Politics
LIKE ALL NEW YORKERS in the early nineteenth century, Five Pointers deferred to their elite neighbors in political matters. Prominent merchants and manufacturers held most important elective offices. With the adoption of universal white male suffrage, however, this deference began to wane. The election of the uneducated and uncultured Andrew Jackson as president in 1828 and his raucous inauguration the following year helped inspire this political revolution. The Five Points election riots of 1834 marked its climax on the local level, as the neighborhood’s Irish immigrants rose up to seize power. Because the well-to-do in these years were already rapidly abandoning the Sixth Ward for more prestigious neighborhoods, few of the old political elite bothered to contest this transfer of power to the brawling multitude. Five Pointers were consequently among the first New Yorkers to experience the new style of mass politics.
“A ZEALOUS, FIRM, HARD-FISTED
DEMOCRAT OF THE OLD SCHOOL”
Prominent Five Pointers still held the majority of political offices in the years after the 1834 riot, but the political elite now comprised saloonkeepers, grocers, policemen, and firemen rather than manufacturers and wealthy merchants. The political power of these four groups resulted from their particular ability to influence voters. Saloonkeepers were the most respected men in Five Points and other low-income neighborhoods. “The liquor-dealer is their guide, philosopher, and creditor,” commented The Nation in 1875. “He sees them more frequently and familiarly than anybody else, and is more trusted by them than anybody else, and is the person through whom the news and meaning of what passes in the upper regions of city politics reaches them.” Saloonkeepers could thus earn the gratitude and confidence of large numbers of tenement dwellers, gratitude that could be repaid as votes on election day. The liquor dealer also had the name recognition and financial resources to bid successfully for political office. Because many groceries sold little more than alcohol, grocers were as well positioned as saloonkeepers for political advancement.7
Another route to political prominence ran through the volunteer fire department, one of old New York’s most colorful institutions. A well-drilled fire company was just as likely to turn out in force to support a particular electoral slate as to extinguish a fire. Intimidation was an important weapon in the rough-and-tumble world of Five Points politics, and the renowned fighters of the Sixth Ward fire companies frequently determined the outcome of a primary meeting or general election, often through a brawl with a competing company. Most companies admitted at least a few members to their exclusive ranks specifically for their fighting skills.
The popularity and respect that carried a Five Pointer to leadership within a fire unit were the same qualities political kingmakers sought in their candidates. Future Five Points political leaders such as Matthew T. Brennan, his brother Owen, Alderman Thomas P. Walsh, Assemblyman Michael Fitzgerald, and Police Justice Joseph Dowling all began their political careers in Engine Company No. 21. Because of its role as a means of political advancement, competition for places in No. 21 was fierce. As a result, some of its members created an auxiliary unit, the Matthew T. Brennan Hose Company No. 60, named in honor of No. 21’s most prominent and politically powerful alumnus and dominated by his political allies. Its first foreman, John Clancy, became president of the board of aldermen and city register. Other early members included future alderman Morgan Jones, future county supervisor Walter Roche, and future city councilman Michael Brophy. Indeed, most Five Points politicians first came to prominence as foremen of the ward’s fire companies, as did Tammany “Boss” William M. Tweed.8
Another path to political power wound its way through the police department. “There is no patronage . . . that a district leader desires so much and seeks so eagerly as places on the police force,” noted the postbellum attorney and reformer William M. Ivins. Politicos usually reserved positions in the police department for young men who had demonstrated party loyalty through previous campaign efforts. In return for such a high-paying and secure job (about $12 per week in the mid-1850s), the officer was expected not only to continue laboring for the party at election time, but to contribute a portion of his salary to party coffers, and use his influence to assist party members who might run afoul of the law. In this “unobtrusive and quiet way,” Ivins recognized, a policeman could render “valuable service” to both the political benefactor who secured him his job and the party as a whole. Such “service” enabled many a Five Points policeman to rise out of the ranks to both party leadership and elective office.9
A few Sixth Warders managed to claw their way to political prominence without first working in the police and fire departments or owning a saloon. A Five Pointer might, for example, approach a neighborhood political leader and promise to deliver the votes of a pair of large tenements or of those immigrants from a certain Irish county. Or he might offer the services of his gang to intimidate the leader’s opponents at a primary meeting or on election day. Whether he offered voters or fighters, this political aspirant would expect something in return. Some gang leaders asked for money; but the more politically ambitious sought patronage—jobs with the local, state, or federal government—either for themselves or for their allies. Patronage was one of the keys to increasing one’s political clout, especially for those who could not count on the support of a fire company or saloon customers. The aspiring politician who could deliver jobs to supporters was in the best position to increase his strength. This was especially the case in Five Points, where steady jobs were so hard to come by.
By the end of the Civil War, these paths to political power had been systematized into a relatively well-defined hierarchy. At the top sat the city’s party “boss.” His lieutenants each controlled one of the city’s assembly districts, and they in turn relied upon the ward leaders. Every ward was divided into election districts, headed by a single leader or a committee of ward captains or “heelers.” In the postbellum years, the subdivisions continued until every block (and sometimes even single buildings within a block) had its designated party leader. But before the Civil War, the situation was far more fluid. No “boss” anointed a ward or district captain in those years. Instead, factional leaders and their supporters fought (often literally) for control of each ward.10
The battles for the political supremacy of Five Points were always waged among Democratic factions. In the twenty years before the Civil War, Whigs and their Republican successors won only a single Sixth Ward political contest, and that only because the Democrats in that year split their votes among three different candidates. By the late 1850s, Republican candidates had trouble garnering even 15 percent of the district’s vote. Five Pointers’ overwhelming support for the Democratic party resulted from a number of circumstances. Democratic opposition to both the anti-slavery movement and to laws that would restrict the sale of alcohol drew many Five Pointers. So too did the party’s reputation as the friend of the immigrant and opponent of nativism. But substantive issues were rarely discussed during Five Points political contests. Platforms and policy statements are conspicuously absent from neighborhood political campaigns, even the few covered thoroughly in the press. Instead, political struggles were usually decided by the personal popularity of the individual factional leaders; their ability to deliver patronage to their followers, and their skill at wielding violence and intimidation at primary meetings and on election day to secure power and maintain it thereafter.
