You Can’t Fight Tammany Hall!

So screwen cold was it that Thomas Warne wondered what compelled him to marshall his men, and head down to the docks in the company of Allan Pinkerton. So cold was the air that the merest breeze seemed to rake his flesh and seep into his bones, yet he also felt mildly feverish and this discomfiting state of affairs left him feeling humiliated. That and the way his heart beat seventeen to the dozen as they neared the docks (skipping a beat as he espied the Resurgam, moored within the harbour). He felt shamed for here he was, about to ride in to the rescue of a woman who clearly didn’t need no rescuing! For a battle encounter with Kitty Grid-Iron was the equivalent of being tied to a ships hull and keel-hauled. If you were a border ruffian you hoped to survive the collision with life if not limb intact. But if you were a secessionist, unless might hisself – accompanied by a Gatling gun and several pistols -was on your side, survival was a tenuous option. The woman was thought by some to be the very devil when it came to meting out northern justice! For all that he loved her and would gladly have laid his life down for her, if she had ever asked!

“Tread carefully gentleman” warned Pinkerton, “Have your pistols at the ready, but we aren’t aiming for discord, there’s only watchmen and constables around this early in the day, and mayhap we will get our business done without so much as a shot being fired”

“Mayhap” murmured one Cletis Halliday under his breath,

“Then again maybe not” replied another. t’is all one to the men riding alongside him, who are so at ease that one could be forgiven for thinking that they meant no harm. Not so, for unlike Allan Pinkerton they harbour no slumbering moral sense, at the first sign of trouble they will draw and fire and the devil take the one who gets in their way! T’is the way of New York Harbour, where the constables and watchmen are allowed to steal all they can from those who won’t pay the Tammany Hall ‘tax’, and where those businessmen who try to take their ship’s cargo entire, are liable to wind up floating in the bay with a bullet in their backs, courtesy of the Tammany ‘taxmen’. As a consequence, Thomas Warne rode with his men when conducting business at the docks, and in that way he avoided the harsh bribes and most of the violence. As they continued to make their progress slowly along the harbour they perceived a wagon waiting to one side of the Resurgam and two burly men staggering under the weight of a carpet bag. This weighty encumbrance seemed to have taken on a life of it’s own, for it writhed and buckled as if for all the world there were a human being contained therein. At one point the men saw fit to drop the carpet bag heavily upon the dock, before picking it up once more and loading it into the back of the wagon. Thomas Warne and Allan Pinkerton looked at each other and then towards the two men who, muttering many salty curses, clambered into the back of the wagon.

“Is that the good English Lord they have bundled into that carpet bag?” asked Thomas Warne smiling grimly Pinkerton nodded,

“None other, though he may parade himself like an Englishman, and dress like an Englishman, he is most emphatically Irish, and it is as an Irishman remiss in his duties to his fellow Irishmen, that he shall be summarily tried (by his own people naturally), and either set free or executed!”

Soon two other figures appeared, one dark and slender, and the other dressed as becomes a New York gentlewoman, except that Thomas knew her skirts were artfully split to the waist so that she could run at a tilt, kneel, and fire several volleys off a rifle. Climbing aboard the front of the wagon and grabbing the reins they sought to leave the docks, but as if from nowhere men emerged one of whom took hold of the reins staying the horses progress.

“Remember what I said! No shooting less’n there’s a need!”

In no time at all they reached the Tammany thugs who, perceiving that there was nought but a woman and a ‘nigrah’ in the wagon, mistook Kitty for a blowen and were even now in the progress of trying to elicit a ‘tax’ from her ill-gotten gains.

“Gentlemen, I’ve no wish to interfere with your commerce, but this lady is under my charge, if you would be so kind?” the two ‘gentlemen’ cock their heads, narrow their eyes and reach for their pistols. In turn Thomas Warne’s men sliding nimbly off their stallions, cock their pistol hammers back and get ready to fire. The Tammany ‘taxmen’ look confused, nay offended, to shoot a businessman who won’t pay his taxes is permissible, but to be shot at? T’is the height of bad manners!

“Ain’t a man uses these docks don’t pay for the use!” they wail piteously,the vicious glare they cast at Kitty says more than words will tell,

“Till now” hissed Alan Pinkerton aiming his peacemaker at the thugs,”Step away from the wagon if you please sirs, farther thank you!”

Snatching the reins back Kitty jerks hard on them, driving her wagon out of there with all speed. With mounting rage the thwarted thugs aim to wound at least one of the malefactors and cause them to fall beneath the hooves of their horses. But as they cock their pistols at the ready, aim, and get ready to fire, they hear another click, and this one sounds altogether different from their own. T’is Methuselah O’Houlihan displaying his usual lack of grace toward Boss Tweed’s men.

“Make one more motion and I’ll put a hole in you so big they’ll have to pack your corpse with dirt before they bury it, now git!” one look in those rattle snake eyes is the end of all argument, they swiftly make their exit!

Of Explosives Strong Enough to Wreck The Throne

The most ignoble army ever to sally forth from the shores of England has found itself a home. Driven abroad by lethargic indifference to their plight, tossed like fetid refuse upon America’s shores, they have at last found safe harbour. Ushered reluctantly through the golden gates of ‘ole New York’ they have found grudging solace in the only refuge afforded them, that bustling, crumbling, begrimed sanctuary, the sixth ward. Put far away from the well paved streets and gas lit walkways of wealthy Upper Manhattan socialites; they tenant unsanitary conditions, poorly ventilated, and prone to occasional outbreaks of Cholera. As well they might! Having brought neither wealth nor social standing to the banqueting tables of enterprise. A strange and inverted world this is, where the same poverty that  reduced Irish farmers to penury can, in this place, and at this time, excite in them a thrilling degree of cunning, propelling some to fame and wealth, and others to infamy….and wealth!

