Note 23 — Chapter XII · THE EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY 1834-1837

A short time before, at an Anti-Monopolist meeting, Chairman Job Haskell had represented that the Tammany Society—the secret body, responsible to no one and enforcing its demands through the Tammany Hall political organization—was to blame for the political corruption. Resolutions were then passed setting forth that whereas the self-constituted, self-perpetuating Tammany Society had assumed a dictatorial attitude and by usages made by itself endeavored to rule the people as with a rod of iron; and, as they (the Equal Rights men) believed the people were capable of managing their own affairs without the aid of said inquisitorial society, “that we deem the Tammany Society an excrescence upon the body politic and dangerous to its rights and liberties.”