[colorado tanker]

Samuel Ruggles was a prominent New Yorker and Strong’s father-in-law. Weed was known as “Boss” Weed and was extremely influential in Albany. The fissures are interesting because they were all nominally on the same side - former Whigs who became Republicans.

[Tax-chick]

they were all nominally on the same side

Thanks, I hadn't caught that.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

The fissures are interesting because they were all nominally on the same side - former Whigs who became Republicans.

I'm not sure what Weed's object was in the matter being considered in Albany, or how it related to Republican policy, but Strong and Ruggles, as Trinity Church Episcopalians, no doubt saw it transcending party politics.

[x]

Weed was known as “Boss” Weed and was extremely influential in Albany.

I guess so. He was the longtime Whig Party boss and everybody knew it.

But he didn't have cartoonist Thomas Nast making the masses think "Boss" was his first name the way Manhattan Democrat William Marcy Tweed did.