Boss Tweed

William Magear Tweed, Boss of Tammany Hall and New York’s Democratic Party after the Civil War, wielded enormous influence over New York politics, but his corruption overshadowed the rest: bribing the state legislature, fixing elections, skimming money from city contractors, and diverting public funds on a massive scale. Was Tweed all bad? Under his leadership, immigrants were brought into the political mainstream, the city built some of its finest landmarks, and support for the neediest residents was increased. This discussion will cover the meteoric rise and highly public fall of Tweed and his Ring. Thomas Nast, the cartoonist who was instrumental in bringing down the Tweed Ring, and James H. Ingersoll, Tweed’s partner in crime, were both prominent members of the Seventh Regiment.

A writer and attorney in Washington, D.C., Kenneth D. Ackerman is the author of The Gold Ring: Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, and Black Friday 1869 (1988); Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James A. Garfield (2003); Boss Tweed: the Rise and Fall of the Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York (2005), and Young J. Edgar Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties (2007).

Professor Kenneth T. Jackson has taught at Columbia University for more than forty years. A former president of the Urban History Association, the Society of American Historians, the Organization of American Historians, and the Historical Society, he is the author of more than a dozen books including The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995) and Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (1987).