The career of Constantine J. Donoho, the first Five Points political leader to emerge in the tumultuous new world of mass politics, exemplifies many of these rules of political life. What little we know about Donoho’s career comes from the memoirs of Frank “Florry” Kernan, a self-described “sporting fireman” whose colorful reminiscences provide some of the most vivid depictions of political and cultural life in Five Points. Kernan remembered Donoho as “a zealous, firm, hard-fisted Democrat of the old school,” who emerged as “king of the politicians of the sixth ward” during “the reign of Felix O’Niel [sic].” O’Neil served as Sixth Ward alderman in 1841–42, which made him the titular leader of the district’s Democrats, but Donoho’s role as kingmaker gave him every bit as much, and perhaps more, influence and power.11
Donoho’s political support rested on the twin foundations of liquor sales and patronage. “Con” (as he was universally known) operated a grocery at 17 Orange Street, a half block south of the Five Points intersection. “The steps that led to the barroom from the street, although wide,” recalled Kernan, “afforded only room for one customer at a time, as upon each step a barrel stood containing two or three brooms, another with charcoal, another with herrings nearly full to the top, while upon its half-open head lay piled up a dozen or two of the biggest, to denote what fine fish were within.” Inside was “a bar quite ornamental,” well stocked with liquor, pipes, and tobacco. “Seats there were none, as Con kept no accommodations for sitters, unless they found it on a half-pipe of gin, ‘Swan brand,’ that lay on its side near the counter, or a row of Binghamton whisky-barrels, interspersed here and there with barrels of pure spirits, much above proof, that told the fact that Con Donoho was a manufacturer of ardent spirits as well as ardent voters.”12
The bulk of Donoho’s power derived not from his status as barman but from his position as Sixth Ward “street inspector,” a post he had held since at least 1839. In this capacity, Donoho hired men to clean, pave, and repair the ward’s streets, giving him more patronage power than any other man in the ward. Con filled these dozens of positions not merely with loyal Democrats, but with “all the roaring, fighting, brawling heroes of his locality” who could be trusted to battle for whichever party faction he chose to support. Donoho also rewarded men who could deliver the votes of a particular tenement or of an ethnic or regional constituency within the neighborhood. Con would be sure to stretch his hiring budget to the limit in the month or so before an election, in order to ensure that influential Democrats and their friends and families had received a share of the proverbial “loaves and fishes.” Donoho’s status as street inspector benefited his grocery business as well. Those hoping for a job were sure to visit Con’s establishment to remind him of their willingness to labor (both physically and politically) upon his behalf. Five Pointers whom he had favored with the coveted patronage posts would likewise show their gratitude by patronizing his bar. Rainy days in particular were “Con’s harvest-time, for then the streets could not be swept, and knights of the broom, hoe, and shovel kept holiday at their chieftain’s rendezvous.”13
The support of Con Donoho and other local men of influence was the most important asset an aspiring politician could acquire to position himself for a nomination at the ward’s annual Democratic primary meeting. As a prerequisite to running for alderman, a liquor dealer had to not only establish himself as one of the most powerful Democrats in his own election district, but earn endorsements from party leaders in others as well. This would take years of service on behalf of the party, along with building popularity in the neighborhood, and doling out patronage to influential neighborhood residents. In advance of the primary, the would-be alderman would treat potential voters in the ward’s saloons and make deals with other party leaders to obtain their support. Endorsements might be offered in return for a promise of patronage, the pledge of a reciprocal endorsement in the future, or an up-front cash payment. Sixth Ward Democrats were generally divided into two factions, so in most cases the aldermanic hopeful would canvass support from just one and then hope to rally that faction to victory at the primary.
The leaders of each faction drew up a slate of candidates in advance of the primary meeting. By the 1850s, it was said that most candidates for significant offices such as alderman had to bribe these leaders to be assured a realistic chance at a nomination. The faction leaders also chose nominees for the minor ward offices (such as assistant alderman, constable, and school board member) and candidates to represent the ward at nominating conventions for city, state, and federal posts. With this ticket set, faction leaders had barely enough time to mollify disappointed officeseekers before the ward primary meeting, which typically took place three to four weeks before election day.
“A point of utmost consequence is the determination of the place at which the primary is to be held,” Ivins noted in the 1880s, explaining that “the voting is usually done at that liquor store, cigar store, livery-stable, or other place where the contestant favored by the [party’s ward] leader can best control the house, its exits and entrances, and can most easily and speedily gather his voters together.” Before about 1858, the situation in the Sixth Ward was somewhat different. Until then, all Democratic factions had agreed that the ward primary meeting should be held in the neutral territory of “Dooley’s Long-Room,” the large barroom in the Sixth Ward Hotel on Duane Street near Centre and Cross. Kernan wrote in 1885 that in Dooley’s Long-Room “there has come off more Irish jollifications, benefit balls, raffles for stoves, primary meetings, and political rows than in any other public place in the city.” In the antebellum years, Dooley’s Long-Room “was as famed in politics as was ever Tammany Hall. To hold a meeting there made it orthodox and regular. The ticket that was indorsed at that famed political head-quarters” almost always carried the ward. Consequently, all factions “struggled hard, even to bloody rows, to obtain an indorsement” at the annual primary meeting held there.14
In a city that became renowned for its rough and bloody primary meetings, those in the Sixth Ward were the most violent of all. “Regularity in the old Sixth was ofttimes only won by black eyes, torn coats, and dilapidated hats,” recalled Kernan. “The knowing politicians of the ward never went well dressed to a caucus meeting at Dooley’s Long-Room.” The meeting’s very first vote was the most crucial, because the faction that managed to elect the convention chairman controlled the proceedings and could, with official sanction, use its fighters to “maintain order,” the typical excuse given for expelling the weaker faction’s supporters from the building. If its strongmen failed to appear promptly, disaster loomed for even the most popular and seemingly invincible clique. “Once,” Kernan remembered, “when John Emmons was the candidate [for alderman, in either 1843 or 1844], nothing gave him the victory but the fact that Bill Scally [a noted pugilist], with Con Donoho and his men, arrived just in the nick of time to save the chairman from going out of the window, and the secretary following him; but their timely arrival changed the complexion of things, and sent the opposition chairman and officers out through the same window.” Candidates for even the most prestigious Sixth Ward office could not sit idly by while hired bullies did the rough work for them. Kernan noted that those nominees who did not “take a hand with their friends in battling for their cause” in Dooley’s Long-Room would be derided as cowards and “lack votes on election days.”15
The ticket that emerged victorious could claim to be the official slate of the Democratic party, its “regular” nominees. Supporters of the winning ticket would boast of their primary meeting heroics and gloat whenever they encountered the defeated faction’s adherents. In contrast to most of the rest of the city, however, the losing side in a Sixth Ward primary did not usually agree to work dutifully for the party’s official nominees. Because Democrats there so outnumbered their opponents, they could split their votes between two slates of candidates and still be relatively sure that one or the other would carry the ward. Consequently, a few days after the convention, the defeated faction typically announced that because of treachery at the primary, or the demands of the “true Democrats” of the ward, it would field its own set of candidates in the general election. Candidates running “on the split” (as this practice was called) hoped to convince voters that they would better represent their constituents’ interests than would the nominees of the ruling cabal.
