Volume 52, Number 19 · December 1, 2005
The Boss
By Michael Tomasky
Boss Tweed: The Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York
by Kenneth D. Ackerman
Carroll and Graf, 437 pp., $27.00
In the summer of 1871, William Magear Tweed was at the height of his power.[1] He was not only a state senator, representing the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City, where he grew up, but also the city's commissioner of public works. As commissioner, he was a member of what used to be called the Board of Apportionment, a predecessor to the old Board of Estimate, which oversaw city contracts and land-use decisions. (It was abolished by the US Supreme Court in 1989.) But in addition, he was Grand Sachem, the leader, of the Society of Tammany, or Grand Columbian Order,[2] the Democratic Party organization that had begun as a patriotic social club in 1789 and, by the 1850s, had become the city's dominant political power. As head of Tammany, Tweed was the king of New York, with control over nearly every politician, judge, police captain, city contractor, and ordinary petitioner who sought to perform any kind of public labor in the city. Finally, he was the owner or part-owner of several companies that had exclusive contracts to do business with the city. Chief among these was the New-York Printing Company, which had the franchise as the exclusive printer for New York County—every ballot, notice, advertisement, and contract. Tweed was an extremely rich man.
Review, 4231 words
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