Here’s an Autograph of NYC Civil War Draft Riots Judge,

Boss Tweed Gang Member, NYC Mayor & Governor

JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN

(1828 – 1888)

POST - CIVIL WAR “BOSS TWEED” GANG MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY,

23^rd GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK

-&-

CIVIL WAR NYC POLICE JUDGE and DISTRICT ATTORNEY, DELIVERING SEVERE SENTENCES AGAINST PERSONS THAT HAD BEEN ENGAGED IN THE 1863 NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS.

While Hoffman was Mayor of New York City and Governor of New York the activities of the Tweed Ring were at their height. His political future was ruined by the conviction of “Boss” Tweed, although there was never any proof that Hoffman was involved in any criminal activity.

<<>::<>>

HERE’S HOFFMAN’S AUTOGRAPH REMOVED FROM AN ALS and MOUNTED WITH ITS CORRESPONDING “STATE OF NEW YORK. EXECUTIVE CHAMBER.” LETTERHEAD, DATED FEBY 9, 1870, and ADDRESSED TO

COL. EMMONS CLARK

(1827 – 1905)

CIVIL WAR “NEW YORK CITY DRAFT RIOTS” COLONEL and COMMANDER OF THE HISTORIC 7^th REGIMENT NEW YORK INFANTRY, N. G. S. N. Y.

-&-

BRIGADIER GENERAL NEW YORK MILITIA

PROVENANCE: This letter came out of a large archive of documents being the personal correspondence of Colonel Emmons Clark. This document has never seen the collector market.

 

The document measures 8" x 6” and is in very good condition – boldly signed by Hoffman.

A FINE ADDITION TO YOUR NEW YORK MILITARY & POLITICAL HISTORY AUTOGRAPH & MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION.

<<>::<>>

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE HONORABLE JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN

John Thompson Hoffman (10 Jan. 1828-24 Mar. 1888), Mayor of New York City and 23^rd Governor of New York, was born in Sing Sing (subsequently renamed Ossining), New York, the son of Adrian Kissam Hoffman, a physician, and Jane Ann Thompson. Hoffman graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, in 1848 and returned to his home town to study law with two local attorneys. Admitted to the bar in early 1849, he moved to New York City later that year to form a legal partnership with Samuel M. Woodruff and Judge William Leonard. In 1854 Hoffman married Ella Starkweather of New York City; the couple had one child.

Even before his move to New York City, Hoffman, who claimed kinship with both the Livingstons and Kissams, two of the state's more prominent families, had begun making a name in politics. In 1848 he had traveled throughout the state to speak on behalf of the Democratic presidential candidate, Lewis Cass, and was also elected to the party's central committee in New York. He continued to participate in politics after he was established in New York City. Hoffman became a member of the Young Men's Tammany Hall General Committee in 1854, and in 1859 he was elected to the Tammany Society's General Committee. Riven by factional strife over many of the same issues that were dividing the nation, the Democratic party in the state of New York was unable to campaign with its usual vigor. The party was also hurting in New York City, where Tammany Hall's ability to mobilize voters had held the key to Democratic success since the 1820s. Dissident factions, primarily Mozart Hall (named for the group's meeting place), were drawing away votes that normally went to Tammany-backed candidates. Tammany's efforts to secure Hoffman an appointment as a U.S. district attorney were ignored by the James Buchanan administration, which at the time was not particularly inclined to heed its requests for patronage.

In 1861, however, Hoffman's prospects improved dramatically when he was elected to the office of recorder, a position that gave him authority comparable to that of a police judge. Hoffman's win contrasted sharply with the fate of other Tammany candidates. Republican George Opdyke won the mayoralty, and William Tweed, not yet established as the organization's boss, lost his bid for sheriff. Oakey Hall, who had had the backing of the Mozart Hall faction in his race for district attorney but who soon made his peace with Tweed, also won. Their victories in this otherwise gloomy year earned Hoffman and Hall recognition as two of the city's most promising men in the Democratic Party.

Two years later Hoffman and Hall (as district attorney) occupied the key positions in the trial of participants in the New York City draft riots of 1863. The trials began in late July and continued into September, winning praise for both Hoffman and Hall, who were seen as firmly committed to law and order--and to union. Their efforts played an important symbolic role in Tweed's rise to supremacy in New York City's factionalized politics, for Tammany was positioning itself as a pillar of the wing of the Democratic party that was identified with support of the Union's war effort. The so-called War Democrats were by no means uncritical of the Abraham Lincoln administration, but they endeavored to stress support for the preservation of the Union.

