offered an alliance; at home, the bickerings of sects were healed.
Peter Minuit came out as director-general and paid his twenty-four
dollars for the Island--a little less than a thousand acres for a
dollar. At all events, the Indians seemed satisfied from Albany to the
Narrows. The Battery was designed, and there was quite a cluster of
houses on the clearing back of it. An atmosphere of Dutch homeliness
began to temper the thin American air. The honest citizens were pious,
and had texts read to them on Sundays; but they did not torture their
consciences with spiritual self-questionings like the English Puritans,
nor dream of disciplining or banishing any of their number for the
better heavenly security of the rest. The souls of these Netherlander
fitted their bodies far better than was the case with the colonists of
Boston and Salem. Instead of starving and rending them, their religion
made them happy and comfortable. Instead of settling the ultimate
principles of theology and government, they enjoyed the consciousness
of mutual good-will, and took things as they came. The new world needed
men of both kinds. It must, however, be admitted that the people of New
Amsterdam were not wholly harmonious with those of Plymouth. Minuit and
Bradford had some correspondence, in which, while professions of mutual
esteem and love were exchanged, uneasy things were let fall about clear
titles and prior rights. Minuit was resolute for his side, and the
attitude of Bradford prompted him to send for a company of soldiers
from home. But there was probably no serious anticipation of coming to
blows on either part. There was space enough in the continent for the
two hundred and seventy inhabitants of New Amsterdam and for the
Pilgrim Fathers, for the present.
Spain was an unwilling contributor to the prosperity of the Dutch
colonists, by the large profits which the latter gained from the
capture of Spanish galleons; but in 1629 the charter creating the order
of Patroons laid the foundation for abuses and discontent which
afflicted the settlers for full thirty years. Upon the face of it, the
charter was liberal, and promised good results; but it made the mistake
of not securing popular liberties. The Netherlands were no doubt a free
country, as freedom was at that day understood in Europe; but this
freedom did not involve independence for the individual. The only
recognized individuality was that of the municipalities, the rulers of
which were not chosen by popular franchise. This system answered well
enough in the old home, but proved unsuited to the conditions of
settlers in the wilderness. The American spirit seemed to lurk like
some subtle contagion in the remotest recesses of the forest, and those
who went to live there became affected with it. It was longer in
successfully vindicating itself than in New England, because it was not
stimulated on the banks of the Hudson by the New England religious
fervor; it was supported on grounds of practical expediency merely. Men
could not prosper unless they received the rewards of industry, and
were permitted to order their private affairs in a manner to make their
labor pay. They were not content to have the Patroon devour their
profits, leaving them enough only for a bare subsistence. The Dutch
families scattered throughout the domain could not get ahead, while yet
they could not help feeling that the bounty of nature ought to benefit
those whose toil made it available, at least as much as it did those
who toiled not, but simply owned the land in virtue of some documentary
transaction with the powers above, and therefore claimed ownership also
over the poor emigrant who settled on it--having nowhere else to go.
The emigrants were probably helped to comprehend and formulate their
own misfortunes by communications with stragglers from New England, who
regaled them with tales of such liberties as they had never before
imagined. But the seed thus sown by the Englishmen fell on fruitful
soil, and the crop was reaped in due season.
The charter intended, primarily, the encouragement of emigration, and
did not realize that it needed very little encouragement. The
advantages offered were more alluring than they need have been. Any
person who, within four years, could establish a colony of fifty
persons, was given privileges only comparable to those of independent
princes. They were allowed to take up tracts of land many square miles
in area, to govern them absolutely (according to the laws of the
realm), to found and administer cities, and in a word to drink from
Baucis's pitcher to their hearts' content. In return, the home
administration expected the benefit of their trade. Two stipulations
only restrained them: they were to buy titles to their land from the
Indians, and they were to permit, on penalty of removal, no cotton or
woolen manufactures in the country. That was a monopoly which was
reserved to the weavers in the old country.