But there was also an ulterior motive for remaining in the race. By threatening to make a deal with the ward’s Whigs or Republicans and thereby possibly defeating the regular nominees, the renegade Democrats were often able to extract concessions from the leaders of the ruling faction. Those running on the split might receive the promise of a certain share of the ward patronage for withdrawing from the race. Or the aldermanic candidate defeated at the primary might be promised that nomination the following year. Such concessions were most common in presidential or gubernatorial election years, especially when party unity was considered crucial for victory in an important state or national contest. But in most cases, the ascendant faction refused to make any concessions to the renegades, knowing full well that having won the nomination at Dooley’s Long-Room, success on election day was usually assured.
One of Con Donoho’s most important tasks was to ensure that the “regular” nominees outpolled those running on the split. To this end, he employed every means at his disposal. According to Kernan:
When Con was away on business, his good woman, Mrs. Donoho, stood behind the counter to attend to all customers; and an able helpmate was she to just such a rising man and politician as Con gave promise to be. Should Mrs. Conlan, or Mrs. Mulrooney, or the wife of any other good voter of the old Sixth, come for her groceries, or with a milk pitcher for a drop of good gin, or a herring to broil for the good man’s twelve o’clock dinner, she would avail herself of the opportunity to have a bit of a talk with her concerning how her James, Patrick, or Peter would vote on the approaching aldermanic election . . . and heaven help the customer if she talked up in favor of John Foote on the split, or hinted that her man believed in Bill Nealus. If she did, the smallest herring or potatoes to be found in the barrel would be dealt out with a jerk, and a wink with it, that said when she had sense, and wanted to see her old man with a broom in his hand and ten shillings a day, work or no work, and pay from Con’s own hand on Saturday nights, she had only to make her husband send the Nealuses to the devil, and hurrah for Felix O’Niel! In this way, Mrs. Con Donoho made many a convert to the banner of her liege lord, the bold Con Donoho.16
Although they could not vote, women like Mrs. Donoho could help determine the outcome of a close election.
The boisterous scene at the ticket booths outside a New York City polling place on election day 1856. The names on the booths are those of the presidential candidates. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (November 15, 1856). Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
Even if defections to candidates running on the split had been kept to a minimum, party leaders such as Donoho had plenty of work to do on election day. If renegade Democrats used their fighters to gain control of the polling places, they might discourage many voters from casting ballots and carry the election by intimidation. One such struggle for the polls occurred in 1848, when Democrat Frederick D. Kohler challenged incumbent Thomas Gilmartin in the race for Sixth Ward alderman. Although it is not evident which candidate was the party’s “regular” nominee, Gilmartin clearly held the upper hand at the “First District poll” located on the second floor of the Sixth Ward Hotel. According to the Tribune, “Gilmartonians . . . occupied the staircase for the purpose of exercising a wholesome supervision over the ballots of democratic voters. As soon as a man came up to vote they demanded to see his tickets, and if he refused[,] snatched them out of his hand for examination. If a Whig, he was suffered to go up and vote; but if a Kohlerite” he was thrown down the stairs. Around four-thirty, a large contingent of Kohlerites arrived at the hotel to remove the obstacle to their voting, “when all of a sudden the Gilmartonians brought forth a store of stout and heavy bludgeons, all ready for fight.” The similarly armed Kohlerites initially routed their opponents, but the Gilmartonians soon returned with bricks. “The struggle now became really fearful; hard blows were given, heads broken and blood flowed freely.—Several men were cut severely.”
Police finally arrived to disperse the fighters, but the combatants regrouped at the second district polls near the Tombs (the city jail located on Centre Street between Leonard and Franklin) “and there attempted to renew the melee” before the authorities again subdued them. Kohler’s success in the first district helped him carry the election. Such gory struggles, which made the Sixth Ward “notorious for the free indulgence of election privileges,” were especially common from 1834 to 1856.17
“BLOODY AND HORRIBLE IN THE EXTREME”
On occasion, polling place fights in the Sixth Ward escalated into full-scale riots. One such melee—that of 1834—was described earlier. Another erupted in 1842, when the already violent world of Sixth Ward politics was convulsed by the volatile “school question,” the controversy surrounding the role of religion in New York’s public education system. Until 1842, public schools in New York City were run by a private Protestant organization, the Public School Society. Its schools featured readings from the Protestant King James Bible, the singing of Protestant hymns, and textbooks that—according to Catholics—presented “the grossest caricatures of the Catholic religion, blaspheming its mysteries, and ridiculing its authority.” As immigration increased their numbers, New York Catholics complained bitterly about the overtly Protestant curriculum and asked that either religion be removed altogether from the schools or that the state fund Catholic schools to complement the overtly Protestant ones run by the Public School Society.
In April 1842, the New York legislature, attempting to mollify both dissatisfied Catholics and Protestants who felt threatened by Catholic demands, passed the Maclay Act, which created a new city-run public school system while leaving the Public School Society and its schools intact. Policy in the new schools on issues such as Bible reading would be set by school boards popularly elected in each ward. Neither side was completely satisfied with the Maclay Act. Catholic leaders such as Bishop John Hughes of New York were disappointed that the legislature would not finance Catholic schools and believed that the Catholic minority would not receive fair treatment from the new boards. Protestants, who perceived any changes to the prevailing system as capitulation to Catholics, were even more unhappy. Walt Whitman, the young editor of a Democratic organ called the Aurora, condemned the new law as a “statute for the fostering and teaching of Catholic superstition.”18
Given the Democratic party’s subsequent reputation as the organization most sympathetic to the city’s Irish Catholic immigrants, Whitman’s comments may come as a surprise. But city Democrats actually split over the school question, with Protestants generally supporting the Public School Society and Catholics endorsing the Maclay Act. Whitman argued in the Aurora that city Democrats should not submit to a “coarse, unshaven, filthy, Irish rabble” that did the bidding of the city’s Catholic leaders. Describing Catholic priests, Whitman asked, “shall these dregs of foreign filth—refuse of convents—scullions from Austrian monasteries—be permitted to dictate what Tammany must do?” No, the young editor insisted, because if Democrats yielded to “the foreign riffraff . . . in this case . . . there will be no end to their demands and their insolence.” Whitman asserted that he had “no prejudice against foreigners, because they are such,” but felt that “they are becoming altogether too domineering among us.” The best way to teach the newcomers to respect American institutions, Whitman argued, was to resist Catholic educational demands.19
The school question would have made the municipal election of April 1842 a contentious one in any event, but passage of the Maclay Act just two days before that contest threw city politics into virtual anarchy. The Sixth Ward, with its unusually high concentration of Irish Catholic voters, was especially volatile. “All the discordant and jarring elements and bones of contention seemed to have been concentrated in the unfortunate Sixth Ward, of bloody and riotous and immortal memory,” lamented the Herald. In the race for alderman, William Shaler (the incumbent assistant alderman) apparently captured the “regular” Democratic nomination, though a second Democratic ticket headed by former alderman James Ferris entered the fray as well. It was not unusual to find two Democratic candidates vying in a Sixth Ward aldermans’ race. But as the Herald pointed out, “all this quarrel arose out of the School question also. For Con Donohue [Donoho], the former Collector of the ward, was turned out by the Common Council for the part he took in the School Question. . . . When the nominations were made, Donohue was sacrificed and thrown overboard; on this his Irish friends rallied, made a new ticket, with Ferris at the head, to run it against Shaler, who had become very unpopular by his crusade against the little boys for crying Sunday newspapers.” The late entry into the race of a third Democratic candidate, Shivers Parker, whom the Herald described as “the Bishop Hughes’ candidate,” further complicated matters, raising the real possibility that the Whig candidate, Clarkson Crolius Jr. (whose family had made a fortune manufacturing earthenware in the Sixth Ward), might win the contest.20
Tension in the Sixth Ward was thus palpable as voters went to the polls on April 12. Balloting progressed with no more than the usual fisticuffs until late in the afternoon, when the “Spartans” arrived at the Sixth Ward Hotel polls. The Spartans were a violent Democratic gang that had become renowned in the previous few years for its use of intimidation at primary meetings and general elections. Although membership in the gang was not limited to any particular locale, its leader, Mike Walsh, and most of his adherents lived outside the Sixth Ward. The inimitable Walsh, a self-styled “subterranean” radical who advocated workingmen’s rights and Democratic independence from Tammany Hall, had in recent years led his troops into election day battles against the Whig “Unionist” Club. But on this occasion, Walsh decided to devote his energies to his Democratic foes.