Hoffman's record as an upholder of law and order and of nationalism also won praise from Republicans, and in 1863 he was reelected with bipartisan support. He gained the mayoralty in 1865 in a hotly contested four-way race. Although he apparently did not seek pecuniary gain from Tammany's graft, his popularity and respectability served as a front for the Tweed ring, which was then solidifying its dominance of Tammany Hall and undermining Mozart Hall's credibility as a rival within New York City. In his zeal to end the Civil War, Fernando Wood, leader of the Mozart faction, had allowed himself to be perceived as someone who would sacrifice the Union to bring about peace. Hoffman, who had been defeated for the governorship in 1866 by the incumbent Republican Reuben Fenton, was reelected overwhelmingly to the mayoralty in 1867. As mayor, Hoffman facilitated the machine's operations by naming Tweed henchman Peter B. Sweeny to the office of comptroller in 1867, but on occasion he also vetoed extravagant spending measures that the ring wanted. However, the extent of the Tweed ring's corruption would not be fully revealed for several years, and in the meantime Hoffman was able to increase his stature by stressing long-standing Democratic principles such as home rule and government noninterference with private morality.

Hoffman, the most visible and articulate opponent of Republican centralism, again received the Democratic nomination for governor in 1868. He won and resigned the mayoralty of New York City a few weeks before his inauguration in January 1869. Widespread voting fraud in the city had resulted in tens of thousands of fraudulent votes being cast for Hoffman and other Tammany candidates by repeaters, by individuals who existed only on paper, and by illegally naturalized immigrants. Without these votes Hoffman might well have been defeated. The pall cast by the election scandal on Hoffman's prospects for a successful administration did not last long, however, because Hoffman disarmed his critics with a masterful inaugural message to the state legislature. In it he emphasized the need for frugal government, for localism, and for an end to special legislation for favored lobbyists. Fortunately for Hoffman, a vote-buying scandal that erupted amid factional strife within the Republican party in New York diverted attention from the Democrats' problems and from his own failure early in his administration to veto the Erie (Railroad) Classification Bill that Tweed and the notorious financier Jay Gould wanted enacted.

As his term advanced, Hoffman continued his advocacy of Jacksonian principles and in 1870 won much praise for his part in helping bring about charter reform that gained New York City a greater measure of home rule than it had enjoyed in a generation. An 1847 charter bill had given Albany considerable say in New York City affairs. Home rule also played into the hands of Tweed by enabling him to pack New York City's various governmental agencies with his men. Although Hoffman often deferred to Tammany on patronage matters (his own father-in-law held the financially rewarding position of collector of assessments in the city), Hoffman's record as governor won applause in several quarters. His emphasis on traditional Democratic principles helped him retain the support of old Jacksonians, and he handled the controversial temperance issue adroitly by advocating decentralization of authority over excise taxes and license fees. That is, the state of New York could retain the tax law passed by a Republican-dominated legislature in 1866 but shift the emphasis to localism by allowing locally chosen boards to set the rates for their respective communities. The amended laws governing license fees were sufficiently ambiguous on Sunday closing so that both drys and wets could claim victory. Genteel reformers were impressed by his fiscal responsibility as well as by the special commission he named to eliminate obsolete statutes. To many in cosmopolitan New York City, Hoffman's stress on tolerance and localism was preferable to what historian Iver Bernstein refers to as "the aristocratic, nativist, and coercive style" offered by the Republican party.

Hoffman's achievements and the continued backing of the Tammany machine gained him reelection in 1870, this time unmarred by voting scandals. Eager to eradicate the stigma of disunion and to carry New York's large electoral vote, some northern Democrats began to look to Hoffman as a national standard-bearer. For several months he continued to enjoy the good fortune that had enabled him to overcome the stigma of the corrupt 1868 elections. Although he continued to make opposition to special interests a theme of his administration, Hoffman was nevertheless able to give Tammany much of what it wanted because large-scale construction projects often had advocates within the business community. To some, construction meant plunder; to others it meant civic improvement and commercial development. For instance, in 1871 Hoffman signed into law legislation for an elevated railway that would run the length of Manhattan on a massive stone viaduct. Financed by a combination of public and private funds, the viaduct plan had its critics but it also had the backing of reputable citizens such as merchant William Martin, editor Horace Greeley, and businessmen August Belmont and Peter Cooper. (The downfall of the Tweed ring discredited the Viaduct Railway before it could be built.)

