Tammany Society

Tammany Society, also known as the Columbian Order, originally a nationwide United States patriotic and charitable organization, devoted to the preservation of democratic institutions, and specifically opposing the aristocratic theories advanced by the Federalist party; it was later confined to New York and was identified with the Democratic party machine there. The Tammany Society is often referred to as Tammany Hall, after the name of its headquarters, which is in New York.

Tammany was founded in New York in 1789 by William Mooney, a former soldier and a prominent anti-Federalist. It was named after a 17th-century Delaware chief known for his wisdom. Tammany was originally organized into 13 “tribes”, one in each of the 13 states; its officers were accorded Native American titles, such as sachem and sagamore; and its meeting places were referred to as wigwams. The national character of Tammany was relatively short-lived. In New York, Aaron Burr gained control of the society in 1798, organizing it as a political machine that helped elect Thomas Jefferson president and Burr vice-president in 1800. In 1836, the grand sachem of Tammany, Martin Van Buren, was elected president.

The society first attained a dominant political influence in New York in 1855, when one of its leaders, Fernando Wood, was elected mayor. About 13 years later the notorious William Marcy Tweed was elected grand sachem of Tammany; his regime, which lasted until 1871, was marked by a notable rise in corruption in the municipal administration.

Beginning in the 1880s under New York Democratic leader Richard Croker, and after 1902 under his successor, Charles F. Murphy, Tammany Hall exercised a profound influence over city and state politics. It continued to have a reputation for corrupt practices and was regularly opposed by reform groups. Tammany leader Alfred E. Smith ran unsuccessfully for the presidency on the Democratic ticket in 1928. In 1926 the Tammany candidate Jimmy Walker was elected mayor of New York. Charges of corruption were levelled at his administration, and the findings of an investigation conducted at the insistence of the state legislature caused Walker to resign in 1932. Excluded from power during the administration (1933-1945) of reform mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, the Tammany Democrats returned to office in the late 1940s, but were weakened in subsequent years by a growing Democratic reform movement. After the defeat of Democratic leader Carmine De Sapio in 1961, the name Tammany Hall gradually passed out of use.