[Speech of Dr. D. B. St. John Roosa, as President of the Holland
Society of New York, at the eleventh annual dinner of the Society,
New York City, January 15, 1896.]
GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY, AND OUR HONORED GUESTS:--My
first duty is to welcome to our Board the representatives of the various
societies who honor us by their presence: St. George's, St. Nicholas,
New England, St. Andrew's, Colonial Order, and Colonial Wars, Southern
Society, the Holland Society welcomes you most heartily. I ought to say
that the Holland Society, as at present constituted, could run a Police
Board [applause], furnish the Mayors for two cities, and judges to
order, to decide on any kind of a case. As a matter of fact, when they
get hard up down-town for a judge, they just send up to the man who
happens to be President of the Holland Society and say "Now we want a
judge," and we send Van Hoesen, Beekman, Truax, or Van Wyck. [Applause.]
They are all right. They are Dutch, and they will do. [Laughter.] All
the people say it does not make any difference about their politics, so
long as the blood is right.
Now, gentlemen, seriously, I thank you very sincerely for the honor
which you have conferred upon me--and which I was not able, on account
of circumstances entirely beyond my control, to acknowledge at the
annual meeting of the Society--in making me your President. I do not
think there is any honor in the world that compares with it, and if you
think over the names of the Presidents of this Society you may imagine
that a doctor, especially knowing what the Dutch in South Africa think
of doctors just now [laughter and applause], would have a mighty slim
chance to come in against a Van Vorst, a Roosevelt, a Van Hoesen, a
Beekman, a Van Wyck, or a Van Norden. But my name is not Jameson.
[Laughter.]
Gentlemen, there seems to be an impression that the Holland Society,
because it does not have a Club-house--and it may have a Club-house,
that remains for you to decide; and because it does not have a great
many other things, has no reason for its existence. But, gentlemen,
there is one sufficient reason for the existence of the Hollanders in a
Society. We have eight hundred and forty members, and each one of us has
a function--to teach our neighboring Yankees just exactly what we are,
whence we came, and where we mean to go. [Laughter and applause.] The
colossal ignorance of the ordinary New Englander [laughter and
applause]--I mean in regard to the Dutch [laughter]--is something that I
would delineate were it not for the presence of the President of the
Mayflower Society. [Renewed laughter.] Why, it was only the other night
that at one of these entertainments when I was representing you and
doing the best I could with my medal and my ribbon, that a friend came
up to me and said: "You belong to the Holland Society, don't you?" I
said, "Yes." "Well," he said, "you Dutch did lick us on the Excise
question, didn't you?" [Great laughter and applause.] Now what are you
going to do with a people like that? We got the credit of that thing,
anyhow. [Renewed laughter.] There is a Governor of Connecticut here
to-night [P. C. Lounsbury], and I was going to say something about
Governors of Connecticut of years and years ago. A man could not
properly relate the history of New Amsterdam without remarking on the
Governors of Connecticut, but out of respect to the distinguished
gentleman, whom we all delight to honor, I shall draw it very mild. I
shall only tell one or two things that those Governors of Connecticut
used to do. There was one of them, I have forgotten his name and I am
glad I have [laughter], who used to say in all his letters to his
subordinates when they were pushing us to the wall and getting the
English over to help them push: "Don't you say anything to those people,
don't you talk to those people, but always keep crowding the Dutch."
[Laughter.] That is what a Connecticut Governor gave as official advice
years ago. And they did crowd us. But Governor Lounsbury told me that
if they really had their rights Manhattan Island would belong to
Connecticut. So you see they are crowding the Dutch still. [Laughter.]
Now, every once in a while, one of these New Englanders that owns the
earth, especially that little stone portion called Plymouth Rock, which
we never begrudged them, gets up at a great dinner and reads a fine
speech and talks about civil and religious liberty which the Puritan
came over to cause to flourish. Why, the poor Puritan did not know any
more about religious liberty than an ordinary horse does about
astronomy. What the Puritan came over here for, was to get a place to do
what he liked, in his own way, without interference from anybody else,
with power to keep everybody out that wanted to do anything the least
bit different from his way. [Great laughter and applause. A voice--"I'm
glad I voted for you."] I never can get elected from New England.
I want to tell you just a thing or two about this business. The Dutch
tried very hard to teach them civil and religious liberty before they
came over, and then they put the Yankees in a ship and sent them over
from Leyden and Delfshaven, saying: "It is utterly useless; we cannot
teach you." [Great laughter.] But we came over to New Amsterdam and we
had free schools in New York until the English took the city by
treachery when there was only Peter Stuyvesant to fire one gun against
the invaders, and then they abolished free schools and had their church
ones, and they are fighting over that question in England now. Free
schools! New York established them when we were free again, years and
years afterwards, but they are an invention of the Dutch.
Civil and religious liberty! it was born in Holland, it was nourished by
the valor of the Beggars of the Sea, and finally it began to grow into
the minds of the peoples of the earth, that it was not only right to
enjoy your own religion, but it was also right to let your neighbor
enjoy his. [Applause.]
Then there is another story, that the English conquered Manhattan
Island, and that we are here by the grace of any people on earth except
our own. That is another mistake. Just read Theodore Roosevelt's "Rise
of New York." [Great laughter.] Now I am going to tell you this story
because you must go up to Ulster County and up to Dutchess and Albany
Counties, and you must tell every Yankee you meet the truth about this,
and not let him talk any more about the English having subjugated the
Dutch.
