"Boss" Tweed elected - 1852 - Tammany's control over the politics of New York City tightened considerably under Tweed. William Magear "Boss" Tweed's elevation to the head of the Tammany machine in 1852 and subsequent election to the US House of Representatives began one of the most extraordinary political careers of the 19th-century New York City and State. Tweed was elected to the US House of Representatives in 1852 and the New York County Board of Supervisors in 1858, the year that he became the head of the Tammany Hall political machine. He was also elected to the New York State Senate in 1867, but Tweed's greatest influence came from being an appointed member of a number of boards and commissions, his control over political patronage in New York City through Tammany, and his ability to ensure the loyalty of voters through jobs he could create and dispense on city-related projects. Tweed was convicted for stealing an amount estimated by an aldermen's committee in 1877 at between $25 million and $45 million from New York City taxpayers from political corruption, but later estimates ranged as high as $200 million. Unable to make bail, he escaped from jail once but was returned to custody. He died in the Ludlow Street Jail.Tammany did not take long to rebound from Tweed's fall. John Kelly, known as "Honest John", was a boss of Tammany Hall and a U.S. Representative from New York from 1855 to 1858. The title "Honest" was given to him during his years as New York City Sheriff and was more ironic than truthful. He was Tammany Hall's 1st Irish Catholic leader, a career politician whose nickname resulted from success in his earlier position as NY Sheriff, a post where the salary consisted of a portion of fees collected, in his case $800,000 by 1867.

The 1st Woman to Run for President - 1872 - Woodhull was politically active in the early 1870s when she was nominated as the first woman candidate for the United States presidency. Woodhull was the candidate in 1872 from the Equal Rights Party, supporting women's suffrage and equal rights; her running mate (unbeknownst to him) was abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass. A check on her activities occurred when she was arrested on obscenity charges a few days before the election. Her paper had published an account of the alleged adulterous affair between the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher and Elizabeth Richards Tilton which had rather more detail than was considered proper at the time. However, it all added to the sensational coverage of her candidacy.She was younger than the constitutionally mandated age of 35. Woodhull's 35th birthday was in September 1873, six months after the March inauguration.

Garfield's only presidential campaign speech - 1880 - On August 6, 1880, James A. Garfield delivered his only major campaign speech to 50,000 people in New York's Madison Square Park. This rare address occurred during his "front porch campaign," where he spoke from the Fifth Avenue Hotel to a massive crowd after a meeting with Republican leaders, focusing on party unity and national issues. 

The Speech Heard 'Round the World - 1860 - The six-foot-four midwestemer cook the fert from New Jersey and loped up Broadway to his lodging at the Astor House across from City Hall. He was in town to deliver a speech, the venue for which had been shifted to Cooper Union from Plymouth Church in leafy Brooklyn Heights. He boarded another ferry for the obligatory visit to hear Henry Ward Beecher deliver his Sunday sermon there. He also dropped by City Hall, a den of Southern sympathy and pro-cotton lobbyists, anti-abolitionism, and talk of secession by the nation's largest city. On Monday, February 27, 1860, before delivering his first speech in the east- a speech that would transform him from a regional phenomenon into a national political figure- he bought a new top hat from Knox at Fulton Street and dropped by Mathew Brady's temporary studio at Bleecker Street to sit for (actually, he was photographed standing up, to reflect his full stature) a likeness that would introduce him to the nation in a first political portrait.In the annals of American political oratory, few speeches rival Abraham Lincoln's presidential audition at Cooper Union that night in eloquence and impact. The hall sat eighteen hundred and was only three-quarters filled, but the speech, in which the fifty-one-year-old Lincoln contrarily declared that "right makes might," would be reprinted and disseminated to every corner of the country. Lincoln's goal was twofold: to unequivocally denounce slavery and to improve his party's odds in the 1860 presidential campaign. He managed to win the plaudits of New York's Republican newspapers and outflank the state's favorite son. William H. Seward, for the nomination later that year (he also collected an impressive two-hundred-dollar fee). His performance would blunt expected Democratic margins in the city sufficiently to deliver New York State and its trove of electoral votes to Lincoln that November. (With typical understatement, he wrote his wife a few days after the speech that it "went off passably well.")Organizers of the speech were competing with other offerings that night, including a performance by Jenny Lind, P. T. Barnum's "Swedish Nightingale," at the Winter Garden. The Cooper Union tickets were twenty-five cents, and apparently, only one survives. It was bought at auction in 2005 by Edward Gillette, a Kansas City, Kansas, criminal defense and personal injury lawyer whose great-great-grand-father served as a Union officer during the Civil War.Cooper Union would figure twice more in Lincoln what-ifs. According to some uncorroborated accounts, the morning after his speech, Erastus Corning, a director of the New York Central, offered Lincoln an astounding ten thousand dollars a year to be the railroad's lawyer. "If Lincoln had accepted his offer," Edward Hungerford wrote in Men and Iron, "he unquestionably would have declined the presidency of the United States."Twice more he was invited to speak at Cooper Union but declined. The last time was at an April 11, 1865, meeting to commemorate the attack on Fort Sumter. Had he attended, he probably would have been unable to return to Washington in time for the Good Friday performance at Ford's Theatre that ended his life."Cooper Union was not just a speech," Harold Holzer, a Lincoln scholar, wrote. "It was a conquest--a public relations triumph, a political coup d'état within the Republican party, and an image transfiguration abetted by the press and illustrated by the most felicitous photo opportunity in American history.TEXT FROM SAM ROBERTS 101 OBJECTS

