wards the
decision and procurement of the Eighth Avenue railway grant, a sum
so large that would startle the most credulous was expended; but in
consequence of the voluntary absence of important witnesses, the Grand
Jury was left without direct testimony of the particular recipients of
the different amounts."

These and other exposures brought on a number of amendments to the city
charter, surrounding with greater safeguards the sale or lease of city
property and the letting of contracts; and a reform council was elected.
Immediately upon the heels of this reform movement followed the shameful
regime of Fernando Wood, an able, crafty, unscrupulous politician, who
began by announcing himself a reformer, but who soon became a boss in
the most offensive sense of that term--not, however, in Tammany Hall,
for he was ousted from that organization after his reelection as mayor
in 1856. He immediately organized a machine of his own, Mozart Hall. The
intense struggle between the two machines cost the city a great sum, for
the taxpayers were mulcted to pay the bills.

Through the anxious days of the Civil War, when the minds of thoughtful
citizens were occupied with national issues, the tide of reform ebbed
and flowed. A reform candidate was elected mayor in 1863, but Tammany
returned to power two years later by securing the election and then the
reelection of John T. Hoffman. Hoffman possessed considerable ability
and an attractive personality. His zeal for high office, however, made
him easily amenable to the manipulators. Tammany made him Governor and
planned to name him for President. Behind his popularity, which was
considerable, and screened by the greater excitements of the war,
reconstruction, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, lurked the Ring,
whose exposures and confessions were soon to amaze everyone.

The chief ringster was William M. Tweed, and his name will always
be associated in the public mind with political bossdom. This is his
immortality. He was a chairmaker by trade, a vulgar good fellow by
nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a
grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the
general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When
he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes;
and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which
usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany with a h