Accompanied by noted pugilists “Yankee” Sullivan and Bill Ford, as well as dozens of less well known but equally tough Spartans, Walsh and his men picked a fight with the Ferris supporters distributing ballots outside the hotel. A phalanx of Unionists stood by “urging on the quarrel.” When the Unionists realized that the Spartans considered this a fight between “Americans” and the Irish Catholics over the school question, they joined in on the Spartan side, attacking Irishmen up and down Centre Street. “Here the Irish got the worst of it, from the Americans” reported the Herald, as the Spartans and Unionists attacked them with both fists and bricks. The Irish initially retreated toward the Five Points intersection, but soon returned with reinforcements armed with sticks and clubs, “driving everything before them; and then the fight was bloody and horrible in the extreme.” Police officers led by the mayor finally arrived on the scene and made many arrests, mostly of Irishmen, “and many who were taken to the Tombs were so beaten about the head that they could not be recognized as human beings.”21
Yet the savagery was far from over. As soon as the police had departed, the Spartans and their allies returned to Centre Street with their own clubs, vowing to punish what Whitman (an ardent admirer of Walsh) called “the outrageous insolence of these foreign rowdies.” As the Spartans inflicted “the most savage violence” upon the Irish Catholics, several of the immigrants took refuge in the Sixth Ward Hotel. The Spartans pursued them inside, reported the Herald, “and gutted the place, as completely as if there had been a fire there.” Many of the Irish fled to their homes in Five Points, wrote Whitman, but the Spartans “burst in the doors, dragged out their antagonists, and cracked their heads.”22
The rioters chose their targets carefully. They attacked the Orange Street residence and grocery of Con Donoho “and injured it considerably; they also attacked several other houses of Irishmen in Orange street, destroying furniture and breaking windows.” The mob then moved uptown to Bishop Hughes’s home, where rioters broke windows, doors, and furniture before authorities dispersed them. “Had it been the reverend hypocrite’s head” that had been smashed, snarled Whitman, “instead of his windows, we could hardly find it in our soul to be sorrowful.” The divisions among Sixth Ward Democrats allowed Crolius to carry the election for alderman, giving the Whigs a one-vote majority on that board. In those races in which the Democrats were more united, however, they emerged victorious. Donoho, for example, was elected to a spot on the new ward school board. Although a Democrat, Whitman rejoiced at his party’s defeat in the contest for alderman, asserting that it would teach Tammany to resist Catholic demands concerning the school question.23
New York newspapers described the election riots of 1842 as a clash between Americans and Irishmen, but in retrospect the roots of the conflict were far more complicated. After all, Walsh himself was a native of County Cork (though he had immigrated to New York as a small child) as was his chief pugilist, Yankee Sullivan. Philip Hone blamed the troubles on religious rather than ethnic tensions. “The combatants in this scrimmage,” he asserted, “consisted of two factions of Irish who, to keep up a pleasant recollection of their interesting amusements in their own country, retain the designations which they had there of Catholics and Orangemen, or as the terms are softened down here, ‘Spartans’ and ‘Faugh-a-ballaghs.’” Walsh was in fact the child of Irish Protestants (whether he was himself religiously affiliated is not known), so there was some basis for Hone’s conclusion that “the cause of all this trouble” was passage of the purportedly pro-Catholic Maclay Act. Yet it seems unlikely that religion was the sole motivating factor either, because when Walsh ran for Congress twelve years later against a devout Irish Catholic Democrat, “Honest John” Kelly, the predominantly Catholic Sixth Ward voted overwhelmingly for Walsh.24
“I HAVE OFTEN SAID THAT THE ALDERMAN OUGHT TO BE LOCKED UP”
For the rest of the 1840s, Sixth Ward politics remained in a state of flux, as a slew of men jockeyed to become the district’s Democratic leader. John Foote and Thomas Gilmartin, for example, successful running mates for alderman and assistant alderman respectively in 1846, fought a bitter battle for the top ward office a year later. Gilmartin succeeded in ousting the incumbent Foote, but the following year, Gilmartin’s running mate from the previous contest—Frederick Kohler—challenged Gilmartin for the alderman’s post, defeating him in the bloody contest described earlier. The details of these power struggles are impossible to reconstruct. Apart from a brief press announcement concerning which ticket had captured the “regular” nominations at the primary meeting and descriptions of the Sixth Ward polling places on election day, newspapers did not cover these local contests. All that changed in November 1849, however, when for a variety of reasons the entire city focused its attention on the contest for Sixth Ward alderman. A close look at this election reveals a great deal about the workings of Five Points politics.
The November 1849 contest became a cause célèbre because of the outrageous conduct of the incumbent, Patrick Kelly. Kernan recalled that Kelly, who lived above his saloon at the corner of Mott and Bayard Streets, had been “very anxious to be an alderman.” But Kelly did not get along with Con Donoho, making his political ascent through normal channels impossible. According to Kernan, Kelly therefore “set himself up as a reformer who would knock the controlling power that was all to smash, and oppose the interest of old Tammany.” Yet after spending liberally in unsuccessful attempts to win the regular nomination for assistant alderman in both 1847 and 1848, Kelly was close to bankruptcy. Kelly then “sued for peace on any terms,” recalled Kernan, “and, in sympathy, was taken into friendship by the regulars and made an alderman” at the municipal election of April 1849.25
That “friendship,” if it ever really existed, did not last very long. Because the city had decided to switch its municipal elections from April to November in order to match the state and national electoral calendars, Kelly was forced to run for reelection just seven months after taking office. Although few Sixth Ward aldermen served consecutive terms, Kelly believed that he deserved a second due to the unusually short duration of his first. A serious challenge to Kelly’s reelection, however, was mounted by ex-alderman Foote, who had the backing of Yankee Sullivan, ward police captain John Magnes, and Matthew T. Brennan, an increasingly influential twenty-seven-year-old fire company foreman and saloonkeeper.
