William Magear Tweed also known as Boss Tweed was born on April 23, 1823 in New York City on the lower east side of Manhattan. He married a woman named Mary Jane Skaden a little after he was born in 1844, then organized a volunteer fire company. It didn’t take long for him to get into politics because he ran for city alderman but unfortunately he lost the race in 1850 when he was 26 years old. He wasn’t a quitter so he ran again the next year and won so he was elected to one term in Congress. This started out to bring him even more success but the niceness didn’t last long, all the while corruption started to take place. He fulfilled his mission in the Democratic Party and of course filled it with the people he was friendly with just like …show more content…
According to Biography, “ His influence in New York politics was growing, and in 1856 he was elected to a new city board of supervisors, the first position he would use for corrupt purposes”. This quote illustrates that he was going to use his new power as an advantage to start corrupting which would lead to bigger positions in the future. Tweed had a hold on New York City and the state Democratic Party so much that his candidates got elected for mayor of New York City, governor of New York and speaker of the state assembly. He became chairperson of the New York county Democratic Party and the leader of the Tammany Club. Later on Rutherford Hayes tried to bring down the Tweed Ring because he was so powerful and earned his way by corruption. Rutherford spent most of his time trying to take down Tweed so much that he didn’t thrive and work towards being successful at something. When he spent most of his time doing this, the Republicans considered this as a major cover-up. The Democratic came back with a response and argued that the length of time was necessary for state power to isolate and weaken local government