SOCIETY OF TAMMANY, OR COLUMBIAN ORDER. TAMMANY HALL, COUNCIL CHAMBER OF THE GREAT WIGWAM, NEW YORK, DEC. 21, 1853. SIR: WE AVAIL OURSELVES OF THIS AUSPICIOUS OCCASION, IN THE NAME OF ALL THE PATRIOTIC MEMORIES OF THE EIGHTH OF JANUARY, AND OF ITS DEAD BUT DEATHLESS HERO, TO APPEAL TO OUR DEMOCRATIC BRETHREN...
New York: 1853. Folded, pale blue folio sheet. [3], [1 blank] pp. Light wear, Very Good.
The Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, was founded in 1789; it became a powerful political organization in New York City and County and, by mid-19th century, one of the most powerful such associations in the country.
This rare publication-- signed at the end in type by Daniel Delavan, George Messerve, and other Tammany stalwarts-- is a call for Democratic Party unity, in the spirit of the annual Jackson Day celebration in memory of Old Hickory. It warns of the "scandalous spectacle of dissensions fatal to the ascendancy of the Democratic Party in the Empire State." Such a possible rupture is based, not on principled disagreement over Slavery, but on "petty personal preferences, feuds and interests." The reference to "the eighth of January" is Old Hickory's victory against the British at New Orleans in 1815.
The document lauds the "sacred...sound and strong State-Right's spirit" which is the "leading characteristic" of the Democratic Party. Continuing "criminal continuance" of strife [between Hunker and Barn-Burner factions] within New York's Democratic Party will have "fatal consequences in the next great national contest of parties on the broad battle field of the Union!" OCLC locates a single copy.
OCLC 60954619 [1- NYHS] as of April 2024. Item #27744
Price: $750.00