The source of the animosity between the Kelly and Foote factions is no longer apparent. Yet authorities were so certain that the upcoming Sixth Ward primary meeting would be even more violent than usual that they ordered the police from the First Ward to attend and preserve the peace (those from the Sixth would be in attendance with Magnes, fighting for Foote). According to the Herald, the First Ward officers “were ordered to wear their fire hats to ward off bricks and stones.” Early reports from the tumultuous scene gave Foote the advantage, but when it became clear that a majority of the men in attendance were casting their votes for Kelly, “the Foot[e] party, under their leader, ‘Yankee Sullivan,’ endeavored to carry off, or break, the ballot box, but did not succeed in the attempt.” Kelly and his supporters celebrated their primary victory at his saloon and all up and down Bayard Street, and according to the Herald, “every man they met of the Foote party they beat most unmercifully. One young man, a barkeeper of Mr. Brennan, of the opposite party, was severely handled; and in the Bowery, several of the voters for Foote were well ‘licked.’” However, the primary battle was destined to be repeated in the general election, as Foote and his ticket vowed to run on the split.26
Because the contest in the Sixth Ward was so acrimonious, the press followed it closely, even taking the unusual step of publishing each of the sixty or so names on each faction’s primary ticket, and providing a rare opportunity to determine exactly who Five Points’ political activists really were. Of the men whose occupations could be determined, 53 percent were liquor dealers—either saloonkeepers or grocers. But a significantly higher proportion of the Foote delegates sold alcoholic beverages, while Kelly’s advocates were twice as likely as Foote’s to be blue-collar workers (artisans and unskilled laborers). These occupational distinctions make some sense given that Kelly positioned himself as a “reformer” in a district whose politics were dominated by saloonkeepers. The only other identifiable distinction between these Kelly and Foote supporters was geographic—Foote backers were much more likely to live in the western portion of the ward, while Kelly’s partisans resided primarily in the eastern election districts. Foote advocates outnumbered Kelly’s seventeen to four on Centre and Elm Streets (the two largest thoroughfares on the west side of the ward), while Kelly delegates exceeded Foote’s by twenty to eleven from Mulberry Street east to the Bowery. This trend may reflect that Foote, Brennan, and Sullivan all resided in the western portion of the ward, while Kelly lived in its northeastern election district.27
Tensions between the two sides were still running high when, just after midnight on Friday, October 12, an inebriated Kelly stopped in at John Lee’s Centre Street porterhouse for a drink. It took nerve for Kelly to visit Lee’s establishment, inasmuch as Lee was a well-known Foote supporter and his saloon was a gathering place for Kelly’s opponents. Indeed, when Kelly arrived, Yankee Sullivan and a number of “Mat. Brennan’s boys” were drinking at the bar. According to eyewitnesses, Kelly and Sullivan soon began “using very coarse and vulgar language together.” Fearing a brawl, Sullivan’s friends took him outside, but the infuriated prizefighter soon rushed back in and struck Kelly a glancing blow to the forehead. Kelly then ordered a policeman who was present to arrest Sullivan. Sometime after 1:00 a.m., the alderman and his political lieutenant John Layden (a printer whom Kelly’s friends had roused from bed when they learned that the alderman was quarreling with a slew of Foote supporters) left Lee’s saloon to accompany Sullivan and the officer on the two-and-a-half-block walk to the Sixth Ward police station on Franklin Street.
Another person who had come to Lee’s porterhouse when word of the confrontation spread through the ward was coal dealer and politico Frederick Ridaboek. Unlike Layden, Ridaboek did not travel to Lee’s establishment to protect Kelly, but instead sought him out in order to have the alderman discharge two prostitutes—“‘Big Maria’ and Johannah Buckly”—who were being held at the station house. When the group arrived there around 1:45 a.m., Layden (himself once the ward’s assistant police captain) convinced Kelly not to press charges against Sullivan. Tempers flared, however, when Kelly, Layden, and Ridaboek entered the station house and found it filled with prominent Foote supporters, including both Brennan and Captain Magnes. Magnes was especially incensed that Kelly had brought Ridaboek with him. Earlier that evening while drinking at a grocery on Orange Street, Ridaboek and the captain had engaged in a fierce argument over Ridaboek’s claim that Magnes had caused the falling-out between Kelly and an influential ex-alderman, James Ferris.
