Monday, November 20, 2023 – BOSS TWEED AND HIS POLITICAL DOINGS

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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20,  2023

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PENITENTIARY GUEST


WILLIAM MARCY “BOSS”


TWEED

ISSUE  #1127


NEW YORK ALMANACK

Wheeler Hazard Peckham: Greenback Defender, Tweed Ring Prosecutor

November 19, 2023 by Peter Hess 

Wheeler Hazard Peckham, born in 1833, was the eldest of three sons of New York Court of Appeals Judge Rufus Wheeler Peckham. He was born in Albany, attended Albany Academy, and later a French boarding school in Utica and a year at Union College.

He left Union due to health problems and spent a year in Europe. Returning in 1853, he became one of Albany Law School’s first students. Completing the program at Albany Law, he joined his father’s firm of Peckham & Tremain. He was admitted to the bar in 1854.

In 1855, Wheeler Peckham married Anne A. Keasbey, whom he had met while traveling in Europe. In 1856, he suffered what was called a hemorrhage of the lungs (tuberculosis) that caused him such alarm that he returned to Europe for another 14 months for medical help.

After returning to the U.S., he took up residence first in Dubuque, Iowa and then St. Paul, Minnesota, where he remained until 1864. That year he joined a law partnership with George M. Miller and John A. Stautenburg practicing in the city of New York.

Defender of the Greenback Dollar

His New York law firm flourished and Wheeler carried a large portion of the work. His first notable case came in 1868, when he came to the defense of the “greenback dollar.”

Prior to the Civil War, most money had inherent value meaning that a $20 gold coin contained about $20 worth of gold; a silver dollar contained about $1 worth of silver.

There was little question about the value of the denomination and counterfeiting was difficult, why would you make a counterfeit silver dollar if you had to make it from $1 worth of silver? Paper money could be counterfeit and therefore was scorned by many Americans.

However, there was never enough money in circulation. Pounds of flour, barrels of rum, pounds of salt, beaver pelts, nails and all sorts of other products were being used as money.

The economy was being hurt because a merchant might sell a plow blade to a farmer, but the farmer could only pay in flour or chickens and the merchant couldn’t easily buy tools from a supplier in Sheffield, England for flour or chickens.

Banks were particularly affected. They couldn’t take deposits of flour or chickens and they couldn’t make loans in flour or chickens; they needed money. The result was that most banks and some businesses issued their own paper money backed by deposits and loans.

During the Civil War things got much worse. People started hoarding gold and silver. The money supply almost dried up in the middle of a booming economy. Even the city of Albany began issuing its own money.

Several Albany companies couldn’t make change so they stamped their own coins. Albany merchant D. L. Wing stamped a penny, good for a one-pound bag of flour. Fruit dealers Benjamin & Herrick and a grocers P. V. Fort followed suit.

Soon other merchants were accepting and using these “pennies” for change. In Troy, pre-Civil War token coins from Boutwell Mills turned up as pennies in change drawers into the 1940s.

All of these different designs of money made counterfeiting easier. Most people outside Albany wouldn’t know what a $20 bill issued by the National Commercial Bank of Albany was supposed to look like.

Following the Civil War, the need for a new banking system and system of issuing money was obvious. Legislation was passed allowing the Federal Government and only the Federal Government to issue paper currency backed by gold and silver deposits in the Federal Treasury. However, there were still the stalwart opponents to the paper money that people nicknamed “greenbacks.”

Legal cases were brought challenging the Federal Government’s authority to issue paper money; New York State tried to tax all greenbacks issued in the state. The Federal Government hired the Albany firm of Peckham and Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham’s New York firm to defend the greenback dollar.

Lyman Tremain, a former New York State Attorney General, argued the constitutionality of the government’s authority to issue the greenback through the New York Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, winning at each step.

Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham argued the case contesting New York’s right to tax the printing of federal money in the New York Court of Appeals and lost but then successfully reversed the decision before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tremain and Wheeler Hazard Peckham were later frequently referred to as the “defenders of the greenback dollar.”

Peckham represented many influential companies and argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. He represented the Bell Telephone Company in several important patent cases.

