[Speech of William S. Stryker at the fifth annual dinner of the
Holland Society of New York, January 10, 1890. The vice-President,
Robert B. Roosevelt, presided, and called upon General Stryker to
respond to the toast, "The Dutch Soldier in America."]
MR. PRESIDENT:--As well-born Dutchmen, full, of course,
to-night of the spirit which creates Dutch courage, it is pleasant for
us to look across the seas, to recall the martial life of our
progenitors and to speak of their great deeds for liberty. It is
conducive to our family pride to trace back the source of the blessings
we enjoy to-day through all the brilliant pages of Netherland history to
the time when the soldiers of freedom--the "Beggars"--chose rather to
let in the merciless ocean waves than to surrender to the ruthless
invader. [Applause.]
We love to say that we can see in the glory of free institutions in this
century the steady outgrowth of that germ of human liberty which was
planted by the sturdy labor, which was watered by the tears and blood,
and fructified by the precious lives of those who fought by land and sea
in the battles of the sixteenth century. [Applause.]
Although we make our boast of the indomitable courage, the many
self-denials, the homely virtues of our forefathers, think you that we
in America are degenerate sons of noble sires? I trow not! [Renewed
applause.]
That irascible old Governor who stamped his wooden leg on the streets of
New Amsterdam, who ruled with his iron will and his cane the thrifty
burghers of this young city, did he not, when called upon to show a
soldier's courage, wage a successful contest with savage foes, with the
testy Puritans of Connecticut and with the obdurate Swedes on
Christiana Creek?
Before the old Dutch church in Millstone on the Raritan River, in the
summer of 1775, a hundred of the young men of the village were drilled
every night. They had on their long smock-frocks, broad-brimmed black
hats, and leggings. Their own firelocks were on their shoulders,
twenty-three cartridges in their cartouches, the worm, the priming-wire,
and twelve flints in their pockets. These were the bold minute-men of
New Jersey, and Frederick Frelinghuysen was their gallant Dutch captain,
who stood ready to march, in case an alarm bonfire burned on Sourland
Mountain, to fight any enemy. [Applause.]
When fighting under Bradstreet on the Oswego River in the old French
war, when laboring against great odds at Fort Edward, when retarding the
British advance after the evacuation of Ticonderoga, when urging on a
force to the relief of Fort Stanwix, when planning the campaign which
ended in the capture of Burgoyne, and placing laurels, now faded, on the
head of Gates, the character of our own Knickerbocker General, Philip
Schuyler, the pure patriot, the noble soldier, is lustrous with
evidences of his sagacious counsels, his wonderful energy, and his
military skill. [Renewed applause.]
The good blood of the patroons never flowed purer or brighter than when,
as soldiers, they battled for a nation's rights. In the fight at
Saratoga, Colonel Henry Kiliaen Van Rensselaer greatly distinguished
himself and carried from the field an ounce of British lead, which
remained in his body thirty-five years. Captain Solomon Van Rensselaer
fought most courageously by the side of Mad Anthony Wayne in the Miami
campaign. Being seriously wounded in a brilliant charge, he refused to
be carried off the field on a litter, but insisted that, as a dragoon,
he should be allowed to ride his horse from the battle and, if he
dropped, to die where he fell. [Applause.]
Worn and bleeding were the feet, scant the clothing of our ragged
Continentals, as, turning upon their foe, they recrossed the icy
Delaware on Christmas night, surprised Rall and his revellers in
Trenton's village, punished the left of Cornwallis's column at
Princeton, and then, on their way to the mountains of Morris County,
fell by the wayside with hunger and wretchedness, perishing with the
intense cold. But, in the darkness of the night, a partisan trooper,
with twenty horsemen, surrounded the baggage-wagons of the British
force, fired into the two hundred soldiers guarding them, and, shouting
like a host of demons, captured the train, and the doughty captain with
my own ancestral name woke up the weary soldiers of Washington's army
with the rumbling of wagons heavily laden with woollen clothing and
supplies, bravely stolen from the enemy. [Applause.]
The poisoned arrows whistled in the Newtown fight as the New York
contingent pressed forward toward Seneca Castle, the great capitol-house
of the Six Nations. The redskins and their Tory allies, under Brant,
tried hard to resist the progress of that awful human wedge that was
driven with relentless fury among the wigwams of those who had burned
the homes in beautiful Wyoming, who had despoiled with the bloody
tomahawk the settlement at German Flats, and had closed the horrid
campaign with the cruel massacre at Cherry Valley. Bold and daring in
this revengeful expedition was Colonel Philip Van Cortlandt, a name
honored in all Dutch civil and military history. [Continued applause.]
As a leader of three thousand cavalrymen the youthful General Bayard
[great cheers], proud of his Dutch descent, fell on the heights of
bloody Fredericksburg. Like the good knight, he was "without fear and
without reproach." Full of zeal for the cause, the bravest of the brave,
his sword flashed always where dangers were the thickest. When a
bursting shell left him dead on the field of honor, his brave men
mourned him and the foe missed him. [Cheers.]
In the leaden tempest which rained around Drury's Bluff, a boyish
officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring. His uniform was
soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took
in every feature of the conflict. The day was just closing when an angry
bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the young
life of my college friend, Abram Zabriskie, of Jersey City, as chivalric
a Dutch colonel as ever drew a blade in battle, was breathed out in the
mighty throes of civil war. [Applause.]
As we picture to ourselves the appearance of that grand figure of
William of Orange, as he led his heroic people through and out of scenes
of darkness and hunger and death into the sweet light of freedom; as we
turn the pages of history that recount the deeds of glory of Vander
Werf, the burgomaster of Leyden; of Count Egmont and Count Horn, of de
Ruyter and Van Tromp, let us not forget that the same sturdy stock has
developed in the New World the same zeal for human rights, the same high
resolves of duty, the same devotion to liberty. If ever again this
nation needs brave defenders, your sons and mine will, I trust, be able
to show to the world that the patriotism of Dutchmen, that true Dutch
valor, still fills the breasts of the soldiers of America! [Prolonged
cheering.]