President Jackson visited Castle Garden - 1833 - In 1833 President Andrew Jackson decided to visit the East Coast.  He spent a few days in Philadelphia taking in the sites at Independence Hall. and then arrived in New York for what was termed a ‘popularity’ visit. He disembarked at Castle Clinton mounted his horse and proceeded to lead a parade of supporters up Broadway to City Hall.  He successfully made it onto dry land but the hundred thousand supporters who followed him turned out to be a bit too heavy for the wooden footbridge connecting the Castle to Battery Park which gave way and a lot of people got wet. 

Chester Alan Arthur became the President - 1881 - Working tirelessly for the Stalwart faction of the Republican Party, Arthur was nominated to be James Garfield`s Vice-President at the 1880 Republican National Convention. Shot after only four months in office, Garfield lived for eighty days, then died on September 19, 1881. On September 20, Chester Alan Arthur was sworn in as the twenty-first President of the United States.Arthur was passionate about the finer things in life – good food and wine, elegant clothes, and fashionable surroundings. When he moved into the White House he had many of the rooms redecorated by Louis Comfort Tiffany and his firm Associated Artists, the most fashionable interior designers of the time. Perhaps the most magnificent of these spaces was a stained glass screen in red, white, and blue created for the entry hall.As President, Arthur took a generally progressive stand, signing and vigorously implementing the 1883 Pendleton Act, or civil service reform bill. He was also responsible for rebuilding and modernizing the U.S. Navy. Some of Arthur`s other executive actions remain more controversial: after vetoing a first version, he signed into law the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first legislation of its kind to restrict immigration to the United States. Although pressed by some members of the Republican party to continue his public service, Arthur retired from politics after serving his one term as President.

Ticker Tape Parade for John F. Kennedy, Democratic presidential nominee - 1960 - John Fitzgerald Kennedy campaigning for President of the United States with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in a ticker tape parade down Broadway in 1960. The Democratic Party`s presidential candidate, Senator John F. Kennedy, received a ticker-tape parade upon his arrival to New York City in October 1960. The Senator and his opponent, Vice President Richard Nixon, were visiting New York to participate in a presidential debate. Nixon did not receive a ticker-tape parade upon his arrival, a fact that both the Republican Party and Nixon protested as unequal treatment. Indeed, Republican leaders in New York attempted to cancel Kennedy`s ticker-tape parade. They failed, and the Senator`s procession drew crowds estimated at well over one million people, some of whom broke through the police tape to shake the candidate`s hand and storm his car. Mayor Robert Wagner referred to the event as “the greatest reception anybody has received in this section of the city in its history,” and the Police Commissioner noted that it rivaled the crowds greeting aviator Charles Lindbergh`s parade in 1927.

Bill Clintons presidency campaign in NYC - 1992 - As Hillary Clinton campaigned in Harlem, Bill Clinton addressed Irish Americans across Central Park at an Irish America Hall of Fame luncheon, where he received a lifetime achievement award for his role in the Northern Ireland peace process. Without mentioning his wife’s campaign, he reflected on winning the 1992 New York primary with Irish-American support and later helping broker the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.Clinton recalled how his interest in Irish issues deepened after his presidency and noted the lasting loyalty of Irish-American voters, likely benefiting Hillary Clinton in New York’s April 19 primary. Marking the centennial of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, he praised inclusive politics, quoted W.B. Yeats, warned against political division, and urged Britain to remain in the European Union, citing risks to Northern Ireland.