He also argued a case before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the State of South Dakota bringing an action against the State of North Carolina and a North Carolina railroad. He represented New Hampshire in a suit against the State of Louisiana.

Peckham served as chief counsel of the Union Trust Company of New York representing them in many varied cases. When federal taxing authorities tried to force the Union Trust Company to pay income tax on the appreciated value of the company caused by the increase in the value of their stock, Peckham successfully argued that only their profit as determined by income minus expenses should be subject to income tax.

In 1869, Wheeler Hazard Peckham was one of the founders of the city of New York’s Bar Association.

In 1873, Charles O’Conor who had been Peckham’s opponent in the greenback dollar case, asked him to take on a case for the New York City District Attorney’s office, the prosecution of the “Tweed Ring.”

Prosecution of the Tweed Ring

Peckham’s father, Judge Rufus Wheeler Peckham, had long been a member of the Democratic Party in Albany serving as County District Attorney for two years and elected to Congress twice in the 1850s with support from Albany’s Democrats.

In the mid-19th century, a dominant political power in the city of New York was Tammany Hall under the leadership of William Marcy “Boss” Tweed. At one time Tweed was also the city’s Superintendent of Public Works, a State Senator, Chairman of the Democrat General Committee, Superintendent of the County Court House and President of the Board of Supervisors. Due to political services provided to Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, Tweed was also appointed a director of the Erie Railroad.

In 1855 the city of New York had a population of around 630,000, half of whom were foreign born. There were 175,000 recent arrivals from Ireland and 95,000 from Germany. Like today, the higher standard of living in the United States (largely a result of the reliance on slave labor and the seizure of natural resources from indigenous people) encouraged emigration to America.

Many Protestant anti-immigrant Americans recoiled, claiming immigrants  – especially Catholics – were anti-American, and responsible for the low wages and poverty associated with the burgeoning industrial revolution.  They also blamed immigrants for crime and immoral behavior and tried to restrict immigration and limit citizenship (and therefore the political power) of immigrants.

Tammany Hall, which increasingly included Catholic Irish-Americans and German-Americans after the Civil War, looked on these new immigrants as simply voters, and an important base of their power in northern urban areas.

Immigrants who lived in extreme poverty and received little government assistance from the Protestant ruling class were welcomed by Tammany Hall, and were provided basic assistance, including food, charcoal, loans, and a job. In this way, Tammany served as an intermediary with a government foreign and often hostile to them. 

Historians now view Tammany Hall, which began as a benevolent association for American Revolutionaries, as an early public welfare system and a champion of social reforms. Tammany nurtured important Progressive politicians such as Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, lending support for the New Deal.

Tammany’s support for the rights of immigrants and other working people was repaid with their loyalty to the Democratic Party. One of the important ways the Party supported new Americans was by expanding public improvement projects in order to provide jobs.

In 1858, the New York State Legislature approved state funds “not to exceed $250,000 for the construction and furnishing” for a new New York County courthouse. By the time it was finished it cost $12 million, more than the cost to build the U.S. Capitol.

The courthouse at 52 Chambers Street, today known as Tweed Courthouse, or the Old New York County Courthouse, was the costliest public building in the United States. Its construction provided opportunity for one of America’s first large-scale graft operations, which involved people from both political parties, numerous businessmen and even newspaper publishers. (You can read about the details here).

In 1870 however, New York County auditor James Watson’s horse bolted and Watson was thrown from his sleigh and killed. The new county auditor was a friend of James O’Brien, who although had once been a friend, had become a political opponent of Tweed’s. O’Brien was a city alderman, then became Sheriff of New York County in 1867.

O’Brien’s friend Matthew O’Rourke gave O’Brien the financial records that would prove the courthouse graft. O’Brien forwarded them to The New York Times, then the only Republican newspaper in the city.  Initially The Times did little, although Thomas Nast contributed political cartoons attacking the “Tweed Ring” that proved effective in turning political opinion against Tweed and his fellow schemers.

