Politics

General Benjamin Franklin Tracy, General James Jourdan and Mr. Silas Dutcher were known as the “Three Graces” back in 1870s Brooklyn. The three of them, all elected officials, had Brooklyn and the Republican Party firmly in their very competent and powerful grasp. Working together, as the state’s attorney, police and health commissioner, and chief tax collector, respectively, these men were able to control not only their political party but the affairs of one of the nation’s fastest growing cities. The United States was recovering from the Civil War, and industries once making weapons and war materials were now making consumer goods for a new middle class that wanted to buy. Brooklyn’s factories were humming, and thousands of immigrants and native born people were pouring into the city, coming here to work and live, joining the population already here. It was an exciting time to be in Brooklyn, but it was also a time when crime, corruption and urban ills were on the rise. Strong leaders were needed, and the men known as the “Graces” were in the perfect position to gain and hold power. (more…)

The War Between the States was well over by 1870, and Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general of the Union Army, was now President of the United States. In Washington, Grant was finding out that it is often a lot easier to run a war than to run a country. Here in Brooklyn, a war still raged, but this one was not between states, but between factions of Grant’s own political party, the Republicans, now the de facto rulers of Brooklyn. Two Civil War era generals and a civilian businessman formed a powerful triumvirate, nicknamed by the press the “Three Graces.” These three men, General James Jourdan, General Benjamin F. Tracy and Silas P. Dutcher, had wrested control of the Republican Party and the city of Brooklyn away from everyone else, and they ruled Brooklyn throughout Grant’s entire administration like a medieval fiefdom. (more…)

Politics have taken up our front pages for months now, and now that the election is over, in the spirit of Tip O’Neill, who famously said “All politics is local,” I bring you the story of three politicians who ruled Brooklyn in the years after the Civil War. Two were Civil War veterans, highly decorated generals in the Union Army. The third was a civilian, a merchant and career civil servant, and a canny player in the game of politics since he was a teenager. As they took control of Republican Brooklyn, they were known as the “Three Graces,” a name that they probably didn’t like. The mythological Graces were goddesses symbolizing beauty, charm and joy, and Silas B. Dutcher, General Benjamin Franklin Tracy and General James Jourdan had little of any of those qualities. They were tough, determined and efficient. For Brooklyn, in the 1870s, that was enough. (more…)