Tammany SocietyThe New York Tammany Society, a fraternal order, was created and formed to help hold onto the ideal of unconstrained freedom which many believed America to be established upon.
The Tammany Hall
While the U.S. Republic was being created, the Tammany Society began to signify rebellion against British control and a fight for freedom. Initially defined as a symbol of American Indian patriotism, during the War of Independence the notion that American Indians were savages began to produce a significant strain upon the image of the society. The society also began facing political conflicts between "Federalist and anti-Federalists, elites and artisans, and native-borns and foreign immigrants.". The society became more of a political grouping than a fraternal statement for freedom. The New York Tammany Society, one to which Walt Whitman was involved with, was quite successful in re-building the debasing image of American Indians. With secret meetings, handshakes and codes, the society used the Indians as a sign of friendship and peace. Over time though, to combat the expansive growth of the negativeness associated with the American Indian image, they began to connect that image with that of Columbus and eventually pushed "Indianness" completely out of American society.
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