ion, and the press in the main approved it.[1271] Even the
_World_, after its bitter attacks in the preceding winter upon the
Ring officials, championed their cause.[1272] "There is not another
municipal government in the world," said Manton Marble, "which
combines so much character, capacity, experience, and energy as are to
be found in the city government of New York under the new
charter."[1273] The final Democratic rally of the campaign also
contributed to Tammany's glory. Horatio Seymour was the guest of honor
and August Belmont chairman. Conspicuous in the list of
vice-presidents were Samuel J. Tilden, George Tichnor Curtis, Augustus
Schell, and Charles O'Conor, while Tweed, with Hoffman and McClellan,
reviewed thirty thousand marchers in the presence of one hundred
thousand people who thronged Union Square, attracted by an
entertainment as lavish as the fetes of Napoleon III. To many this
prodigal expenditure of money suggested as complete and sudden a
collapse to Tweed as had befallen the French Emperor, then about to
become the prisoner of Germany. In the midst of the noise Seymour,
refraining from committing himself to Tammany's methods, read a
carefully written essay on the canals.[1274] It was noted, too, that
Tilden did not speak.

[Footnote 1271: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1870, pp. 543, 544; Frank J.
Goodnow in Bryce's _American Commonwealth_, Vol. 1, p. 342.]

[Footnote 1272: New York _World_, March 29, 1870.]

[Footnote 1273: _Ibid._, June 13, 1871.]

[Footnote 1274: _Ibid._, Oct. 28, 1870.]

The election resulted in the choice of all the Democratic candidates,
with sixteen of the thirty-one congressmen and a majority in each
branch of the Legislature. Hall was also re-elected mayor.[1275]
Republicans extracted a bit of comfort out of the reduced majority in
New York City, but to all appearances Tammany had tightened its grip.
Indeed, on New Year's Day, 1871, when Hoffman and Hall, with almost
unlimited patronage to divide, were installed for a second time, the
Boss had reason to feel that he could do as he liked. From a modest
house on Henry Street he moved to Fifth Avenue. At his summer home in
Greenwich he erected a stable with stalls of finest mahogany. His
daughter's wedding became a prodigal exhibition of great wealth, and
admittance to the Americus Club, his favourite retreat, required an
initiation fee of one thousand dollars. To the poor he gave lavishly.
In the winter of 1870-71 he donate