Boss Tweed had taken control of the…

Boss Tweed had taken control of the New York City government following the election of 1869.

His protégé, John T. Hoffman, the former mayor of the city, had won election as governor, and Tweed had garnered the support of good government reformers like Peter Cooper and the Union League Club, by proposing a new city charter which returned power to City Hall at the expense of the Republican-inspired state commissions.

The new charter had passed, thanks in part to six hundred thousand dollars in bribes Tweed has paid to Republicans, and is signed into law by Hoffman in 1870.

Mandated new elections allow Tammany to take over the city's Common Council when they win all fifteen aldermanic contests.

The new charter puts control of the city's finances in the hands of a Board of Audit, which consists of Tweed, who is Commissioner of Public Works, Mayor A. Oakey Hall and Comptroller Richard "Slippery Dick" Connolly, both Tammany men.

Hall also appoints other Tweed associates to high offices—such as Peter B. Sweeny, who takes over the Department of Public Parks—providing the Tweed Ring with even firmer control of the New York City government and enabling them to defraud the taxpayers of many more millions of dollars.

In the words of Albert Bigelow Paine, "their methods were curiously simple and primitive. There were no skilful manipulations of figures, making detection difficult ... Connolly, as Controller, had charge of the books, and declined to show them. With his fellows, he also 'controlled' the courts and most of the bar." (Paine, Albert B. (1974). Th. Nast, His Period and His Pictures. Princeton: Pyne Press, p. 143)