Showing posts with label Tammany Hall. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tammany Hall. Show all posts

Friday, September 20, 2019

Gansevoort Melville, speeches and more on Melvilliana

The New York Public Library Digital Collections
For anyone looking into the life and times of Herman Melville's brilliant older brother Gansevoort Melville (1815-1846), here are links to relevant posts on Melvilliana, starting with those containing transcriptions (partial, mostly) of Gansevoort's political speeches.

Speeches by Gansevoort Melville

Letters

More on Gansevoort Melville

Published scholarship:
  • Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). See especially chapter 5, In the Shadow of the Young Furrier (pages 84-103); and chapter 16, The Sailor, the Orator, and the Grand Contested Election: 1844 (pages 316-338).
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Saturday, May 4, 2019

Allan Melville gets Gansevoort's ticket to the ball


This is one of the letters from Gansevoort Melville to William Edward Cramer in the Augusta Melville papers, now accessible online courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections. I like Gansevoort's expressions "gall and wormwood" and "unmitigated dulness"; and the latinity at the end. Dated January 9, 1845 when Herman Melville (not mentioned here) was also in New York City. Seymour is Horatio Seymour. Foster is Henry Allen Foster.
New York. January 9th 1845.
Astor House. Thursday
Private & Confidential

Friend Cramer. Your letter of Saturday and Monday found me on a sick bed to which with the exception of a single interval of a couple of hours I had been confined for several days. This morning I am sitting up, but am very much debilitated and do not expect to be permitted to leave my room for some days to come. The news of Seymour's election as Speaker reached me at the same time with your letter. I was not surprised at it and from certain givings-out had anticipated the result of the contest. That result must be gall and wormwood to certain gentlemen in Albany who were active in the effort to defeat him. The majority in caucus - 5 - was small but still enough --enough for Seymour-- but not enough to place another Oneida man --Foster-- out of danger.

The Tammany ball last night went off with a good deal of eclat, as I understand from Allan, who (I being unable to attend) had the benefit of my ticket. In case I hear of any opening of the kind you mention I will inform you at once, in compliance with your request--but I do not think it probable that things of that kind of a desirable character are apt to turn up without being sought.

The little that I have written has been with some effort--excuse its unmitigated dulness and pray enliven my sick chamber with a daily epistle de omnibus rebus et multis aliis.

Yours Truly

Gansevoort Melville
Peter A. Cowdrey late Corporation Counsel is another applicant for the anticipated vacancy on the bench of the Circuit Court. He is a respectable man and a lawyer of fair standing.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Melville, Gansevoort" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1844 - 1845. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/58ffefc0-5c82-0136-14dd-194ba775773e

Astor House, Broadway, 1867
via The New York Public Library Digital Collections 

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Thursday, May 24, 2012

Gansevoort Melville at Tammany Hall, 1842

TYRANTS PROSTRATE LIBERTY TRIUMPHANT. 
1844 polemic applauding Democratic support of the Dorrite cause
Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
In 1843 the New York Express recalled that Gansevoort Melville's "first debut as a public orator was in favor of Dorr the Rhode Island runaway” ("Great Mass Meeting of Irish Repealers in the Park"; reprinted in the Richmond Whig on June 20, 1843).

Below we find Gansevoort arguing for the extension of democratic voting rights in Rhode Island in what must be one of his earliest political speeches, close in time and theme to that "first debut" in support of Thomas Wilson Dorr and the Dorr Rebellion.

From the New York Weekly Herald, April 30, 1842; reprinted from the New York Herald of Thursday, April 28, 1842:
Non-Extraordinary Meeting in Tammany Hall--Root Beer Crisis in Rhode Island.
A very curious, cool, dispassionate, hard, unenthusiastic meeting, was held on Wednesday at Tammany Hall, relative to the present crisis in the affairs of pretty little Rhode Island. The Hall was about half full. There was a great deal of talk, but no cider—we mean enthusiasm. It had more the appearance of a root-beer assemblage—gathered together to “head off Captain Tyler,” in a small way, about his letter to the Governor of Rhode Island; but the lion-spirit of the democracy did not shake his mane, nor give a roar worth a button….

MR. MELVILLE then rose, and said he was sorry Eli Moore and Mr. Parmentier were not there. They could speak so much better than him, and so could Aaron Vanderpoel. [Cheers.] He labored under great disadvantages. [Cheers] The worthy Chairman was great at compression. [Cheers] He was not. [Cheers] This meeting would assure Rhode Island of the sympathy of New York. Freemen should not be coerced into a charter which the people had despised and rejected—That charter dates from 1683. It’s the last relic of British oppression in this country. (Cheers) The people of Rhode Island had so much wisdom and purity, that they had borne it so long. Its two obvious features were inequality of representation and the property qualification. Portsmouth with 1700 inhabitants sent as many men to the Assembly as Providence with 23,000. The property qualification is a freehold real estate qualification. And a man can’t vote for a legislator, although they tax him as much as they please. This struggle began thirty years ago. In 1829 petitions poured into the Assembly, and they were laughed at, and insult was added to injury. Since then the people toiled. In 1841, a spirit was provoked, that will never be allayed till the people get universal suffrage. [Cheers.] Here Mr. Melville went into a history of the late troubles in Rhode Island, and the rejection of the Assembly’s constitution by 676 votes. He also denounced the Algerine Act, and called it an act for the propagation of constructive treason generally. The people have rightfully elected officers under their constitution. The others chose to live under Charles’s charter, who though dead 200 years, has still some very dutiful subjects now living in Rhode Island. And who was Charles 2d? A pitiful, profligate abandoned fellow, who, if he was living now in New York, couldn’t be elected Constable even for the 6th Ward; and his appropriate sphere, would be behind the counter of a perfumer’s store dealing out essences to the moustached fools and loungers of Broadway—(Cheers.)—or else he’d be in a brothel with panderers, procurers, and pimps. (Tremendous cheers) The great point contended for by the people of Rhode Island was a universal free suffrage. This had been tried in 22 States out of 26, and works well. Their opponents insist on a property qualification. And what is wealth? The sweat of the poor and the blood of the brave. (Cheers.) This is the old Federal plan to detract the capacity of the people for self government. But the tide of public opinion is sweeping on. Can they stand up against it? Let them try it if they dare. When they shall have rolled back the Amazon, and damned it up with bulrushes, and shaken the Andes to their base, then they may do it, but not before. (Cheers.
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