Why was tammany hall the famous political machine

Because in the s Tammany successfully fought to extend the franchise to all propertyless white males, it was popular with the working class. A close association with the Democratic party was also forged in the Jacksonian era. A criminal judge, for example, appointed or kept in office by Tammany Hall would have to listen carefully to a local ward leader asking for a suspended sentence in a particular case.

Later, the hundreds receiving Tammany Hall assistance with problems or baskets of food on holidays would show their gratitude at the polls. It retained some strength, however, until John V. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors.

All rights reserved. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. From November 8 to November 9, , Adolf Hitler and his followers staged the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich, a failed takeover of the government in Bavaria, a state in southern Germany.

Since , Hitler had led the Nazi Party, a fledgling political group that After the Civil War, the party dominated in the South due to its opposition to civil and political rights for African Americans. After a major Founded in as a coalition opposing the extension of slavery into Western territories, the Republican Party fought to protect the rights of Populism is a style of politics used to mobilize mass movements against ruling powers.

So you had wave upon wave and ship after ship of these poor, Irish-speaking immigrants landing in cities like New York and, over the course of 10 years or so, completely transforming the character of cities like New York and Boston and others so that the foreign-born population of some of the cities in the Northeast by the late 19th century was well more than half.

On Tammany's decision to cozy up to Irish immigrants. Tammany embraced immigrants because they knew how to count and they understood that, as these Irish immigrants began washing up on South Street in New York The Whig Party, which was the main opposition party at the time, chose to regard these immigrants as aliens and interlopers.

And people, because most of them were Catholic, thought of them as people who could never really understand the Anglo-Protestant idea of liberty The Democrats were a little more practical. They realized that if these people were extended the hand of friendship — and I do believe it was friendship — then well, you know, maybe they would show their appreciation on Election Day.

So Tammany becomes associated with immigrants around the time of the famine immigration. On the relationship between Tammany Hall and the Irish immigrant population. The immigrants got respect from Tammany Hall. Now, whether it was calculated or not is a matter of debate. What they did was in essence create an informal social welfare system when of course none existed, so that, eventually, if you were an immigrant and you needed some advice or you needed a job or, frankly, if you just needed some respect, Tammany Hall was willing to give you that.

In return, of course, Tammany expected you to turn out early and often and vote on Election Day. On Tammany Hall's progressive response to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which killed garment workers. In alone, New York passed all sorts of factory reforms. Now, that's what you would've expected after the Triangle Shirtwaist fire — everybody expected that Albany would come back with laws for sprinklers.

These are important laws, I don't mean to diminish them, but they expected all kinds of workplace reforms. What they might not have expected was a push for things like unemployment compensation, eventually for the beginnings of the minimum wage. In , New York passed a law that said that employers had to give their employees one day of rest for every seven.

This was not really related to making the workplace safer. So what Tammany did was they took this workplace catastrophe of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and used it as an excuse, if you will, to begin to implement these progressive laws that maybe had been talked about for a long time but finally Tammany had the power and the will to enforce them.

The Tweed Ring also manipulated elections in a variety of ways. It hired people to vote multiple times and had sheriffs and temporary deputies protect them while doing so. It stuffed ballot boxes with fake votes and bribed or arrested election inspectors who questioned its methods. As Tweed later said, The ballots made no result; the counters made the result. Sometimes the ring simply ignored the ballots and falsified election results. Tammany candidates often received more votes than there were eligible voters in a district.

Although Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall engaged in corrupt politics, they undoubtedly helped the immigrants and poor of the city in many ways. Thousands of recent immigrants in New York were naturalized as American citizens and adult men had the right to vote. Because New York City, like other major urban areas, often lacked basic services, the Tweed Ring provided these for the price of a vote, or several votes.

Tweed made sure the immigrants had jobs, found a place to live, had enough food, received medical care, and even had enough coal money to warm their apartments during the cold of winter. In addition, he contributed millions of dollars to the institutions that benefited and cared for the immigrants, such as their neighborhood churches and synagogues, Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, and charities. When dilapidated tenement buildings burned down, ring members followed the firetrucks to ensure that families had a place to stay and food to eat.

Immigrants in New York were grateful for the much-needed services from the city and private charities. The Tweed Ring seemed to be creating a healthier society, and in overwhelming numbers, immigrants happily voted for the Democrats who ran the city. The New York Times exposed the rampant corruption of his ring and ran stories of the various frauds. Tweed was actually more concerned about the cartoons than about the investigative stories, because many of his constituents were illiterate but understood the message of the drawings.

He offered bribes to the editor of the New York Times and to Nast to stop their public criticisms, but neither accepted. Boss Tweed was arrested in October and indicted shortly thereafter. He was tried in , and after a hung jury in the first trial, he was found guilty in a second trial of more than crimes including forgery and larceny. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. While he was in jail, Tweed was allowed to visit his family at home and take meals with them while a few guards waited at his doorstep.

He seized an opportunity at one of these meals to escape in disguise across the Hudson to New Jersey, and then by boat to Florida, from there to Cuba, and finally to Spain.

With his health broken and few remaining supporters, Tweed died in jail in Political machines corruptly ran several major cities throughout the United States, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest where millions of immigrants had settled. The machines may have provided essential services for immigrants, but their corruption destroyed good government and civil society by undermining the rule of law.

By the early twentieth century, Progressive reformers had begun to target the bosses and political machines to reform city government in the United States. An event that propelled William Tweed to a position of respect and more power in New York City was his.