When Kelly began writing the discharge papers for the two prostitutes, Magnes insisted that Kelly should not act in a judicial capacity while intoxicated. But Kelly ignored him and with Ridaboek’s assistance continued drafting the release papers. The chagrined Magnes responded by ordering Ridaboek removed from behind the desk reserved for police and judicial officials. The two men and their associates hurled increasingly vicious slurs at each other, and when Magnes refused to remove a Foote supporter from behind the same desk, Kelly began screaming at the captain. Magnes then arrested Kelly for drunkenness and ordered him placed in a cell. Layden got another alderman out of bed to discharge Kelly, but the obstinate and still intoxicated Kelly refused to leave the cell unless the board president himself came to free him. The dutiful Layden fetched James Kelly from his Second Ward home, and at dawn Pat Kelly returned to his apartment on Bayard Street.28
News of Kelly’s arrest for drunkenness caused a sensation in the Sixth Ward and throughout the city. His trial, which began on October 16, captivated New Yorkers for more than a week. The proceedings did not reveal any details not already well known within hours of Kelly’s arrest, but did expose the extent of the animosity between the two political factions and the weapons those in power could use to punish their enemies. One witness for the prosecution admitted under cross-examination that he might harbor bitterness toward Kelly because the alderman had fired his brother-in-law from his post as ward lamplighter. Patrolman Edward Riley testified that he had been told that Kelly would dismiss him from the force if he won reelection. Rumor also had it that Kelly would replace Magnes with Layden if Kelly won a second term. Virtually every prosecution witness conceded having spoken disparagingly of Kelly in public at one time or another. Brennan, for example, admitted that “I have often said that the alderman ought to be locked up.” After more than a week of testimony, attorneys for both sides rested their cases, and the judge announced that he would not render his verdict until after the election. The Irish-American hoped that the city would now concentrate on matters more important than “this supremely ridiculous affair.”29
Meanwhile, Kelly’s arrest became a campaign issue. Within hours of the alderman’s release from jail, Foote’s adherents posted handbills headed in large, bold type: “AN ALDERMAN IN CUSTODY,” containing both a history of “the affray” and copies of the affidavits taken at the time of Kelly’s incarceration. Kelly quickly responded with a letter to the editor of the Herald, insisting that his arrest and the fuss over it “was made up for the shop, by the ‘stars’ [police] and their underlings, to suit the present electioneering times, and prejudice the minds of the community against me.” Each faction could also rely on newspaper allies to publish propaganda on its behalf. The Sun, one of the city’s first “penny dailies,” advocated the Foote cause, while a campaign sheet known as the Clarion rallied Kelly’s supporters. The Clarion reminded voters that in his first term on the Common Council, Kelly had proposed to establish “a FREE BATHING AND WASHING HOUSE for the poor” and to increase the pay of laborers working for the city to $1.25 per day in the summer when demand for such employees was at its peak. Kelly’s supporters also emphasized his status as a political outsider. According to the Herald, one speaker told Sixth Warders that the alderman “was none of your high-stiffened aristocracy. He did not live upon chicken for dinner, but his fare was just as homely as their own. And when he found any of the boys in a scrape he let him out of the Tombs.”30
Both factions understood that spectacle was just as important as propaganda in an antebellum election, so as election day approached, each organized public demonstrations to inspire a groundswell of support for its candidates. On October 30, Kelly’s advocates held a “ratification meeting” at the Sixth Ward Hotel, concluding with a torchlight parade in which the marchers bombarded Brennan’s and Sullivan’s saloons with bricks as they passed by. Later, Foote’s supporters outfitted a Broadway omnibus with a “huge cap of liberty” and a “large placard” promoting the ticket. Inside the vehicle, someone lustily beat a drum while the other passengers chanted and sang of their allegiance to Foote. On the evening of November 2, his adherents organized an “open air meeting” which, according to the Herald, featured “bonfires, sky-rockets, torches, and bands of music . . . but no clubs, brick bats, or stones. Wonders will never cease.”31
As election day dawned on November 6, the whole city braced for extraordinary violence at Sixth Ward polls. “In expectation of a riot,” noted the Herald, men from all over town collected in the district “to witness the sports.” But these enthusiasts were ultimately disappointed. “The election was one of extraordinary quiet,” remarked the Herald in surprise. Merchants and saloonkeepers in the vicinity of the polls kept their establishments shuttered in anticipation of a riot, and as a result, the scene “bore the appearance of a Sabbath day, instead of a hotly contested election.” According to the Herald’s reporter, the ward’s only election day excitement was
a negro hunt. A colored voter in the forenoon having made his appearance at one of the polls, some of the “bhoys” took it into their heads to give him a licking. . . . He took to his heels in beautiful style, and never was there a rarer hunt. Through Centre street, and the streets adjoining, he ran for his life, amidst shouts and yells, while his pursuers chased him most vigorously, still keeping close on his track, till at length he gave a short double round the corner of a street, and “earthed” himself in a friendly house.
As evening fell, the suspense became unbearable as each side waited to learn which ticket had polled the most votes. Kelly was finally announced the winner, having captured 892 votes to Foote’s 707. The unusually low Whig turnout—just 98 votes—suggests that one of the factions may have consummated a last-minute deal with that party’s leaders. The Herald, no great admirer of Kelly, insisted that the alderman had secured Whig support by placing the name of the Whig candidate for sheriff on some of his ballots. But it is also possible that Whigs stayed home (the total number of votes cast was well below normal) rather than risk bodily harm should they arrive at the polls as rioting erupted. In any event, after the results became known, Kelly’s supporters “shouted and paraded around the ward,” throwing stones at “Footites” they encountered, firing off an occasional pistol, and holding “really uproarious” celebrations in neighborhood saloons.32
In a fitting denouement, Police Justice Mountfort handed down his verdict on November 30. Issuing a stinging indictment of Kelly’s behavior, Mountfort observed that had the alderman “not gone to the station house for an illegal purpose, that of discharging from confinement two prostitutes . . . his other delinquencies might have passed unnoticed.” Mountfort reminded Kelly that an alderman could lawfully discharge a prisoner only after taking testimony and examining other evidence, not merely because a political ally asked him to do so. The judge pronounced Kelly guilty of drunkenness as charged, upbraided him for abuse of his judicial authority, but waived a fine, perhaps concluding that the embarrassing publicity and judicial tongue-lashing were penalty enough. In large part because aldermen such as Kelly so often abused their judicial powers, state lawmakers rescinded them when they reorganized the city’s legislative bodies a few years later. As for Kelly, his haughtiness and penchant for making enemies doomed his political future. He ran unsuccessfully on the split for three more offices—alderman in 1851, Congress in 1852, and councilman in 1854—and thereafter quickly faded from the political scene.33
“THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE WARD”
Kelly’s political demise cleared the way for Brennan’s emergence as the undisputed leader of the Sixth Ward Democratic party. Brennan was born in New York in 1822 and grew up in impoverished Irish enclaves in the First and Fourth Wards. His father, Timothy, a porter, was supposedly “one of the political refugees driven from Ireland to escape the fury of the British Government after Lord Edward Fitzgerald’s rebellion” in 1798. He died at about the time Matthew was born, forcing Matthew’s mother, Hannah, who as a child had emigrated from County Donegal, to run a vegetable stand at the Franklin Market to support the family. After attending primary school, Matthew helped his mother at the vegetable stand and was briefly apprenticed as a molder. In the mid-1830s, his older brother Owen, eight years Matthew’s senior and active in Whig political circles, opened Monroe Hall, a Sixth Ward saloon at the northwest corner of Pearl and Centre Streets, and the teenaged Matthew became a bartender there.34
Perhaps out of a desire to emerge from Owen’s shadow, Brennan soon moved downtown and sold “coffee, cakes and oysters” from a small storefront at 89 Cedar Street near Broadway. According to the Herald, Brennan “remained there for four or five years and gained considerable custom.” But by this point, recalled the Tribune years later, “running to fires” had become “the ruling passion” of Brennan’s life. Although a childhood accident had left him with a perceptible limp, Brennan was “fleet of foot, and . . . possessed of extraordinary strength,” precisely the traits of the ideal fireman. Emulating both Owen and his eldest brother, Timothy, Brennan entered the fire department. He spent a few years with Engine Company No. 11 before joining Owen in the Sixth Ward’s Engine Company No. 21.35
Brennan’s transfer to Engine No. 21 probably coincided with his move back to Five Points. The twenty-three-year-old Brennan had relocated there in 1845 when Owen turned over control of Monroe Hall to him. While Owen ascended in Whig circles, “Matt” (as he was universally known) began establishing a base in the ward’s Democratic ranks. The ideal location of his saloon at the intersection of two heavily trafficked thoroughfares ensured brisk business and made Brennan a well-known neighborhood liquor dealer. But it was his election in the late forties as foreman of the politically powerful Engine No. 21, noted the Times years later, that served as Brennan’s “stepping-stone to political preferment.”36
Brennan exuded an air of confidence, strength, and congeniality that made him a natural leader and helped him achieve his prestigious position as company foreman. And in a neighborhood in which fighting and toughness were prerequisites to political power, Brennan’s imposing physical presence also helped him. A friend and newspaper editor described Matthew Brennan at age forty as “a large and robust man, with spreading shoulders, large and arching chest; throat muscular and massive; face singularly open, strong and honest; black hair curling closely round his forehead; a dark brown imperial dropping down from his lower lip, and merging into a small black growth of throat-beard; hazel gray eyes, full of kindly humor and penetration, set under eyebrows rather slight and short; immensely broad round the base of the forehead; and with a nose, not long, but prominent and indicative of energy and courage.” Brennan possessed both the physical and personal traits necessary to ascend through the rough world of Irish-American ward politics.37
As fire company foreman, Brennan commanded a gang of forty or so tough young men who could be counted on to fight at primary meetings and on election day. Such influence had its rewards. In January 1848, he received his first patronage plum—appointment as one of the two ward residents to whom chimney fires were to be reported. Modest though this might seem, city newspapers covering Kelly’s arrest in late 1849 agreed that Brennan was an up-and-coming power in Sixth Ward politics.38
Despite Brennan’s apparently rapid advancement, his political career seemed in jeopardy at midcentury. His support of Foote’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Kelly in 1849 was potentially damaging to his political future, because city Democratic leaders looked disdainfully upon those who failed to fall in line behind the “regular” nominees. Yet a graver threat to Brennan’s ambitions materialized in 1850 in the form of Isaiah Rynders, a political fighter feared even more than Con Donoho or Yankee Sullivan.
