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the water, one engine could not handle the water pumped into it by the preceding machine, it was “washed” and, in the eyes of the members of other companies, disgraced. The battle between Fourteen and the Red Rovers took place at night in Mackerville, one of the roughest districts in New York City and a common battleground for the “fightingest” Irish. It was a place of squatters, tin can mansions, and shanties around Fourteenth Street and Avenue A and Avenue B. Sawyer’s foreman, Venn, coaxed, cursed, and coddled his men for hours. A cry of “She’s up to the rabbits! She’s over!” came ringing through the cheers of the Red Rovers. They were victorious over Fourteen’s machines. Fourteen was so stunned, some men cried as they lay on the ground exhausted. The “Mackereville washing” was one of the most exciting contests of the day.
    “Although his origin was lowly,” it was said of Broderick, “he felt stir within himself the forces of a strong nature. Though his associations were debased, he was not bound down by them and continued to rise year by year on the shoulders of the electors of the Ninth Ward.” He was lifted to fame by his intense personal magnetism, marvelous knowledge of men, and absolute integrity. “He learned how to work hard, handle men and get what he wanted. He was no orator, but a man made for action … a populist whose strength of character was only rivaled by its complexity.”
    In 1840, Broderick had been a ward heeler for Tammany Hall,the corrupt political machine of William Marcy Tweed. “Boss” Tweed yearned to be foreman of a New York volunteer fire company in the Democratic Ninth Ward that extended to the Hudson River west of Washington Square (now Greenwich Village) and housed New York’s three most popular fire companies. Tweed joined several units before becoming foreman of Big Six, whose seal was a growling tiger painted on the body panel of their pumper. Tweed knew any political boss who affiliated himself with a district firehouse as their benefactor acquired that unit’s prestige and great influence it wielded in their community. By allying himself, he gained not only a block of local voters but also a gang of street toughs to intimidate any opposition. The volunteers, tangible symbols of his authority, cracked heads at political rallies and got out the vote for him. When Boss Tweed became New York’s “King of Corruption,” cartoonist Thomas Nast refashioned the tiger into a symbol of Tweed’s corrupt organization: the infamous Tammany Tiger. He incited such public outrage that his scathing cartoons eventually brought Tweed down.
    In 1845, the electors of the Sixth Ward in the Bowery tapped Broderick to receive the Democratic nomination for Congress. As a devout Irish Catholic, he believed he could “make more reputation by being an honest man instead of a rascal.” If he was elected, he could make a difference, but he lost to a Whig.
    Broderick was a man of contradictions. Though he didn’t smoke, gamble, or drink, he ran a New York tavern, the Subterranean, at the corner of King and Hudson streets, which catered to Irish laborers. Behind the bar he wore rough workingman’s clothes, the class with which he most identified, yet read the great works of philosophy and literature, especially the poetry of Shelley. At the request of Colonel Jonathan Drake Stevenson, who was raising a company of soldiers to fight in the Mexican War, Broderick sold his saloon, poured the remaining barrels of whiskey down the gutter, and on April 17, 1849, resigned from the Red Rovers. As a parting gift, his men presented him with a heavy-duty, double-cased gold pocket watch. He set out from Manhattan for San Francisco, but hostilities had ceased by the time Stevenson’s men reached the Pacific Coast. The tortuous trip crossing Central America damaged Broderick’s health and he arrived in San Francisco on June 13, penniless and sick. The first day he vowed: “I tell you,