This was excellent for such as could afford to become patroons; but
what about the others? The charter provided that any emigrant who could
pay for his exportation might take up what land he required for his
needs, and cultivate it independently. Other emigrants, unable to pay
their fare out, might have it paid for them, but in that case, of
course, incurred a mortgage to their benefactors. In effect, they could
not own the product of the work of their hands, until it had paid their
sponsors for their outlay, together with such additions in the way of
interest on capital as might seem to the sponsors equitable.
The Company further undertook to supply slaves to the colony, should
they prove to be a paying investment; and it was chiefly because the
climate of New York was less favorable to the Guinea Coast negro than
was that further south, that African slavery did not take early and
firm root in the former region. Philosophers have long recognized the
influence of degrees of latitude upon human morality. The patroon
planters could dispense with black slaves, since they had white men
enough who cost them no more than their keep, and would, presumably,
not involve the expense of overseers. Everything, therefore, seemed
harmonious and sunshiny, and the Company congratulated itself.
But the patroons, through their agents, began buying up all the land
that was worth having, and found it easy to evade the stipulation
restricting them to sixteen miles apiece. One of them had an estate
running twenty-four miles on either bank of the Hudson, below Albany
(or Fort Orange as it was then), and forty-eight miles inland. It was
superb; but it was as far as possible from being democracy; and the
portly Van Rensselaer of Rennselaerwyck would have shuddered to his
marrow, could he have cast a prophetic eye into the Nineteenth Century.
The Company at home presently discovered that its incautious liberality
had injured its own interests, as well as those of poor settlers; for
the estates of the patroons covered the trading posts where the Indians
came to traffic, and all the profits from the latter swelled the
pockets of the patroons. But the charter could not be withdrawn; the
directors must be content with whatever sympathetic benefits might be
conferred by the increasing wealth of the colony. The patroons were
becoming more powerful than their creators, and took things more and
more into their own lordly hands. Neither patroons nor Company
concerned themselves about the people. The charter had, indeed,
mentioned the subjects of schools and religious instructors for the
emigrants, but had made no provision for the maintenance of such; and
the patroons conceived that such luxuries were deserving of but the
slightest encouragement. The more a poor man knows, the less contented
is he. Such was the argument then, and it is occasionally heard to-day,
when our trusts and corporations are annoyed by the complaints and
disaffections of their only half ignorant employés.
Governor Minuit was not held to be the best man in the world for his
position, and he was recalled in 1632, and Wouter Van Twiller, who
possessed all of his predecessor's faults and none of his virtues, took
his place. A governor with the American idea in him would have saved
Manhattan a great deal of trouble, and perhaps have enabled the Dutch
to keep their hold upon it; but no such governor was available, and
worse than Van Twiller was yet to come. A colony had already been
planted in Delaware, but unjust dealings with the Indians led to a
massacre which left nothing of the Cape Henlopen settlement but bones
and charred timbers. The English to the south were led to renew the
assertion of their never-abandoned claim to the region; there were
encroachments by the English settlers on the Connecticut boundary, and
the Dutch, deprived by the wars in Europe of the support of their
countrymen at home, were too feeble to do more than protest. But
protests from those unable to enforce them have never been listened to
with favor--not even by the English. Besides, the Dutch, though
amenable to religious observances, were far from making them the soul
and end of all thought and action; and this lack of aggressive
religious fiber put them at a decided political disadvantage with their
rivals. Man for man, they were the equals of the English, or of any
other people; as they magnificently demonstrated, forty years
afterward, by defeating allied and evil-minded Europe in its attempt to
expunge them as a nation. But the indomitable spirit of Van Tromp and
De Ruyter was never awakened in the New Netherlands; commercial
considerations were paramount; and though the Dutch settlers remained,
and were always welcome, the colony finally passed from the
jurisdiction of their own government, with their own expressed consent.
