Free BOSS TWEED: The Corrupt Pol who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman

sizable bankroll—but the Democratic Party had spent thousands more based on Tilden’s promises. In late October, Tweed—who’d given Tilden his own $5,000 check as an early campaign contribution—began pressing him to settle accounts. Tilden ignored repeated calls for a meeting to decide who should pay the mounting pile of bills. Tammany apparently got stuck with most of them. 30
    And now, sitting before a congressional committee, Tilden faced the final embarrassment of a voting scandal, complete with a forged letter dragging his name in the mud. He had a reputation to protect in 1868—a possible future in politics, his standing with the city’s elite, his legal practice. This was no time to quarrel with Boss Tweed and his Tammany crowd. Tweed might be a rival but, so far, he wasn’t an enemy. This day, December 30, 1868, testifying to the congressmen, Tilden would swallow his pride, make no damaging charges, and protect himself.
    The more the congressmen pressed, the more Tilden back-pedaled. They asked him about the phony naturalizations and repeat voting and Tilden, the state party chairman, threw up his hands: “I did not know very much of the details of the minor committees,” he claimed. “There was generally some officer about the City Hall who looked after all these matters; but I had nothing to do with naturalization at all.” 31 The committee didn’t keep him long in the grand jury room that morning—Tilden’s testimony covers a scant three pages of the thousand-page transcript. On each point, the congressmen took Tilden’s story at face value, even Tilden’s explanation of the forged letter. In their final report, they’d describe it as “A. Oakey Hall’s Secret Circular”—not Tilden’s.
    After he’d finished testifying, Tilden left the courthouse, stepped outside onto Chambers Street, and returned uptown to his busy legal practice. There was money to make in 1868 and plenty of time for politics later. But he couldn’t shake the scandal that had tarred his name. Months later, long after the congressmen had issued their final report, Horace Greeley would publicly blast him in an open letter, published in the New York Tribune : “Mr. Tilden, you cannot escape responsibility,” Greeley railed. “For you were at least a passive accomplice in the giant frauds of last November. Your name was used, without public protest … [a]nd you, not merely by silence but by positive assumption, have covered those frauds with the mantle of your respectability… you are as deeply implicated in them to-day as though your name were Tweed, O’Brien, or Oakey Hall.” 32
    Tilden never answered Greeley’s charge. He’d pick his own day and his own way to make known his feelings about Bill Tweed and Oakey Hall.

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    Next came Tweed, ushered into the committee’s private room moments after Sam Tilden had left. The contrast could not have been sharper. Unlike Tilden’s cold personality, Tweed lit up the room. Big and boisterous, he knew how to lavish the congressmen with humor, look them in the eye, slap shoulders, shake hands, crack a joke, share a confidence, poke fun at his own girth. Tweed dressed sharply these days—he’d grown wealthy since the war. But his black suit, gold watch chain, and stiff collar only accentuated his most prominent new physical feature, a bulging stomach. Good food had become his favorite vice. “I was never drunk in my life,” he’d tell a newspaper writer later. “I have never smoked a cigar nor chewed a piece of tobacco. I never liked whiskey. Being a man of large body, I am fond of eating.” 33
    Tweed too had come to the committee this morning to declare his innocence. He sat down at the table, filled the large leather chair with his 300 pounds, and swore to tell the truth. It took little prompting to start him talking:
    “State your official position,” Congressman Kerr asked at the outset as the others looked on. 34
    “I am deputy street