Hoffman, who had presidential aspirations, began to dissociate himself from Tammany later in 1871 when he persuaded New York City authorities to withdraw their ban on the 12 July parade of the Loyal Order of Orangemen. Violence ensued when Irish Catholics clustered at the parade's assembly point to harass the marchers and the troops ordered by Hoffman to protect them. When stones were hurled and a shot fired, the militia retaliated by firing indiscriminately at the Catholic crowd. Several dozen people were killed. Hoffman's decision to permit the parade that ring insiders had initially opposed was risky for it could well cost him Irish support in any subsequent campaigns. The slayings made matters worse. But the question of the Catholic vote became moot when reports of the Tweed ring's enormous graft began to gain attention. Hoffman was by no means the only ranking Democrat to remain quiet as journalists and civic reformers bore the initial burden of protest, but he lost respect by delaying comment too long.

In the meantime, attorney Samuel Tilden, long prominent in Democratic party affairs, stepped forth as the chief spokesman for those who wished to prosecute Tammany leaders for graft. Hoffman finally seemed to join ranks with Tilden in the fall of 1871 by naming Charles O'Conor, a widely respected lawyer, as a special attorney general to recapture public funds in the civil courts. O'Conor was a member of the Tilden wing of the Democratic party who could be counted on to diligently pursue the investigation of the Tweed ring's graft. Satirized by the political cartoonist Thomas Nast as a wooden Indian (an Indian had often been used as the Tammany Society's emblem) mounted on wheels so he could be pushed and pulled toward the White House by the Tweed ring, Hoffman did not immediately disclose his intentions about running for reelection in 1872. Democrats, however, were relieved when Hoffman chose not to seek the party's nomination for governor and instead returned to the practice of law, first in Albany and later in New York City. He did head the New York delegation to the 1872 Democratic convention, where he promoted the nomination of Greeley for president, but rarely spoke out on politics thereafter. Hoffman had been suffering from heart disease for several years when he was stricken on his annual trip to Wiesbaden, Germany, where he died. At the time of his death he was affiliated with the law firm of Johnes, Willcox & Purdy.

From 1868 through 1892 every Democratic nominee for the presidency but one (General Winfield Scott Hancock in 1880) was a New Yorker: Horatio Seymour, Greeley, Tilden, and Grover Cleveland, who was elected president in 1884 and again in 1892. Whether the ambitious Hoffman would have tried to bid for the Democratic presidential nomination (that went to the liberal Republican Greeley) in 1872 is uncertain, for at age forty-four he might have preferred to run again for the governorship or seek some other office before trying for the presidency. In any event, it was not the tarnished Hoffman who became the Democratic candidate in 1876 but Tilden, the man who had humbled Boss Tweed.

Bibliography

No substantial body of Hoffman's papers survives. The Manuscript Division of the New York Public Library has about sixty items (mainly letters to Hoffman) that comprise one of the collections in the Personal Miscellaneous file. Papers of his contemporaries can be used in gaining insight into Hoffman's career in politics. Among the relevant collections are the papers of Manton Marble at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and the papers of Samuel J. Tilden at the New York Public Library. Personal information about Hoffman can be found in two laudatory profiles, Hiram Caulkins and De Witt Van Buren, Biographical Sketches of John T. Hoffman and Allen C. Beach (1868), and Adrian Hoffman Joline, "John Thompson Hoffman," New York Genealogical and Biographical Record (Apr. 1911): 111-28. The Public Papers of John T. Hoffman (1872) should also be consulted. Much insight into the politics of Hoffman's times can be found in Iver Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots (1990); Adrian Cook, The Armies of the Streets: The New York City Draft Riots of 1863 (1974); Leo Hershkowitz, Tweed's New York: Another Look (1977); and James C. Mohr, The Radical Republicans and Reform in New York during Reconstruction (1973). Three books by Jerome Mushkat, Tammany: The Evolution of a Political Machine (1971), The Reconstruction of the New York Democracy, 1861-1874 (1981), and Fernando Wood: A Political Biography (1990), are essential. Also pertinent are Alexander Flick, Samuel J. Tilden (1939); Alexander B. Callow, Jr., The Tweed Ring (1966); and Mark W. Summers, The Era of Good Stealings (1993). Charles F. Wingate, "An Episode in Municipal Government," North American Review (Oct. 1874), and DeAlva S. Alexander, A Political History of the State of New York, 1861-1882, vol. 3 (1909; repr. 1969), provide more detail on Hoffman than is common in more recent works. An obituary is in the New York Times, 25 Mar. 1888.  [Source: American National Biography]

I am a proud member of the Universal Autograph Collectors Club (UACC), The Ephemera Society of America, the Manuscript Society and the American Political Items Collectors (APIC) (member name: John Lissandrello). I subscribe to each organizations' code of ethics and authenticity is guaranteed. ~Providing quality service and historical memorabilia online for over 25 years.~

WE ONLY SELL GENUINE ITEMS, i.e., NO REPRODUCTIONS, FAKES OR COPIES!