In 1823 attempts were made by different factions to obtain the invaluable “regular” nominations. Seemingly a local election, the real point turned on whether partisans of Jackson, Adams or Crawford should be chosen. Upon this question Tammany Hall was still divided. The nominating committee, however, was for Jackson. The voters were bidden to assemble in the hall at 7 o’clock on the evening of October 30 to hear that committee’s report. When they tried to enter, they found the hall occupied by the committee and its friends. This was a new departure in Tammany practices. Since the building of the hall the nominating committee had always waited in a lower room for the opening of the great popular meeting, and had then marched up stairs and reported. To head off expected hostile action by the Adams men, the committee this time started proceedings before the appointed hour. The names of its candidates were called and affirmed in haste. Gen. Robert Swartwout, a corrupt but skillful politician and an Adams supporter, proposed a substitute list of names, upon which the chairman declared that the meeting stood adjourned. A general fist-fight followed, in the excitement of which Swartwout took the chair, read off a list of names and declared it adopted. Epithets, among which “liar” and “traitor” figured most, were distributed freely. Both tickets went to the people under the claim of “regularity,” and each carried five of the ten wards.
Though Robert Swartwout[4] was for Adams, another Swartwout (Samuel), an even shrewder politician, was Jackson’s direct representative in the task of securing the organization’s support for President. A third and less important group were the Crawford advocates. They were led by Gen. John P. Van Ness, an adroit intriguer and one of the old Burr chieftains of Tammany. In 1821 Adams, then Secretary of State, ascertaining that Van Ness, as president of the Bank of the Metropolis, was indebted to that institution to the amount of $60,000 and that its affairs were in bad condition, transferred the account of the State Department to another bank. From that time Van Ness bore deep hatred against Adams, and supported Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, for President. Crawford had deposited as a standing balance with Van Ness about the same sum Adams had withdrawn, notwithstanding the bank’s suspicious character. The Crawford men went first about the business of obtaining complete ascendency in the Tammany Society. With that end in view they tried in 1823 to elect a Grand Sachem favoring Crawford. The old Burr faction now brought forth a Presidential candidate of its own in the person of John C. Calhoun, and taking advantage of the absence of most of the society’s members, dexterously managed to elect William Todd, a partisan of Calhoun, Grand Sachem.