Fernando Wood set a new pace in this race for votes. It has been
estimated that in 1854 there "were about 40,000 shiftless,
unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of
others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary
elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating, and
breaking up meetings." Wood also systematized naturalization. A
card bearing the following legend was the open sesame to American
citizenship:
"Common Pleas:
Please naturalize the bearer.
N. Seagrist, Chairman."
Seagrist was one of the men charged by an aldermanic committee
"with robbing the funeral pall of Henry Clay when his sacred
person passed through this city."
When Hoffman was first elected mayor, over 15,000 persons were
registered who could not be found at the places indicated. The
naturalization machinery was then running at high speed. In 1868,
from 25,000 to 30,000 foreigners were naturalized in New York in
six weeks. Of 156,288 votes cast in the city, 25,000 were
afterwards shown to be fraudulent. It was about this time that an
official whose duty it was to swear in the election inspectors,
not finding a Bible at hand, used a volume of Ollendorf's "New
Method of Learning to Read, Write, and Speak French." The courts
sustained this substitution on the ground that it could not
possibly have vitiated the election!
A new federal naturalization law and rigid election laws have
made wholesale frauds impossible; and the genius of Tammany is
now attempting to adjust itself to the new immigration, the new
political spirit, and the new communal vigilance.
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