|
|
“A Marriage of Convenience”
No caption.
After
two years of press allegations and state investigations against Tammany
Hall corruption, Republicans, independents, and anti-Tammany Democrats
put aside their differences to nominate reformer Seth Low
for mayor in 1901. The search for a clean mayoral candidate to
counter the forces arrayed against Tammany Hall led Boss Richard Croker
to offer the Tammany nomination to Edward M. Shepard, a
well-respected lawyer and Democratic reformer who had previously
denounced Tammany and backed Low's unsuccessful bid for the mayoralty in
1897. Cartoonist W. A.
Rogers comically portrays the "Marriage of Convenience"
between Tammany and Shepard, with the carefree and dapper candidate
holding the paw of the veiled Tammany Tiger. In the background
behind the couple, an irritable Croker carries a model of City Hall, and
behind him a worried-looking Police Chief William Devery
bears a bouquet of flowers. The "Made In England" ribbon
on Shepard's coat may allude to his aristocratic manner.
Edward Morse Shepard was born
in New York City in 1850. His father died when Edward was six
years old, and August Belmont
became legal guardian of the
Shepard children. Raised in Brooklyn, Edward Shepard attended the
common schools and City College, from which he graduated with the
highest distinction in 1869. Afterward, he read law at a private
firm and passed the state bar in 1871.
A good-government reformer,
Shepard served on the Brooklyn Civil Service Commission in 1883-1885, as
its chairman in 1888-1890, as New York's forestry commissioner in
1884-1885, and on the Brooklyn Water Commission from 1889-1890.
Although primarily a civil lawyer, he gained public acclaim in 1893-1894
while serving as special deputy attorney general in the prosecution of John Y. McKane, the corrupt police chief of Coney
Island. Harper's Weekly judged that Shepard's
"patriotic spirit and intrepidity cannot be too highly
commended..." He also earned plaudits as counsel to the New
York Rapid Transit Commission, for which he oversaw negotiations for
construction of the city's subway.
In 1895, he ran unsuccessfully
for the Brooklyn mayoralty against the Democratic machine of Hugh
McLaughlin. The next year, Harper's Weekly deemed him a
"worthy leader" of the reform Democrats, whose "high
character, as well as his eminent ability, commands the absolute
confidence of his followers--in fact, of the community at
large." In 1896, he endorsed the breakaway "Gold"
Democrats against the free-silver presidential nominee of the Democratic
Party, William Jennings Bryan. Anxious about American imperialism
in the wake of the Spanish-American War of 1898, Shepard backed Bryan in
1900.
When the opportunity came to
run for mayor of New York City in 1901, Shepard's commitment to
reforming the Democratic Party from within compelled him to accept the
Tammany nomination. Given the egregious corruption revealed
through press and public investigations, many who previously held
Shepard in high regard considered his candidacy to be naive (as in this
cartoon) or duplicitous. Harper's Weekly editorialized that
his decision to run on a Tammany slate was personally
"despicable" and "pathetic from the standpoint of public
morals." In November 1901, Shepard lost to Low, 53%-47%.
Shepard served as a trustee for
City College from 1900 and as chairman from 1904 until 1911. He
died at his summer home in Lake George, New York, in July 1911.
Robert C. Kennedy
|
|
|