The colorful Rynders had reached the peak of his influence after Polk’s election in 1844. He had become even more notorious in 1849 and 1850, helping to incite the bloody Astor Place Riot. Rynders bought dozens of tickets so that his men could attend the theater there in order to harass William Macready, the controversial English actor. He also paid for the printing and distribution of inflammatory handbills that helped whip the crowd surrounding the theater into a fury. A year later, Rynders again received national attention, this time for disrupting an abolitionist convention organized by William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass.
Despite these exploits, Rynders could not advance as rapidly within Democratic ranks as he would have liked. Because the most powerful positions within Tammany were chosen by delegates elected from each ward, Rynders needed to establish a base of power in one of these political districts. Given his penchant for violence and intimidation, political weapons that were both accepted and respected in the “bloody Sixth,” his decision to concentrate his political operations there made perfect sense. That no leader or faction had managed to seize control of the ward’s politics in the late 1840s also undoubtedly motivated Rynders. He therefore bought a Sixth Ward saloon (well south of Five Points on Reade Street), rented a house on Pearl Street just a block west of Monroe Hall, and according to Kernan, “quietly awaited an opening.”39
Rynders made his move in the autumn of 1850, announcing his intention to take the district’s nomination for state assembly. Yet Rynders’s move “did not suit the bone and sinew of the ward,” recalled Kernan years later, because Donoho, Brennan, and their allies saw Rynders and his Empire Club thugs as “squatters.” Not easily deterred, Rynders arrived at Dooley’s Long-Room for the primary meeting accompanied by noted fighters Bill Ford, Tom Maguire, John McCleester, and “Hen” Chanfrau—“men who seldom met defeat”—as well as hundreds of other supporters. But Brennan, Donoho, and the rest of Five Points’ Irish-American leaders were not about to cede control of the ward without a fight. “When the hour came to name the chairman,” Kernan recalled, “the fierce onset of Rynders’s friends to defeat [Donoho’s candidate] was met with a bold response. The ball opened and the strife commenced, and ere ten minutes passed away, the hall was cleared of all who stood in opposition to the regular voters of the ward. Rynders and his men met defeat.”
He did not give up. When city Democrats met at Tammany Hall to choose their legislative candidates, Rynders captured the nomination anyway, probably due to support from the Third Ward, which made up the other half of the assembly district. But disgruntled Five Points Democrats had the last laugh. Many refused to vote for the Captain on election day, and as a result he received 350 fewer votes in the Sixth Ward than the other Democratic candidates. This proved to be decisive, as Rynders lost to his Whig opponent by 200 votes. Realizing that Sixth Warders would not accept him as their political leader, Rynders’s “ambition to get a foothold in the glorious old Sixth was quieted ever after.” He soon moved across the Bowery to the Seventh Ward, and stung by his embarrassing defeat, never again ran for elective office. He remained a power in Democratic circles throughout the 1850s, and for his continuing loyalty to the party President James Buchanan made Rynders a U.S. marshal in 1857. But Rynders never again dominated New York politics with the swagger and impudence that had marked his early career. His political comeuppance had been engineered in large measure by the increasingly influential Irish Catholic Democrats of the Sixth Ward.40
“A SERGEANT OR CAPTAIN IS A REAL POWER
IF HE TAKES ANY INTEREST IN POLITICS”
With Rynders no longer a threat to dominate the Sixth Ward, Brennan could concentrate on his own advancement. In the November 1851 race for alderman, Kelly was opposed by his ambitious former protégé, Thomas J. Barr. Unlike Kelly, Barr was far too smart a politician to make an enemy of the up-and-coming Brennan. The two probably came to some sort of understanding before the election, because just a few weeks after Barr’s victory, the alderman-elect helped secure Brennan an appointment to succeed Magnes as Sixth Ward police captain.41
Brennan used his new post to increase his already strong position in Sixth Ward political affairs. “A sergeant or captain is a real power if he takes any interest in politics,” noted Ivins, and Brennan certainly proved this to be the case. He used his authority as captain to appoint a number of his most trusted allies to places on the force. At the end of 1854, these supporters established the M. T. Brennan Hose Company No. 60, both to demonstrate their gratitude to their patron and to rally support for his candidates at primaries and on election days. To ensure control of the polling places (and to discourage the turnout of his adversaries), Brennan moved some of the voting stations from neutral sites to locations associated with his supporters. By 1856, Five Pointers in the ward’s second electoral district had to cast their ballots inside the Brennan Hose Company’s club room at 123 Leonard Street (Brennan lived next door at 121 Leonard). Voters in the fifth district were required to venture inside the “low rum-shop” of Brennan loyalist Walter Roche at 19 Mulberry. Another polling site was located in a “hair-dresser’s saloon” at 6 Franklin Street, across the road from the ward’s police station at 9 Franklin, enabling Brennan’s allies on the force to maintain control. Brennan also probably engineered the transfer of the ward primary contest from Dooley’s Long-Room in the Sixth Ward Hotel, where it had been held for decades, to the friendlier confines of Elm Street’s Ivy Green saloon, another haunt controlled by his supporters.42
In 1854, after nearly three years as police captain, Brennan made his first run for elective office, seeking the influential post of police justice. Although police justices were the first judicial authorities before whom all those accused of misdemeanors and minor felonies were brought, legal training was not considered a prerequisite for the post. The judicial district in question covered not only the Sixth Ward but also the Fourth and Fourteenth, each a heavily Irish-American district. Although these demographics might appear to favor Brennan, Democrats in the other wards nominated their own candidates for the highly prized office. On the eve of the vote, these opponents attempted to blame Brennan for the police department’s role in the arrest of an Irish patriot wanted by the British. Nonetheless, Brennan carried the election by a comfortable margin.43
