[3] Slamm was born in New York City,[4] the son of a Revolutionary War veteran and a grocer.
[6] As a young man in 1830, Slamm sailed aboard the Corvo from Boston under Capt.
Jeremiah Spalding in August, together with Samuel Colt, the firearms inventor,[7] and apparently they became fast friends.
[8] When the economic troubles of the 1830s began, he joined the Locofocos and soon became one of the most influential, in part through his publication of the radical periodical the Daily Plebeian.
[10] In 1838, together with Locofocos Alexander Ming Jr. and Charles Ferris, Slamm struck a deal with the Tammany Hall General Committee to adopt the entire Locofoco's radical Declaration of Rights,[2] thus uniting the two halves of New York's Democratic Party that had been in schism since 1835.