Meanwhile an ally of O’Brien, John Morrissey, was already organizing opposition to The Ring known as the “Young Democracy,” which included allies of Samuel Tilden. They were soundly defeated by supporters of Tweed in the Spring of 1870, but it provided space for Tilden, then the New York State Democrat Party Chairman, and August Belmont, then the National Democrat Party Chairman, to hold a meeting at New York’s Cooper Union September 4, 1871 to pressure for reform.

On October 26, Tilden signed an affidavit arguing that money from city contractors had been misappropriated into Tweed’s personal bank account. The next day Tweed was arrested and charged with 55 criminal offenses relating to embezzlement of public funds. Nonetheless, Tweed was reelected State Senator in November 1871.

Wheeler Hazard Peckham was named a special prosecutor for the State in what became known as The Ring Cases. In 1872, he unsuccessfully prosecuted Mayor A. Oakey Hall and successfully prosecuted Tweed in 1873. The trial began in 1873, with Peckham assisted by Lyman Tremain, O’Conor, Peter Olney and Henry Allen.

Tweed’s influence on the New York City Police Department was considered so strong that Peckham requested and received permission for each juror to be assigned a plainclothes detective 24 hours a day. Each plainclothes officer was followed by another plainclothes officer and a private detective to be sure that the first plainclothes officer did not carry a bribe or threat to the juror.

Peckham presented to the jury the volumes of obviously inflated and fake invoices. Peckham also introduced new charges that he thought he could make stick without question: approving invoices without audit, a misdemeanor. The city laws required all invoices to be audited and some invoices personally approved by Tweed had not been submitted for audit.

Tweed was convicted on 204 misdemeanor charges of approving fraudulent invoices without audit. The judge, knowing the true involvement of Tweed in the Ring’s graft, sentenced Tweed to 12 years in prison and a $12,750 fine. Tweed’s lawyers appealed the sentence and the Court of Appeals found that 12 years was inappropriate for misdemeanor charges and reduced his term to 1 year.

After Tweed was released from jail, Peckham brought a civil lawsuit against him to recover millions in funds Tweed had personally stolen. Unable to post the $3 million bond the former Boss fled, first to Cuba, but was captured en route to Spain and returned to the United States. Peckham won a $6 million verdict and was returned to the Ludlow Street Jail.

Tweed eventually agreed to testify against the other Ring members if he was released, but this promise was rejected by then Governor Samuel Tilden and Tweed died in jail on April 12, 1878, from pneumonia.

Peckham was appointed Special District Attorney and Special Deputy Attorney General and continued his prosecution of Tweed Ring members, including bringing impeachment charges against Ring-connected judges.

Return to Private Practice, and Politics

After the Ring Cases Peckham returned to private practice. He was appointed New York District Attorney by Governor Grover Cleveland in 1884, but served less than a year due to health problems.

In 1888, he entered the political fray by supporting Warner Miller in his campaign for Governor against incumbent David B. Hill (a Cleveland opponent who was responsible for establishing the New York State Forest Preserve) and served as president of the New York City Bar Association from 1892 to 1894 where he advocated law reform.

In January, 1894, Peckham (along with William B. Hornblower) was nominated by then President Cleveland to two vacancies on the United States Supreme Court. At that time, the U.S. Senate operated under an informal but powerful custom known as “senatorial courtesy,” which allowed that no appointment or law affecting a state could move forward unless one of its two Senators agreed.

Former Governor David B. Hill, who Peckham and Cleveland had opposed, was one of New York’s U.S. Senators. The other was Edward Murphy of Troy. Neither men, although both Democrats, would move the nominations. Peckham returned to private practice.

In 1900, Peckham represented the New York World, a Democratic newspaper, in an action against New York City Mayor Robert Anderson Van Wyck and Dock Commissioner Charles Murphy and in the subsequent impeachment proceedings against Van Wyck in the infamous “Ice Trust” price fixing scandal.

Peckham was also president of the People’s Municipal League and president of the City Club for many years.

Wheeler Hazard Peckham died suddenly in his office in New York City in September 1905 at the age of 72 and is interred at Albany Rural Cemetery together with his wife and other members of his family.

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