Van Twiller vanished after eight years' mismanagement, and the
sanguinary Kieft took the reins. But before his incumbency, Sweden, at
the instance of Gustavus Adolphus, and by the agency of his chancellor
Oxenstiern, both men of the first class, lodged a colony on Delaware
Bay, which subsisted for seventeen years, and was absorbed, at last,
without one stain upon its fair record. Minuit, being out of a job,
offered his experienced services in bringing the emigrating Swedes and
Finns to their new abode, and they began their sojourn in 1638. They
were industrious, peaceable, religious and moral, and they declared
against any form of slavery. They threw out a branch toward
Philadelphia. But Gustavus Adolphus had died at Luetzen before the
Swedes came over, and Queen Christina had not the ability to carry out
his ideas, even had she possessed the power. The Dutch began to dispute
the rights of the Scandinavians; Rysingh took their fort Casimir in
1654, and Peter Stuyvesant with six hundred men received their
submission in the same year. But this success was of no benefit to the
Dutch; the tyrannous monopolies which the Company tried to establish in
Delaware, instead of creating revenues, caused the country to be
deserted by the settlers, who betook themselves to the less oppressive
English administrations to the southward; and it was not until the
English took possession of both Delaware and the rest of the New
Netherlands that it began to yield a fair return on the investment.
But we must return to the ill-omened Kieft. It was upon the Indian
question that he made shipwreck, not only incurring their deadly
enmity, but alienating from himself the sympathies and support of his
own countrymen. The Algonquin tribe, which inhabited the surrounding
country, had been constantly overreached in their trade with the
Dutchmen; the principle upon which barter was carried on with the
untutored savage being, "I'll take the turkey, and you keep the
buzzard: or you take the buzzard, and I'll keep the turkey." This
sounded fair; but when the Indian came to examine his assets, it always
appeared that a buzzard was all he could make of it. Partly, perhaps,
by way of softening the asperities of such a discovery, the Dutch
merchant had been wont to furnish his victim with brandy (not
eleemosynary, of course); but the results were disastrous. The Indians,
transported by the alcohol beyond the anything-but-restricted bounds
which nature had imposed upon them, felt the insult of the buzzard more
keenly than ever, and signified their resentment in ways consistent
with their instincts and traditions. In 1640 an army of them fell upon
the colony in Staten Island, and slaughtered them, man, woman and
child, with the familiar Indian accessories of tomahawk, scalping-knife
and torch. The Staten Islanders, it should be stated, had done nothing
to merit this treatment; but Indian logic interprets the legal maxim
"Qui facit per alium, facit per se," as meaning that if one white man
cheats him, he can get his satisfaction out of the next one who happens
in sight. Staten Island was a definite and convenient area, and when
its population had been exterminated, the Indians could feel relieved
from their obligation. Not long afterward an incident such as romancers
love to feign actually took place; an Indian brave who, as a child
years before, had seen his uncle robbed and slain, and had vowed
revenge, now having become of age, or otherwise qualified himself for
the enterprise, went upon the warpath, and returned with the
long-coveted scalp at his girdle. Evidently the time had come for
Governor Kieft to assert himself.
It was of small avail to invade the wilds of New Jersey, or to offer
rewards for Raritans, dead or alive. The sachems were willing to
express their regret, but they would not surrender the culprits, and
declared that the Dutchmen's own brandy was the really guilty party.
