Boss Tweed And The Draft Riots

940 Words2 Pages

In the movie the politician Boss Tweed is depicted as a major player during the draft riots but, in fact his biggest years came afterward not during the time of the draft riot (Anbinder). What actually happened according to Dennis, Hale author of "Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of Modern American Politics, William Tweed has just in the beginning of his political career a couple of years before the New York drafts started to happen. He moved to washington and had came back to New York, as he arrived his noticed that there were far more people. He was referring to all the immigrants (Irish, german, etc..),he viewed the as his natural constituency. While in the end of the Civil War brought a dramatic upturn in New York's fortunes, …show more content…

He improved water supplies, sewage disposal and streets. And because Central Park was far removed from most immigrant neighborhoods, Tweed built smaller parks nearer the poor” (Hale). Additionally he was the one who controlled the Tammany Hall political machine who was one one the heads of the Democratic Party. So within Dennis, Hale’s book we can clearly depict that the movie did not show his full potential and the importance he was to history. Along with William Tweed, another character was wrongly placed in the movie, William Poole. According to historians William Poole died from the gunshot wound on March 8, 1855 in his home; In the movie he was stabbed by a fictional character because he had stabbed his father to death so this character wanted revenge. As well as being caused by him conspiring against all that were non …show more content…

Also, the movie place the famous Five Points built on the site of the filled-in Collect Pond. In the film it was really low and damp area for the kind of tunnels that were depicted in the film. In the finale of the movie the scene inspired by the great draft riot of 1863, was a complete exaggeration of what really happened. The film showed explosives going off from every direction, especially coming from the boats that were on the dock. They completely bombarded the entire city leaving everything in dust and people not being able to even see their own hands. This is just the illusions that Hollywood wanted to portray to make everything seem much more believable and realistic. Along with exaggerating the explosives in the film, the neighborhood was also very exaggerated when it came to the violence and it being god awfully dangerous. In fact, it is said that other than public drunkenness and prostitution, there was not much more crime being committed in Five Points than in any other part of the city. As well as, the hanging of many people for no reason just to prove a point that some people are more superior than

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