ited rare cunning in the capture
of the State Senate. Until this fortress of Republican opposition
surrendered, Hoffman's appointments, like those of Seward in 1839,
could not be confirmed.

After this election William M. Tweed's supremacy was acknowledged. In
1867 he had captured the Assembly and elected most of the State
officials; in 1868, after forcing the nomination of John T. Hoffman,
he made him governor by a system of gigantic frauds; and now in 1869,
having employed similar tactics in the southern tier of counties, he
had carried the Senate by four majority, secured the Assembly by
sixteen, and for the third time elected the State officials. This made
him leader of the State Democracy. Seymour so understood it, and
Tilden knew that he existed only as a figurehead.

Tweed's power became more apparent after the Legislature opened in
January, 1870. He again controlled the Assembly committees through
William Hitchman, his speaker; he arranged them to his liking in the
Senate through Allen C. Beach, the lieutenant-governor; and he
sweetened a majority of the members in both houses with substantial
hopes of large rewards. This defeated an organisation, called the
Young Democracy, which hoped to break his power by the passage of a
measure known as the Huckleberry Charter, transferring the duties of
State commissions to the Board of Aldermen. Then Tweed appeared with a
charter. Sweeny was its author and home-rule its alleged object. It
substituted for metropolitan commissions, devised and fostered by
Republicans, municipal departments charged with equivalent duties,
whose heads were appointed by the mayor. It also created a department
of docks, and merged the election of city and state officials. Its
crowning audacity, however, was the substitution of a superintendent
of public works for street commissioner, to be appointed by the mayor
for a term of four years, and to be removable only after an
impeachment trial, in which the entire six judges of the Common Pleas
Court must participate. It was apparent that this charter perpetuated
whatever was most feared in the system of commissions, and obliterated
all trace of the corrective. It was obvious, also, that by placing
officials beyond the reach of everybody interested in their good
behaviour except the Courts, whose aid could be invoked only by the
mayor, and by him only for the extreme offense of malfeasance, it gave
a firmer hold to a Ring actuated by the resolute