It is true the English captured Manhattan Island, but nine years
afterwards Admiral Evertsen and another Admiral whose name escapes me,
came up the harbor in two frigates with guns well shotted, got beyond
Staten Island, and gave the military authorities of New York notice that
they were going to take that town, and granted them thirty minutes to
make up their minds whether they would give it up or not. When the
thirty minutes elapsed, six hundred Dutch troops were landed just back
of where Trinity Church now is, and New York became New Amsterdam again.
Then how did we lose it? Because the Dutch States-General, which did not
know enough, in deciding between New York and Surinam, to choose New
York, took Surinam, and they have been wishing ever since they never had
been born. Now talk about anybody conquering the Dutch! We generally get
there. They sometimes say: "That is all very well, they were very brave
people and all that, but they don't do anything now." Waterloo, Van
Speyk, Majuba Hill, and the Boers of the Transvaal show what their
courage has been in the later generations. What are the Dutch? Why, we
are the salt of the earth! We do not pretend to be the bread and butter
and the cheese, but we are the salt [laughter], and I think the Boers in
South Africa very lately salted some people I know of. [Great laughter
and applause.]
If you want to see a city that is well salted, look at New York. Go to
the St. Nicholas Society dinner and see that grand assembly; if there is
ever a society in New York that is well salted with Dutch, that is, and
we are all proud of it. And so it is with every other society, New York
society, but not on the paternal side! [Great laughter and applause.]
But if you want to see a place where the Yankee is salt, pepper, bread,
butter, and everything, go to Boston. It is a great city. That is all
right. But we prefer New York, and we prefer just what God has ordained
us to be--the people not always getting the credit of it, but always
accomplishing all the good that is ever accomplished on the face of the
earth! [Laughter and applause.] Now you may think that I have not
whooped it up enough for the Dutch [great laughter], so I will go on,
just for a minute.
The State of North Carolina is always talking about having had a
Declaration of Independence in Mecklenburg County, about six months
before they had one in Philadelphia. Why, the Dutch farmers up in the
Mamacotting Valley of Ulster County signed a Declaration of Independence
in April, 1775, and they would have signed it six months before if the
New York Council of Safety had given it to them! [Laughter.] This same
New England gentleman to whom I have alluded--I have it rather mixed up
in my mind which gentleman said it--but some one said that the New
Englanders were very unwilling to part from the English, who were
patronizing them with tea and stamps. Why, the liberty boys of New York
had made up their minds many months before the Declaration of
Independence. The Dutch, and notably the Scotch-Irish, had made up their
minds. As I say, up in Ulster County they circulated that Declaration of
Independence a year and three months before it was really signed
in Philadelphia. They knew what they meant. They said, "We shall never
be slaves." If you will excuse the fact that I did have a
great-grandfather--I am happy to say that my great-grandfather signed
that paper and he had a commission in the Continental Army, which I
possess, signed by John Hancock, and he was at Saratoga. He was in the
2d New York Line. The Dutch knew that what we wanted was to be a free
and independent people, even if our friends over there had not made up
their minds. The Dutch are satisfied with a very modest position in the
world--so that they have the goods and control its destinies. [Great
laughter.] Others may call it New York, if they like, or Manhattan, but
we call it Dutch.
Now this Society, gentlemen, has a great work before it; our President,
who is very much like the President of the French Republic, goes around
with a big ribbon, but he has no authority of any kind whatever. He
might have some at the Board of Trustees meeting, but that is such an
orderly set that there is no use for authority there, and as for the
dinner, Judge Van Hoesen and Mr. Van Schaick manage it very well. But
the President does not wish any authority, and glories in the great
honor, which it seems to him to be one that any one in this Society
might be proud of. We have, however, work to do, and in that your
President, by your grace, as a private member and as a trustee, hopes to
co-operate with you.
It is a strange thing that this great city of New York has allowed the
Puritans first to commemorate the virtues of their heroic race which we
all admire, and all love to speak of in terms of praise in our serious
moments. It is strange that Central Park is adorned by them with that
beautiful statue, while the Dutch have no monument. I well remember the
day that that silver-tongued orator, George William Curtis, made the
dedication address. But why is it that on this Hudson, which was first
ploughed by a Dutch keel, over which first of all a Dutch flag floated,
along this Hudson which was first discovered and explored and made
habitable by Dutch industry and Dutch thrift, there is no Dutch monument
to which we may proudly point as we pass by. There ought to be a statue
of that great Dutchman, William the Silent, on Riverside Drive. [Great
applause.] Do you ever think of him? Do you ever think of his career,
that of the prototype of our own Washington? At fifteen years of age the
companion of an emperor; at twenty-one years of age, the commander of a
great army, and later giving up wealth and pomp and power, preferring to
be among the people of God, than to dwell at ease in the tents of
wickedness; giving up everything for a life of tedious struggle in the
cold marshes of the Netherlands, finally to die at the hand of an
assassin with a prayer for his country upon his lips as he passed away.
He was the first human being on the face of this earth, who fairly and
fully understood the principles of religious and civic freedom. This
great city, the exemplifier of those principles to which it owes so much
for its prosperity and magnificence, has not yet commemorated that man.
How long shall it be, sons of Hollanders, before William the Silent
shall be there looking out upon the Hudson and lifted on high as an
example for all time? I hope our eyes will see the day! [Great
applause.]