[1][2] At its peak the machine had the advantage of a core of solid supporters, and usually exercised control of politics and policymaking in Manhattan; it also played a major role in the state legislature in Albany.

[9] Although Mooney claimed the top role in the early organization, it was a wealthy merchant and philanthropist named John Pintard who created the society's constitution and declared it to be "[a] political institution founded on a strong republican basis whose democratic principles will serve in some measure to correct the aristocracy of our city."

Tammany Hall soon realized its influence over the local political scene was no match for that of Clinton,[16] in part because Burr's support among New York City's residents greatly faded after he shot and killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

[21] For example, one official, Benjamin Romaine was found guilty of using his power to acquire land without payment and was ultimately removed from his office as City Comptroller[18] despite the Council being controlled by Democratic-Republicans.

[18] Following the disclosures, the Federalists won control of the state legislature and the Democratic-Republican Party maintained a slim majority of the local government in New York City.

[23] However, Tammany Hall did not learn their lesson,[17] and instead of fixing the problem of corruption, Wortman, one of the chief powers at the time, created a committee, consisting of one member from each ward, that would investigate and report in general meetings who were friends or enemies.

[20] One of the Clintonites, James Cheetham, wrote extensively about Tammany and its corrupt activities, using his position as State Printer and publishing his work in the American Citizen newspaper.

[33] During the 1828 U.S. presidential election, Tammany Hall leaders met with Democratic candidate Andrew Jackson and agreed to endorse him after he promised to give them control over the allocation of some federal jobs.

These committees were made up primarily of Tammany politicians and employees, and their duties consisted of filling out paperwork, providing witnesses, and lending immigrants money for the fees required to become citizens.

These gangs included the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys, Mike Walsh's Spartan Association, the Roach Guards, the Plug Uglies, the Wide-Awakes, and Captain Isaiah Rynders' Empire Club.

A number of real estate deals followed with suspicious transaction amounts, including a purchase of a pauper's burial ground on Ward's Island and the sale of city property occupying Gansevoort Market near the western end of 14th Street to Reuben Lovejoy, an associate of James B. Taylor, a friend of many of the Aldermen.

Wood ran for mayor in 1859, with the backing of James Gordon Bennett's New York Tribune, as the champion of workingclass Irish and German immigrants against the "kid glove, scented, silk stocking, poodle-headed, degenerate aristocracy.

In 1858, Tweed capitalized on the efforts of Republican reformers to rein in the Democratic city government to obtain a position on the County Board of Supervisors, which he then used as a springboard to other appointments, and to have his friends placed in various offices.

The Tweed ring at its height was an engineering marvel, strong and solid, strategically deployed to control key power points: the courts, the legislature, the treasury and the ballot box.

James Watson, who was a county auditor in Comptroller Dick Connolly's office and who also held and recorded the ring's books, died a week after his head was smashed by a horse in a sleigh accident on January 21, 1871.

[55] Having inadvertently provoked George into running, Tammany now needed to field a strong candidate against him, which required the cooperation of the Catholic Church in New York, which was the key to getting the support of middle-class Irish American voters.

The New Tammany appeared to be more respectable, and less obviously connected to saloonkeepers and gang leaders, and the clubhouses, one in every Assembly District, were also a more efficient way of providing patronage work to those who came looking for it; one simply had to join the club, and volunteer to put in the hours needed to support it.

Still, Tammany could not be kept down for long, and in 1898 Croker, aided by the death of Henry George – which took the wind out of the sails of the potential re-invigoration of the political labor movement – and returned from his stay in Europe, shifted the Democratic Party enough to the left to pick up labor's support, and pulled back into the fold those elements outraged by the reformers' attempt to outlaw Sunday drinking and otherwise enforce their own authoritarian moral concepts on immigrant populations with different cultural outlooks.

In quiet times the machines had the advantage of the core of solid supporters and usually exercised control of city and borough affairs; they also played a major role in the state legislature in Albany.

[69][70] Murphy wanted to clean up Tammany's image and sponsored progressive era reforms benefiting the working class through his two protégés, Governor Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner.

Police received protection money from shopkeepers, rackets surrounded the fish and poultry markets, as well as the docks, and licensing fees for various professions were increased with Tammany Hall middlemen reaping the benefits.

Vitale was accused of owing $19,600 to Arnold Rothstein and was investigated by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for failing to explain how he accrued $165,000 over four years while receiving a total judicial salary of $48,000 during that same period.

[73] In 1932, the machine suffered a dual setback when mayor Jimmy Walker was forced from office by scandal and reform-minded Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president of the United States.

[75] Roosevelt and his lead campaign manager James Farley stripped Tammany of federal patronage, which had expanded under the New Deal, and passed it instead to Ed Flynn, boss of the Bronx, who had kept his district clean of corruption.

[77] Tammany alderman Alford J. Williams died in December 1933; when the Board of Aldermen reconvened in January 1934 it defied party leadership and elected an ally of La Guardia as his successor.

[77] Tammany depended for its power on government contracts, jobs, patronage, corruption, and ultimately the ability of its leaders to control nominations to the Democratic ticket and swing the popular vote.

[81] Those relations largely collapsed with the rise of newer crime organizations that flourished during Prohibition; Tammany came to depend on figures such as Arnold Rothstein to maintain some measure of control, however limited, over them.

[88] Tammany never recovered from prosecutions of the 1940s but staged a small-scale comeback in the early 1950s under the leadership of Carmine DeSapio, who succeeded in engineering the elections of Robert F. Wagner Jr., an outspoken liberal Democrat,[91] as mayor in 1953 and W. Averell Harriman as governor in 1954, while simultaneously blocking his enemies, especially Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. in the 1954 race for state attorney general.

[93][94] Eleanor Roosevelt organized a counterattack with Herbert H. Lehman and Thomas K. Finletter to form the New York Committee for Democratic Voters, a group dedicated to fighting Tammany.

[107] When Tammany started to lose its political influence, and its all-important access to graft, it could no longer afford to maintain the 17th Street building, and in 1943 it was bought by a local affiliate of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.