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supervisors, would run Lincoln’s August draft in New York City. Tweed’s plan made practical sense and Tweed came across as someone he could trust. Stanton “highly commended [the plan] for its patriotism, and as evincing the determination of the citizens of the city and county of New York to aid and sustain the
    government in crushing this wicked rebellion, and in vindicating the majesty of the law,” they could later report. 35 They’d become partners in a strange marriage. F OOTNOTE 36
    With Stanton’s blessing, Tweed and Blunt now hurried back to New York to put their plan in effect. The August draft came and went. Army offices around the city held lotteries, drawing large crowds to watch the spinning wooden wheels pick name after name. On its eve, Governor Seymour warned citizens against disorder and General Dix stationed army troops on the streets, but they weren’t needed. Instead, Tammany vouched for the draft; at every office, its Sachems stood side by side with army officers in their crisp blue uniforms. The wooden wheels selected over a thousand names, and virtually every one of them appealed to the new County Substitute and Relief Committee—Tweed’s committee. In the seventh ward by the East River, the army held its drawing at the old police station at 228 Broome Street and, after a few spins, the wheel actually selected the name of William M. Tweed, Boss of Tammany Hall. The announcement sparked a loud, good-natured cheer from the men in the room. 37 Tweed, if anyone, would have paid the $300 fee from his own pocket to avoid joining the infantry.
    Then, all September, Tweed’s committee met in the state Supreme Court chambers at 65 Duane Street, a few doors down from Tweed’s private office. Tweed or Orison Blunt personally questioned almost every appellant under oath. “[I]f the duties of the Board are arduous they appear to be eminent and fair… invariably insisting that the would-be exempt shall first secure a substitute ere he is let off,” a New York Herald reporter wrote after sitting through hours of sessions. 38 The New-York Times similarly complimented the committee members for “performing their duties with eminent satisfaction to all parties.” 39 By September 29, out of 1,034 draftees appealing to them, Tweed’s committee had found substitutes for 983, another 49 were excused, and only two chose to join the army and go to war. 40
    It was a remarkable accomplishment. Lincoln got his soldiers, the city had order, and the poor had relief from a law blatantly unfair to them. “No money, no trust was ever more honestly administered than the loan of the Board of Supervisors,” crowed the journal destined soon to become Tweed’s most bitter enemy—the New-York Times . 41
    At the same time, a few blocks away, two of Tweed’s Tammany Hall proteges launched aggressive prosecutions against the July lawbreakers. District Attorney A. Oakey Hall and John Hoffman, the presiding judge of New York’s Court of General Sessions—called the Recorder—won indictments against dozens of rioters and put them on immediate public trial. The daily spectacle of looters, arsonists, pickpockets, muggers, and killers from every ethnic background paraded in handcuffs through Hoffman’s courtroom and sentenced to jail terms had a dramatic impact—a show of swift, tough law enforcement, even if juries had to release dozens of offenders because the cases against them were poorly prepared. Newspapers carried long transcripts of the daily court actions, soon making Hall and Hoffman two of the most popular political figures in New York.
    Through the last two years of the Civil War, Tweed would position Tammany squarely with the Union. His county recruitment drive for the army would attract scandal: abusive bounty brokers, unqualified soldiers—either prisoners from local jails or immigrants literally straight from New York Harbor—and middlemen stealing fortunes in graft. But it hardly raised an eyebrow