The election was favorable to Tammany. About 3,800 workingmen who had supported the independent movement the previous year, went back to Tammany, because of its advocacy of the mechanics’ lien law. The average Tammany plurality was 3,000. The real Workingmen’s ticket polled a vote of about 2,200; the Clay Workingmen’s ticket a little above 7,000, and the Agrarian, 116.
For the next few years the contest of Jackson with the United States Bank drew together the energies of all Democrats supporting him. Dropping local contests, they united to renew his power. For the time, the Workingmen’s movement ceased to exist.
[1] “The members [of the Legislature] themselves sometimes participated in the benefits growing out of charters created by their own votes; … if ten banks were chartered at one session, twenty must be chartered the next and thirty the next. The cormorants could never be gorged. If at one session you bought off a pack of greedy lobby agents … they returned with increased numbers and more voracious appetite.”--Hammond, Vol. II, pp. 447-48.
Four conspicuous “charter dealers” at Albany were Sachems Samuel B. Romaine, Michael Ulshoeffer, Peter Sharpe and Abraham Stagg, all powerful organization leaders.
[3] _MS. Minutes of the Common Council_, Vol. 48, pp. 59-60.
[4] Noah, after falling into financial difficulties, had been ousted from the editorship of the _National Advocate_ and had now become associated with his former political enemy, James Watson Webb, in the conduct of the _Courier and Enquirer_.
[5] _MS. Minutes of the Common Council_, Vol. 70, p. 311. Shortly after this the Wigwam men removed Smith from his post of Commissioner of the Almshouse for opposing Bowne. So great was the haste to oust him, before the Aldermen went out of office, that one of the board seconded the motion for his removal before the motion was made.
[6] The general committee was now composed of thirty-six members, mainly the directors in banking and other companies. Remonstrances at this time were frequent that its important proceedings were a sealed book to the electors. Among other things it dictated to the wards not only when, but where, they should meet.
[7] The term “Whig” had now come to have a definite party meaning, being used as a popular designation of the group led by John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, officially known (1828-36) as the National Republican party. The term is first found in American politics applied to the Separatists during the Revolution. About 1808 it was taken by the anti-Burr faction of the Democratic-Republican party.