The Don Jr. Wedding May Be the Emblem of a Corrupt Age

On May 31, 1871, William Marcy Tweed threw a spectacularly lavish wedding for his daughter, Mary Amelia, in New York City. “Boss” Tweed was then at the height of his power as the political master of New York City, its ruling Democratic Party, and its . Elected to the U.S. House at 29 in 1852, he sacrificed his career in Washington to vote for the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which was massively unpopular in the North. This was not a stance on principle: The vote was a test of party loyalty, and the Pierce administration paid off Tweed by appointing a friend to a job as postmaster. Returning home to New York, Tweed was running Tammany Hall by 1858.

The corruption he oversaw was immense. It at least doubled the cost of building anything that the city could touch. The Tweed Courthouse cost some $13-14 million to build, twice the cost of the Alaska Purchase during the same period. David McCullough argued in that the Brooklyn Bridge would never have been completed had the Tweed Ring not fallen early in its construction. Tweed and his cronies were convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars — some modern estimates place the real amount in the hundreds of millions — which would be worth billions today. Alfred Ely Beach, who published , decided to build a pioneering subway line between 1868 and 1870, powered by an immense pneumatic tube, and to avoid paying off Tweed, he built it like a bank heist, removing the dirt at night and not telling the city what he was building until it was ready for passengers.

On May 31, 1871, William Marcy Tweed threw a spectacularly lavish wedding for his daughter, Mary Amelia, in New York City. “Boss” Tweed was then at the height of his power as the political master of New York City, its ruling Democratic Party, and its . Elected to the U.S. House at 29 in 1852, he sacrificed his career in Washington to vote for the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which was massively unpopular in the North. This was not a stance on principle: The vote was a test of party loyalty, and the Pierce administration paid off Tweed by appointing a friend to a job as postmaster. Returning home to New York, Tweed was running Tammany Hall by 1858.

The corruption he oversaw was immense. It at least doubled the cost of building anything that the city could touch. The Tweed Courthouse cost some $13-14 million to build, twice the cost of the Alaska Purchase during the same period. David McCullough argued in The Great Bridge that the Brooklyn Bridge would never have been completed had the Tweed Ring not fallen early in its construction. Tweed and his cronies were convicted of stealing tens of millions of dollars — some modern estimates place the real amount in the hundreds of millions — which would be worth billions today. Alfred Ely Beach, who published Scientific American, decided to build a pioneering subway line between 1868 and 1870, powered by an immense pneumatic tube, and to avoid paying off Tweed, he built it like a bank heist, removing the dirt at night and not telling the city what he was building until it was ready for passengers.