that began probing Croker about his holdings in ice companies.<ref>Allen pp. 197–200</ref>

Despite occasional defeats, Tammany was consistently able to survive and prosper. Under leaders such as [[Charles Francis Murphy]] and [[Timothy Sullivan]], it maintained control of Democratic politics in the city and the state.