and a stiff hat, the young
men of his class had made a hero of the tall, graceful, athletic
chief. His smiles were winning and his manners magnetic. From leading
a fire company he quickly led the politics of his district and then of
his ward, utilising his popularity by becoming in 1859 a member of the
Board of Supervisors, and in 1863 deputy street commissioner. As
supervisor he influenced expenditures and the making of contracts,
while the street deputy-ship gave him control of thousands of
labourers and sent aldermen after him for jobs for their ward
supporters. Thus intrenched he dropped chair-making, a business
inherited from his father, put up the sign of lawyer, and became known
to friends and foes as Boss Tweed, a title to which he did not object.

[Footnote 1129: Gustavus Myers, _History of Tammany Hall_, p. 250.]

Like Hoffman, Tweed had a most agreeable personality. Always
scrupulously neat in his dress and suave in manner, he possessed the
outward characteristics of a gentleman, being neither boastful nor
noisy, and never addicted to the drink or tobacco habit. To his
friends the warmth of his greeting and the heartiness of his
hand-shake evidenced the active sympathies expressed in numberless
deeds of kindness and charity. Yet he could be despotic. If he desired
a motion carried in his favour he neglected to call for negative
votes, warning opponents with significant glances of the danger of
incurring his displeasure. Once, when his ruling as chairman of a
Tammany nominating convention raised a storm of protests, he blocked
the plans of his adversaries by adjourning the meeting and turning off
the gas.

Although Tweed, perhaps, was often at fault in his estimate of men who
frequently deceived him, he selected his immediate lieutenants with
intelligent care. In 1857 he had George G. Barnard elected recorder
and Peter B. Sweeny district attorney. About the same time Richard B.
Connolly became county clerk. When Barnard's term expired in 1860 he
advanced him to the Supreme Court and took up Hoffman for recorder.
Later Hoffman became mayor and Connolly city comptroller. After
Hoffman's second promotion A. Oakey Hall was made mayor. In his way
each of these men contributed strength to the political junta which
was destined to grow in influence and power until it seemed
invincible. Hall had been a versifier, a writer of tales in prose, a
Know-nothing, a friend of Seward, and an anti-Tammany Democrat. As a
clu