Boss Tweed Arrested—But Is He Really Guilty?

William M. Tweed, photographed by Mathew Brady in 1865.

(National Archives)

William M. “Boss” Tweed’s arrest for fraud, 134 years ago today, permanently cemented his fate. The one-time leader of New York City’s most powerful political machine is universally remembered as the embodiment of urban corruption, a man who bought votes, paid off enemies, and embezzled millions of dollars. But if the tribunal of history has unquestionably convicted him of theft, it is the only court to have done so. Tweed was never tried on a single felony count—not theft, embezzlement, or forgery—and his only criminal conviction was for a misdemeanor. So how did he come to be the foremost symbol of greed and misuse of power? Did he elude justice? Or have a century and a half of Americans damned him without just cause?

Born in 1823 in Manhattan’s increasingly working-class Lower East Side, Tweed decided to try his hand at politics just when the American political tradition began evolving. Politics, long a national craze, was shifting from being a rich man’s pursuit to a vocation in which poorer aspirants like Tweed could achieve status and power. The upper classes complained that the new politicians were driven not by duty but rather by lust for money. Whatever his motivations—probably all of the above—Tweed ran for his first office, assistant city alderman, in 1850 as a Democrat. He lost, but he succeeded in a bid for alderman in 1851, and a year later he won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. After one undistinguished term, though, he failed to be renominated and came home to New York.

Upon his return he began the association with Tammany Hall that would forever equate both with municipal corruption. Tammany had been founded in 1787 as a society for craftsmen excluded from more exclusive clubs, but during the first half of the nineteenth century the organization built a strong power base by helping the immigrants pouring into the city find housing and jobs and gain citizenship. Tweed was a member of the Tammany general committee by 1858, and over the next 13 years he served on the Board of Education and the Board of Supervisors of New York County and as chairman of the Democratic General Committee of New York County, deputy street commissioner, state senator, and member of what would become known as the Board of Audit.

Those last two jobs landed him in the hot water that boils him to this day. He had a hand in many business interests, including a printing company, the Erie Railroad, the Harlem Gas Light Company, the Brooklyn Bridge Company, the Third Avenue Railway Company, and the Tenth National Bank. But after earning New York City a modicum of home rule over its finances by persuading the state senate to set up a board of audit and taking a seat on it, he drew suspicion over his handling of municipal funds.

After the city’s debt grew from $20 million in 1860 to $87 million in 1871, The New York Times published a series of articles accusing Tweed of overcharging contractors and lining his own pockets with kickbacks. Whether or not he was actually guilty, he made for good copy, owing in no small part to his size: 5 foot 11 inches and 280 pounds. He was a ready-made caricature, as the political cartoonist Thomas Nast had already discovered, drawing scathing lampoons of him for Harper’s Weekly. Nast, a staunch Republican who was openly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic—groups Tweed championed—contributed immeasurably to Tweed’s downfall. The outcry grew to its highest pitch in late October 1871, when rumors buzzed that Tweed would soon be arrested.

Although The New York Times headline on October 28 announced “Tweed Under Arrest—How the Great Criminal Was Captured in His Den” (with the subhead “A Day of Heartfelt Rejoicing Among the Better Classes”), the implication of stakeout and dragnet is exaggerated. As the article went on to report, Tweed, well aware he was to be arrested that day, had awaited the sheriff in his office on October 27 with a few associates and a son. A crowd of spectators followed Sheriff Matthew Brennan to Tweed’s door at 1:30 p.m. Tweed and the sheriff greeted each other and discussed bail—$1 million, which the accused already had ready. Before long “the stiffness had worn off, and the assemblage were conversing pleasantly,” although Tweed, until the bail bond was prepared two hours later, was in custody, albeit in his own office. “The only difference between his position and a that of a man charged with stealing $100,” said a deputy, “was that Tweed was arrested by the Sheriff personally.”

Tweed assured the Times he would be “vindicated” in court and even reelected to the state senate the following month. Time proved him correct on the second count but not the first. He underestimated the weight of the wheels turning against him around the country. White House Republicans needed to divert attention from their own recent scandals, including the Whiskey Ring and Crédit Mobiler, and local Republicans wanted to unseat the Democrats and end a four-year losing streak. The nativist elite hated Tweed for advocating the interests of immigrants and the poor, and Democrats like Samuel Tilden, the state Democratic chairman who led the charge against him, pounced on a sacrificial lamb to prove their determination to reform the party.

After Tweed’s indictment in December, Tammany expelled him, ending his political career; he did not take his seat when the Senate reconvened. By the time his trial began in January 1873, he had been indicted on seven felony charges of larceny and forgery, although in the end he was never tried on any of them. The prosecution decided its most provable case was a 220-count misdemeanor indictment issued in October 1872 for failing to audit claims against the city. The trial ended in a hung jury, but Tweed was convicted of 204 counts at a retrial in November 1873. Although a misdemeanor carried a maximum penalty of one year in prison, Judge Noah Davis sentenced him to consecutive terms for groups of the charges, adding up to 13 years in prison, plus $12,500 in fines.

The Court of Appeals, ruling this punishment excessive, unanimously ordered Tweed’s release after a year in prison. He was immediately rearrested on a $6 million civil suit brought by the state and placed in jail on $3 million bail. Before he could be tried, he escaped, disappearing for ten months until a U.S. State Department official recognized him in Cuba. He then fled to Spain but was captured as soon as he arrived (lacking a photo, U.S. officials sent a Nast cartoon to identify him) and extradited. Convicted on the civil charge in his absence, he died of heart disease in 1878 in debtors’ prison.

Even though he was never officially tried for theft, he was condemned by the press, Nast, and popular opinion. But was he guilty? Historians today differ. Many side with prevailing memory, noting Tweed’s 1877 confession to most of his alleged crimes. But another camp, led by Leo Hershkowitz, author of the exhaustively researched Tweed’s New York: Another Look, considers him merely a scapegoat, finding no evidence in court or city documents that he himself, rather than contractors or the mayor’s office, filched a cent, nor that he tried to buy off Nast, The New York Times, or jurors—of which he is often accused. Hershkowitz dismisses Tweed’s confession as the last effort of a dying man to win his freedom and notes that the money Tweed and his associates are supposed to have stolen—estimated at between $30 million and $200 million—was nowhere in evidence in Tweed’s estate. He also points out how Tweed helped the city: Among other achievements, he incorporated numerous schools and hospitals, ensured a site for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, reformed public welfare, and helped build the Brooklyn Bridge, which, along with the soaring population, help increase the city’s rising debt.

Whether you believe that an entrenched elite, hating Tweed’s lower-class constituents, deposed him and historians perpetuated the myth of his guilt out of credulousness or elitism, or you believe that he amassed enough power in a heterogeneous city of one million to rob it blind, may depend on your own political vantage point. The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Most likely Tweed was no more or less corrupt than any politician of his day. But his city would take a long time to live down the impression that it was rotten to the core. Seen as irreparably and inherently reprobate after Tweed, the New York City government suffered decades of inattention from Albany.

The real legacy of Tweed’s arrest—beyond the political cartoons and municipal cautionary tales—reverberated long after his passing, although determining whether he deserved to be arrested in the first place has proven an even longer-lived affair.

—Christine Gibson is a former editor at American Heritage magazine.