Turning from these, I determined to find the facts for myself. My search led me first through the files of all the available newspapers from 1789 to the present time, and thence--for origins and contributory causes--through publications as far back as 1788; thence through State and city histories, and a great number of biographies, sketches, essays, political pamphlets and broadsides. The fragmentary matter gleaned from these sources was found to be extremely valuable in helping to form the continuous thread of a narrative, and in determining contemporary spirit; but the statements and conclusions, particularly with regard to the character and conduct of public men, were generally contradictory and inconclusive. Realizing this, I began the last phase of my search--a task that has led me through numberless dreary pages of the Minutes and Documents of the Common Council (which for the years previous to 1881 exist only in manuscript), Journals and Documents of the Senate and Assembly, including the reports of various legislative committees; Congressional and Executive Records, Treasury Reports, Records of the Police, Common Pleas, Superior and Supreme Courts; Minutes of the Oyer and Terminer; Grand Jury Presentments, and Records of the Board of Supervisors. Finally, I have had the good fortune, in developing the story of the middle and later periods, of having secured many valuable interviews with a number of men who actively participated in the stirring events of thirty, forty and even fifty years ago. The purpose to write a book became fixed as my search progressed. The work is finished, and the result is now to be given to the public. What I have sought to produce is a narrative history--plain, compact and impartial. I have sought to avoid an indulgence, on the one hand, in political speculation, and on the other, in moralizing platitudes. Such deductions and generalizations as from time to time I have made, seem to me necessary in elucidating the narrative; without them the story would prove to the reader a mere chronology of unrelated facts. If my narrative furnishes a sad story for the leaders and chieftains of the Tammany Society and the Tammany Hall political organization, the fault is not mine, but that of a multitude of incontestible public records. It was in no partizan spirit that I began the work, and in none that I now conclude it. I have always been an independent in politics; and I have even voted, when there seemed to me ample reason for doing so, a Tammany ticket. I have tried to set down nothing in malice, nor with such exceptions as are obviously necessary with regard to living men, to extenuate anything whatever. Those who may be tempted to consider my work partial and partizan, on account of the showing that it makes of Tammany corruption and inefficiency, will do well to read carefully the pages relating to the Whigs and to some other opponents of Tammany Hall. * * * * *