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Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics
Liveright
March 2014
On Sale: February 24, 2014
400 pages
ISBN: 0871403757
EAN: 9780871403759
Kindle: B00EIMTTHG
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction History
A major, surprising new history of New York’s most
famous political machine—Tammany Hall—revealing, beyond the
vice and corruption, a birthplace of progressive urban
politics. For decades, history has considered
Tammany Hall, New York's famous political machine, shorthand
for the worst of urban politics: graft, crime, and patronage
personified by notoriously corrupt characters. Infamous
crooks like William "Boss" Tweed dominate traditional
histories of Tammany, distorting our understanding of a
critical chapter of American political history. In
Machine Made, historian and New York City
journalist Terry Golway convincingly dismantles these
stereotypes; Tammany's corruption was real, but so was its
heretofore forgotten role in protecting marginalized and
maligned immigrants in desperate need of a political voice.
Irish immigrants arriving in New York during the
nineteenth century faced an unrelenting onslaught of
hyperbolic, nativist propaganda. They were voiceless in a
city that proved, time and again, that real power remained
in the hands of the mercantile elite, not with a crush of
ragged newcomers flooding its streets. Haunted by fresh
memories of the horrific Irish potato famine in the old
country, Irish immigrants had already learned an indelible
lesson about the dire consequences of political
helplessness. Tammany Hall emerged as a distinct force to
support the city's Catholic newcomers, courting their votes
while acting as a powerful intermediary between them and the
Anglo-Saxon Protestant ruling class. In a city that had yet
to develop the social services we now expect, Tammany often
functioned as a rudimentary public welfare system and a
champion of crucial social reforms benefiting its
constituency, including workers' compensation, prohibitions
against child labor, and public pensions for widows with
children. Tammany figures also fought against attempts to
limit immigration and to strip the poor of the only power
they had—the vote. While rescuing Tammany from its
maligned legacy, Golway hardly ignores Tammany's ugly
underbelly, from its constituents' participation in the
bloody Draft Riots of 1863 to its rampant cronyism. However,
even under occasionally notorious leadership, Tammany played
a profound and long-ignored role in laying the groundwork
for social reform, and nurtured the careers of two of New
York's greatest political figures, Al Smith and Robert
Wagner. Despite devastating electoral defeats and countless
scandals, Tammany nonetheless created a formidable political
coalition, one that eventually made its way into the
echelons of FDR’s Democratic Party and progressive New Deal
agenda. Tracing the events of a tumultuous century,
Golway shows how mainstream American government began to
embrace both Tammany’s constituents and its ideals.
Machine Made is a revelatory work of revisionist
history, and a rich, multifaceted portrait of roiling New
York City politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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