"Boss" Tweed : the story of a grim generation / by Denis Tilden Lynch.

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"Hang Themlr 371
Emott analyzed the figures, and reviewed the frauds as made
known by The Times, indicating the theft of some $15,000,000.
All dwelt on the fact that no one as yet knew how much
The Ring had stolen. No estimate has ever placed it less than
double that sum. A conservative figure is $45,000,000, although O'Rourke later calculated that in taxes arbitrarily
reduced by The Ring for money and in return for favor, and
by the issuance of bonds at extravagant rates of interestmany of the issues were disposed of to syndicates abroad-the
city lost $200,000,000 in the thirty months that The Rigflourished,
At one point in Emott's speech he said:
"Gentlemen, there is no denial of these fraudulent payments
and there is no fabrication of their amount. Now what are
you going to do with these men?"
"Hang them!" answered a man on the floor.
Resolutions had been drafted, and were presented by Joseph
H. Choate, who as he advanced to the center of the stage, with
the program for the prosecution of The Ring, exclaimed:
"This is what we are going to do about it!"
This response to Tweed's defiant snarl brought the audience
to its feet, cheering even more wildly than it had when one of
its number had proposed that Tweed and his fellow culprits
be hanged.
These resolutions demanded the repeal of the Tweed charter,
and declared that "the credit of the City of New York and the
material interests of its citizens will demand that they (Hall,
Connolly, and Tweed, who comprised the Board of Audit),
quit or be deprived of the offices which they have dishonored
and the power which they are abusing." The resolutions,
which were unanimously adopted, empowered the chairman to
appoint an executive committee of seventy to carry out the
objects of the meeting, including the recovery of "whatever
sums of money have been fraudulently or feloniously abstracted."
The suggestion of hanging, voiced at the Cooper Union
meeting, had been voiced in written and spoken word for a
month or more. The Nation had proposed the forming of a,