DescriptionAlthough Tammany Hall was founded as a social club just after the American Revolution, it exists in memory as the quintessential American political machine, run by and for Irish-American political operatives more concerned with power than ideas. This dissertation seeks to re-interpret Tammany in the context of a transatlantic Irish experience of hunger, dislocation, and alienation. Irish immigrants brought with them distinct political narratives which were incorporated into Tammany Hall’s pragmatic but progressive ideology during the first quarter of the 20th Century. These political narratives, centered on the experience of powerlessness and oppression in Ireland and inextricably linked to Catholicism, led Irish immigrants to regard reformers in New York as American versions of their traditional enemies, the well-born Anglo-Protestant. The Irish arrived in New York with an understanding of the power of mass politics thanks to Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for Catholic Emancipation in the 1820s. Few studies of Tammany Hall attempt to link O’Connell’s mobilization of the Irish peasantry to Tammany’s ability to turn out the vote, especially after the Famine exodus of 1845-52. Likewise, the critical role of John Hughes, the first Catholic archbishop of New York and a native of Ireland, remains outside the story of Irish-American politics, despite the key role he played in organizing the Irish vote behind transatlantic grievances. This dissertation seeks to show how a particularly Irish experience in both Ireland and New York helped to mobilize a new kind of politics which emphasized cultural pluralism, populist rhetoric, and practical solutions to social injustice. A child of a Famine immigrant, Charles Francis Murphy, transformed Tammany into a force for social change during the Progressive Era. Murphy’s forgotten role in nurturing politicians such as Alfred E. Smith and Robert Wagner has been forgotten, but this dissertation will show that his embrace of change helped set the stage for the rise of Franklin Roosevelt and the implementation of the New Deal.