Kieft would not concede the point, and the situation was strained. At
this juncture, the unexpected happened. The Mohawks, a kingly tribe of
red men, who claimed all Northeast America from the St. Lawrence to the
Delaware, and who had already driven the Algonquins before them like
chaff, sent down a war party from northern New York, and demanded
tribute from them. There were more Algonquins than there were Mohawks;
but one eagle counts for more than many kites. The kites came
fluttering to Fort Orange for protection: not so much that they feared
death or torture, but they were overawed by the spirit of the Mohawk,
and could not endure to face him. Kieft fancied that he saw his
opportunity. He would teach the red scoundrels a lesson they would
remember. There was a company of soldiers in the Fort, and in the river
were moored some vessels with crews of Dutch privateers on board. Kieft
made up his party, and when night had fallen he sent them on their
bloody errand, guided by one who knew all the camps and hiding-places
of the doomed tribe. It was a revolting episode; a hundred Indians were
unresistingly murdered. They would have made a stronger defense had
they not been under the impression that it was the Mohawks who were
upon them; and to be killed by a Mohawk was no more than an Algonquin
should expect. But when it transpired that the Dutch were the
perpetrators, the whole nation gave way to a double exasperation:
first, that their friends had been killed, and secondly that they had
suffered under a misapprehension. The settlers, in disregard of advice,
were living in scattered situations over a large territory, and they
were all in danger, and defenseless, even if New Amsterdam itself could
escape. Kieft was heartily cursed by all impartially; he was compelled
to make overtures for peace, and a pow-wow was held in Rockaway woods,
in the spring of 1643. Terms were agreed upon, and, according to Indian
usage, gifts were exchanged. But those of the chiefs so far exceeded in
value the offerings of Kieft that these were regarded as a fresh
insult; war was declared, and dragged along for two years more. It was
not until 1645 that the grand meeting of the settlers and the Five
Nations took place at Fort Amsterdam, and the treaty of lasting peace
was ratified. Kieft sailed from New Amsterdam with the consciousness of
having injured his countrymen more than had any enemy; but he was
drowned off the Welsh coast, without having brought forth fruits meet
for repentance.
Peter Stuyvesant is a favorite character in our history because he was
a manly and straightforward man, faithful to his employers, fearless in
doing and saying what he thought was right, and endowed with a full
share of obstinate, homely, kindly human nature. He was not in advance
of his age, or superior to his training; he was the plain product of
both, but free from selfishness, malice, and unworthy ambitions. He was
born in 1602, and came to America a warrior from honorable wars, seamed
and knotty, with a famous wooden leg which all New Yorkers, at any rate
love to hear stumping down the corridors of time. His administration,
the last of the Dutch regime, wiped out the stains inflicted by his
predecessors, and resisted with equal energy encroachments from abroad
and innovations at home. He was a true Dutchman, with most of the
limitations and all the virtues of his race; fond of peace and of
dwelling in his own "Bowery," yet not afraid to fight when he deemed
that his duty. His tenure of office lasted from 1647 till 1664, a
period of seventeen active years; after the English took possession of
the town and called it New York, Peter went back to Holland, unwilling
to live in the presence of new things; but he found that, at the age of
sixty-three, he could not be happy away from the home that he had made
for himself in the new world; so he returned to Manhattan Island, and
completed the tale of his eighty years on the farm which is now the
most populous and democratic of New York's thoroughfares. There he
smoked his long-stemmed pipe and drank his schnapps, and thought over
old times, and criticised the new. After two and a half centuries, the
memory of him is undimmed; and it is to be wished that some fitting
memorial of him may be erected in the city which his presence honored.
The very next year after his arrival, free trade was established in New
Amsterdam. There had been a strict monopoly till then; but in one way
or another it was continually evaded, and the New Amsterdam merchants
found themselves so much handicapped by the restrictions, that their
inability reacted upon the managers at home. There were not at that
time any infant industries in need of protection, and the colony was
large and capacious enough to take what the mother country sent it, and
more also. But in order to prevent loss, an export duty was enforced,
which pressed lightly on those who paid it, and comforted those to whom
it was paid. Commerce was greatly stimulated, and the merchants of old
Amsterdam sent compliments and prophesies of future greatness to their
brethren across the sea. Every new-hatched settlement that springs up
on the borders of the wilderness is liable to be "hailed" by its
promoters as destined to become the Queen City of its region; the wish
fathers the word, and the word is an advertisement. But the merchant
princes of Amsterdam spoke by the card; they perceived the almost
unique advantages of geographical position and local facilities of
their American namesake; with such a bay and water front, with such a
river, with such a soil and such openings for trade, what might it not
become! Yes: but--"Sic vos noa vobis aedificatis!" The English reaped
what the Dutch had sown, and New York inherits the glory and power
predicted for New Amsterdam.