Brennan had built up an effective electoral machine, but he also succeeded in politics because he was a likable man who made few personal enemies. He was “looked up to by all the poor of his ward and district as a protector and friend,” reported his allies at the Leader. The Herald agreed that “he took a special and personal interest in the poor of his district, and always lent a willing ear to their grievances.” Brennan was also a hard worker, and devoted to “his fireside and family”—he married Margaret Molony in about 1850 and by 1860 they had five children. Unlike some of his fellow politicians, Brennan “lived a temperate life in all things. . . . His habits of living were of the old fashioned type, early to bed and early to rise, up at five o’clock in the morning, winter and summer, and in his office . . . hours before any of his subordinates thought of stirring.” Though a native New Yorker, Brennan and his entire family “spoke Irish and took a pride in it,” a devotion to Gaelic culture that undoubtedly impressed the many recent Irish immigrants among his constituents. Brennan’s popularity was such that state Democrats nominated him for the post of state prison inspector in 1856. Although Brennan and his Democratic running mates were defeated in the November election, the nomination of a Five Points Irish Catholic for statewide office was unprecedented.44
Brennan had a small coterie of especially loyal allies who played an important role in advancing his political career. One of the most important was Joseph Dowling. Dowling was one of the few successful Five Points politicians who had lived in Ireland long enough to remember it, having emigrated at age twelve. Upon arriving in New York in 1838, his family settled in Five Points, where Dowling’s father worked as a shoemaker on Centre Street. Like many immigrant children, young Joseph augmented the family income as a newsboy. Soon he was employed “in the office of old Major Noah’s Times and Messenger, . . . running errands, delivering papers, collecting bills, sweeping out the office and making paste.” Later he worked as a paper folder for the Herald.
By his late teens, Dowling was a regular at Brennan’s saloon, which the Times accurately described years later as “a resort for all the young and rising politicians of the period.” Like most Five Points politicos, young Dowling “was robust and rugged in physique. He wrestled like a professional and his blow from the shoulder might have felled an ox.” He was brave as well; as a teenager he supposedly challenged the renowned Yankee Sullivan to a fight in Brennan’s saloon. Impressed by these qualities, Brennan made Dowling a runner with Engine Company No. 21. According to the Times, “this proved his starting point in political life.” Allying himself with Brennan, Dowling “gradually gained notice as a shrewd and indefatigable worker in ward politics.” In August 1848, Dowling was appointed to the ward’s police force as a reward for his loyal service to the Democratic party. When Brennan became captain, Dowling as sergeant served as his mentor’s right-hand man. And when Brennan became police justice, he made sure that Dowling succeeded him as captain.45
Even more important to Brennan’s success than Dowling was another loyal ally, John Clancy. Clancy was born in the Sixth Ward on March 5, 1829, the son of “an Irish patriot, who had fought against England on several bloody fields.” Other than this familiar refrain, however, Clancy’s early years were very different from those of Five Points politicians such as Brennan and Dowling. Most Five Pointers left school to help support their families; Clancy was such a gifted student that his parents allowed him to attend “the grammar school of Columbia College” well into his teens. After working for a number of years as the junior associate of a “commercial merchant” on Water Street, Clancy moved to Savannah, where he wrote essays for several journals. He soon returned to the Sixth Ward and studied law in the office of attorney (and future Tweed Ring insider) Peter Barr Sweeny, who became Clancy’s “dearest friend and most intimate associate.”46
Sweeny’s uncle, Sixth Ward Alderman Thomas J. Barr, must have facilitated Clancy’s entry into Five Points politics, because he had few of the qualities one usually associates with the neighborhood’s politicians. Whereas the biography of virtually every Sixth Ward politician emphasizes the subject’s fighting prowess, Clancy’s stressed that he had a “slender figure” and “blue eyes, soft as a woman’s in their affectionate expression.” Other Five Points politicos were known for their street smarts, but Clancy was bookish (though he never did complete his legal studies), erudite, and “a graceful and polished writer.” Clancy did serve in the fire department, demonstrating his leadership skills by becoming foreman of Engine Company No. 28. This may have helped him win the respect of the neighborhood’s rougher element. Whatever the case, Clancy’s advancement in Sixth Ward politics was unprecedented. In 1853, without holding any of the usual minor patronage posts, or serving in the ward’s police or fire departments (Engine No. 28 was located elsewhere), the twenty-four-year-old Clancy was elected to one of the ward’s seats on the new board of councilmen, a body created to replace the board of assistant aldermen. He was reelected in November 1854, and was elected ward alderman in 1855. After his reelection in November 1856, Clancy’s colleagues made him president of the board of aldermen, a great honor for a twenty-seven-year-old who four years earlier was literally unknown in city political circles.
Clancy’s remarkable rise to prominence was facilitated by his involvement with the New York Leader, a weekly newspaper that became the Tammany organ in 1855. Clancy began contributing to the Leader as soon as it became affiliated with Tammany, and his work on the paper made him a well-known figure to all the city’s Democratic strongmen. In February 1857, weeks after the aldermen chose him as their president, Clancy became one of the paper’s editors. But just as important to Clancy’s success was his alliance with Brennan. Founding members of the M. T. Brennan Hose Company No. 60 elected Clancy as their inaugural foreman.
In their capacities as police justice, president of the board of aldermen, and Tammany editor, the thirty-four-year-old Brennan and the twenty-seven-year-old Clancy had climbed further in Tammany’s ranks by the beginning of 1857 than had any previous Sixth Ward Irish Catholics. Their accomplishments would have been almost unimaginable to the previous generation of Five Pointers. Only in the 1830s had Irish Catholics wrested control of the ward’s politics from the old elite. Even after they had succeeded in overturning the old order, a Catholic Five Pointer of Con Donoho’s day could at best aspire to a term as ward alderman. Tammany was still firmly in the hands of leaders who were happy to take the Irishmen’s votes, but refused to give them major offices either in the party or in citywide government. But the new generation of Irish Catholic politicians refused to accept such limitations. Led by Brennan and Clancy, these Five Pointers would play a major role in reshaping the dynamics of political power in Civil War–era New York.47
