Many corrupt city political machines have existed in the history of urbanized America, but none has surpassed the infamy of the Tweed Ring of New York City, whose performance has been described as "a classic of municipal fraud." From 1866 to 1871 William Marcy Tweed's notorious organization plundered the city of money in amounts astonishing even by today's standards. An intriguing study of large-scale graft and of the rogues who perpetrated it, this book presents also a fully-documented record of the activities of Boss Tweed and his his Mayor, "the elegant Oakey Hall," Comptroller "Slippery Dick" Connolly, and his master of patronage, Peter Barr Sweeny, sometimes referred to as "$weeny." Professor Callow closely examines the factors that created the Tweed Ring, the situations out of which Tweed built the first modern political machine, and assesses what the Ring meant in terms of American city government. A study of America's major city in a time of crisis, the book also contains a colorful account of the social life of New York during this period.