The Spring election of 1834, though local, again turned upon national issues. For the first time in the history of the city, the Mayor was to be elected by the people. The growth of public opinion had been such that the Legislature was forced, in 1833, to grant this reform. The contending hosts were swayed, first, by the question of the United States Bank, and second, by the spoils. The merchants shut their shops and sent their whole body of clerks and laboring men to surround the polls and influence voters against Tammany Hall. The United States Bank spread abroad the cry of “panic.” If its directors could show that public opinion in the foremost city in the Union had altered so as to favor the continuation of the bank charter, then they could use that as a good basis for influencing Congress. There was no concealment of coercion of voters; the weak, the timid, the fearful were overawed by the increasing clamor of paid newspapers that the destruction of the United States Bank meant “widespread revulsion of trade and everlasting injury to the poor.” In fact, a general depression of business was produced. A row began in the “bloody ould Sixth,” by the breaking of some ballot boxes. Both parties armed with stones and bludgeons, and turned the scene into one of violence. The riot became general. A crowd, composed chiefly of Whigs, ransacked gun-shops in Broadway and made for the State arsenal at Elm and Franklin streets. Rumors of their intentions spreading, a gathering of peaceably inclined citizens arrived before them and held the arsenal until the militia hastened there and restored order.[9] Cornelius W. Lawrence, the Tammany candidate, was declared elected by 181 votes out of a total of nearly 35,000[10] over Gulian G. Verplanck, who had gone over to the Whigs. Verplanck never ceased to contend that he had been defrauded of the office. The Whigs obtained a majority in a Common Council, 17 members to the Wigwam’s 15, and joyfully said that Tammany Hall in electing the Mayor had the shadow; while they, in securing the corporation, had the substance. With the Common Council they could carry the whole patronage of the city, amounting to more than $1,000,000 a year. This election demonstrated clearly that the propertied classes as a whole were combined against the laborers, mechanics, farmers and producing classes generally, and that they were as much concerned over the spoils of office as was the most rabid Tammany man. As a protest against the indifference of the local leaders of both parties to the real interests of the people, and to put a stop to the granting of special privileges, the Equal Rights party now came into existence. FOOTNOTES [1] Advertisement in the New York _Evening Post_, March 17, 1831. [2] Resolutions of the Sixth Ward Anti-Tammany Republicans, March 24, 1831.