William F F Young
Thomas E. Dewey, et al. is a two-part study. The first part deals with Dewey’s career through 1941 as a lawyer in civil practice, assistant U.S. Attorney, energetic Young Republican and party worker, and district attorney. The second part addresses his vigorous but futile effort to destroy the Albany Democratic political machine of Daniel O’Connell during his first term as Governor of New York. As a preamble, the pre-Albany segment treats of 19th century New York State politically significant figures: the early Tammany Hall leaders, Rev. Charles Parkhurst, Thurlow Weed, Roscoe Conklin, and Thomas Platt. Intertwined with the relation of Dewey’s pre-Albany activity are the formidable Tammany Hall leader, Charles Francis Murphy; Samuel Koenig, the long-time leader of Manhattan’s long-time unsuccessful Republican Party; FDR; New York City Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia; the hapless Democratic district attorney, William Copeland Dodge; and George Z. Medalie, the lawyer-politician mentor of Dewey. The first three Albany chapters feature O’Connell, the judge and special prosecutor selected by Dewey for his campaign against O’Connell by means of the criminal process, and wiretaps of O’Connell that made the front page of the New York Times. The fourth and final chapter deals with Dewey’s having taken over by gubernatorial force majeure the grand jury investigation of the Republican controlled State Legislature that had been instituted by O’Connell’s District Attorney of Albany County in response to Dewey’s offensive against O’Connell. It relates the sustained harassment of the Legislature’s Democratic Assembly Minority Leader.