Take Thomas Warne, he whose travels to Calcutta and the Indies came to be most thrillingly reported in the Morning Courier. Orphaned at the tender age of ten, he enlisted upon a packet boat bound for China, and having the good fortune to be abducted by an elderly pirate from Canton, turned ‘privateer’ at the age of twelve. With the money made from his share of ‘privateering’ he purchased his first ship, traversing the waters of China, Cuba, and the Indies. Till at length he was able to set up shop in Manhattan, leaving the running of his ships to others. T’was rumoured that Mr Warne had once been a near-starved Irish emigrant, t’is even said that he sat by his da’s withered corpse for nigh on five days ere he was found. These days who may tell? At thirty he’s as handsome a man as any in New York, one worth $100,000, and the world is his oyster!

To look upon the corpse of a man as one would do a dog is a gift few have been cursed with. Isaiah Wynders is such a one, a Tammany man from the crooked shine of his hob nailed boots, to the brilliantined wave in his jet black hair. Look upon that snaggle-toothed alligator smile ye ladies and despair! If ever a fiend bound for hell were clad in mortal flesh, t’is he! A river boat rat, a gambler, a hard eyed filleter of reckless men, a purveyor of favours and champion of the common man! You doubt me dear reader? Then look upon ole Mother Connor as she clambers gamely out of her rocking chair doffing her bonnet with a shrill,

“God save ye Mr Wynders!” and Mr Wynders halting briefly in his journey turns aside to clasp the frail old widow’s hands and enquire as to how

“Frances is keeping and how the trade suits him?” whereupon Widow Connor’s dull eyes brim with grateful tears,

“The trade suits him jes fine your grace” says she, and with a tremulous shake of his hand she resumes her seat by the front door and he passes on.

“Bless me if it ain’t Mr Wynders!”

This time it is Mrs O’Shea-baby at her hip-who halts his turn into Shadder Avenue, asking after his health and thanking him for the good turn he done her husband (now a docker), and her son (an apprentice carpenter). And so it continues from one avenue to the next, with much tugging of forelocks, shaking of hands and partaking of blessings. Indeed he is so burdened with gratitude and thanks, t’would seem that the path to perdition lies blocked and the gates of heaven beckon, were it not for the iniquitous lure of King Cotton. The virile life’s blood of the southern states, it sparkles and glistens like white gold on New York’s docks. White gold that may only be stored by Tammany porters and packed by Tammany dock men, upon ships which may only dock with the tacit approval of the harbour commissioners-Tammany men everyone. And now t’would seem (through no fault of his!) as though the lucrative flow of commerce-and bribes- were to be put in serious jeopardy.

“Have they shot Lincoln yet?”

“Nope, he got through Virginia in one piece,  Maryland too”

“He took Pinkerton agents with him?”

“Ten of em, toting Winchester rifles and packing Colt pistols or so I am tole! The south can be a bottomless terror for them that don’t love er!”

“They mean’t to take him in Baltimore?”

“They failed, for better or worse he’s president now!”

“Has the world gone mad? There wasn’t a working man in alla New York didn’t vote Democrat! I saw to it!”

Isaiah Winders smiled, “There is no denying the service that Tammany has rendered New York. There is no other organization for taking hold of untrained, friendless men and converting them into citizens. Who else in the city would do it? For all that, somebody voted us a Republican president, and now? Half the Southern states have seceded!”

Boss Tweed chuckled, he puffed ruminatively on his cigar for the longest time, then he chuckled some more,

“Where’s Michael Houlihan?” he asked stretching forth a beringed hand that the fearful miner might kiss it,

“Yer Grace!” murmured the man holding the Tammany society ring to his lips as if Boss Tweed were the Pope himself (heaven forfend!). Boss Tweed winked at Isaiah Winders who sizing up the shabby little coal miner wondered what use he could possibly be to the Tammany cause. He did not have to wonder long,

“Just look at him! Ain’t it just good to look at him! Here stands the reason why come hell or tarnation no Republican president will ever defeat the will of the people! Take a seat Mr Houlihan!”

Michael Houlihan sat. Boss Tweed beamed and though the smile should have warmed the very innards of Michael Houlihan’s soul it had the opposite effect. For who had not heard of Tammany Hall? The tiger of the five boroughs devouring all who stood in its path, including him if he wasn’t careful. He shouldn’t have taken that job at ‘The Silver Slipper’ nor the ‘gift’ of 50 dollars but taken he had,now there was the very devil to pay for it.

“Tell Mr Winders what you have told me” and so with a heavy sigh Michael spoke, of an iron clad ship, a brace of  vengeful Molly Maguires, two Pinkerton agents and their scandal drenched cargo, the exiled Lord Grid-Iron. Blushing furiously with shame he recounted the manner in which the English aristocrat had been abducted, and of his intended destination, the coal fields of Oklahoma. Boss Tweed looked across at Isaiah Winders whose face was strained with incredulity,

“The abduction of an English minister of the state? He’s lying!”. But Boss Tweed shook his head,

“I telegraphed London two weeks ago, Lord Grid-Iron is missing, believed dead. Just imagine how grateful the English would be if we were to return him…for a price.That iron-clad ship set off from Liverpool harbour over a month ago, it should arrive any day now and when it does? I want you and your men ready and waiting!”