The Tammany General Committee, on January 13, 1845, passed resolutions favoring the annexation of Texas and calling a public meeting. With a view of glorifying John Tyler--to whom they owed their positions--and at the same time of winning the good will of the incoming administration, the Custom House officers tried to anticipate the committee’s action, but were not allowed to use the hall. Resolved, at any rate, to control the meeting regularly called, they crowded two thousand of their creatures, under the leadership of Rynders, into the Wigwam. The meeting was soon one of uproar, turbulence and some fighting. Rynders had his resolutions adopted “amid yells, shouts, screams, oaths, cheers, blasphemy, hisses and an uproar never before known in the pandemonium of politics.” It was the generally expressed opinion that the time had come when the proceedings of a meeting at Tammany Hall were no longer to be considered as any certain indication of the opinions of the Democratic party; that a class of men who chose to organize themselves for the purpose, by being early on the ground, acting in concert and clamoring according to certain understood signals, could carry any set of resolutions they pleased, in the very teeth of the large majority of the Democratic party. In the local campaign of 1845 Tammany acted sagaciously. It nominated William F. Havemeyer for Mayor, laying stress on the fact that he was a “native New Yorker.” The Native Americans renominated Harper, and the Whigs, Dudley Selden. The vote stood: Havemeyer, 24,183, Harper, 17,472; Selden, 7,082. Tammany secured a majority of 26 on joint ballot in the Common Council--the real power. Mayor Havemeyer sincerely tried to effect reforms. In the beginning of his term he urged the fact that the Common Council united in itself nearly all the executive with all the legislative power, and declared that its main business was to collect and distribute, through the various forms of patronage, nearly a million and a half dollars a year.[25] His attacks upon the arbitrary powers and corrupt practises of the Common Council made so little impression upon that body that on May 13, the very first day of convening, the Aldermen, immediately after the reading of the Mayor’s message, removed not less than seventy officials, from the heads of departments to Street Inspectors;[26] and on subsequent days the process was continued until every post was filled with a Tammany man. But the effect upon the public mind was such that in 1846 a new charter was drafted and adopted, which deprived the Common Council of the power which it hitherto had enjoyed of appointing the heads of departments, and gave their election direct to the people.