[24] Within a few months after its organization the Empire Club had thirty-three parades and had been hired to go to Albany, Trenton, Tarrytown and other cities to help the Democracy. Whenever the Empire Club met a rival political club, a fight was sure to follow. [25] _Annual Message_, 1845. [26] _Proceedings of the Board of Aldermen_, Vol. XXIX, pp. 1-55. [27] Tammany won by a minority vote both in 1845 and in 1846. That neither Tammany nor the Native Americans had enacted any competent reforms in the matter of the taxation of property was conclusively shown in an Aldermanic report of 1846. It appeared from this report that thirty million dollars’ worth of assessable property escaped taxation every year, and that no bona fide efforts were being made by the officials to remedy this state of affairs. _Proceedings of the Board of Assistant Aldermen_, Vol. XXIX, Document No. 24. CHAPTER XVI “BARNBURNERS” AND “HUNKERS” 1846-1850 Two factions had lately arisen in Tammany Hall--the “Barnburners” and the “Hunkers.” Differences in principle had at first caused the division, but it was characterized, nevertheless, by a lively race for office. The “Barnburners” were the radical Democrats who believed, among other things that slavery should not be extended to free territory. The nickname was occasioned by the saying of a contractor, a few years before: “These men are incendiaries; they are mad; they are like the farmer, who, to get the rats out of his granary, sets fire to his own barn.” The “Hunkers” were the office-holding conservatives, very unwilling to have anything disturb their repose, and above all, opposed to the agitation of the slavery question. Their influence was thrown wherever possible with the slaveholding States. The term “Hunkers” arose from their characteristic of striving to keep their offices to the exclusion of everybody else--“to get all they can and keep all they can get.”[1] The quarrel was as sharply defined throughout the State as in New York City. Such men as Samuel J. Tilden, C. C. Cambreleng, William F. Havemeyer and Minthorne Tompkins were the local leaders of the “Barnburners”; John McKeon, Lorenzo B. Shepard,[2] a brilliant young leader who was a noted orator at the early age of 19; Edward Strahan and Emanuel B. Hart were some of the chiefs of the “Hunkers.” This factional struggle, together with the dissatisfaction given by the city administration, weakened Tammany, whose nominee, in the Spring election of 1847, J. Sherman Brownell, was defeated by the Whig candidate, William V. Brady. The vote stood: Brady, 21,310; Brownell, 19,877; Ellis G. Drake (Independent), 2,078. This was the first time in nine years that the city had been carried by the Whigs proper, though they were aided somewhat by the Native Americans.