The soil of Manhattan Island being comparatively poor, the place was
destined to be used as a residence merely, and the houses of prosperous
traders and burghers began to assemble and bear likeness to a town. The
primeval forest still clothed the upper part of the island; but the
visible presence of a municipality in the southern extremity prompted
the inhabitants to suggest a remodeling of the government somewhat
after the New England pattern, where patroons were unknown and
impossible. It is not surprising that suggestions to this effect from
the humbler members of the community were not cordially embraced by
either the patroons or their creators at home; in fact, it was
still-born. That the people should rule themselves was as good as to
say that the horse should loll in the carriage while his master toiled
between the shafts. The thing was impossible, and should be
unmentionable. The people, however, continued to mention it, and even
to neglect paying the taxes which had been imposed with no regard to
their reasonable welfare. A deputation went to Holland to tell the
directors that they could neither farm nor trade with profit unless the
burdens were lightened; the directors thought otherwise, and the
consequence was that devices were practiced to lighten them illicitly.
This added to the interest of life, but subverted the welfare of the
state. Where political rights are not secured to all men by
constitutional right, those who are unable to get them by privilege,
intrigue to steal what such rights would guarantee. At this rate, there
would presently be a Council of Ten and an Inquisition in New
Amsterdam. In 1653, the Governor was constrained to admit the deputies
from the various settlements to an interview, in which they said their
say, and he his. "We have come here at our own expense," they observed,
"from various countries of Europe, expecting to be given protection
while earning our living; we have turned your wilderness into a
fruitful garden for you, and you, in return, impose on us laws which
disable us from profiting by our labor. We ask you to repeal these
laws, allow us to make laws to meet our needs, and appoint none to
office who has not our approbation." Thus, in substance, spoke the
people; and we, at the end of the Nineteenth Century, may think they
were uttering the veriest axioms of political common sense. What sturdy
Peter Stuyvesant thought is perfectly expressed in what he replied.
"The old laws will stand. Directors and council only shall be
law-makers: never will they make themselves responsible to the people.
As to officers of government, were their election left to the rabble,
we should have thieves on horseback and honest men on foot." And with
that, we may imagine, the Governor stamped his wooden toe.
The people shrugged their shoulders. "We aim but at the general good,"
said they. "All men have a natural right to constitute society, and to
assemble to protect their liberties and property."
"I declare this assembly dissolved," Peter retorted. "Assemble again at
your peril! The authority which rules you is derived not from the whim
of a few ignorant malcontents." Alas! the seed of the American Idea had
never germinated in Peter's soldierly bosom; and when the West India
Company learned of the dialogue, they spluttered with indignation. "The
people be d----d." was the sense of their message. "Let them no longer
delude themselves with the fantasy that taxes require their assent."
With that, they dismissed the matter from their minds. Yet even then,
the Writing was on the wall. The flouted people were ripe to welcome
England; and England, in the shape of Charles II., who had come at last
to his own, meditated wiping the Dutch off the Atlantic seaboard. It
availed not to plead rights: Lord Baltimore snapped his fingers.
Lieutenant-governor Beekman, indeed, delayed the appropriation of
Delaware; but Long Island was being swallowed up, and nobody except the
government cared. The people may be incompetent to frame laws: but what
if they decline to fight for you when called upon? If they cannot make
taxes to please themselves, at all events they will not make war to
please anybody else. If they are poor and ignorant, that is not their
fault. The English fleet was impending; what was to be done? Could
Stuyvesant but have multiplied himself into a thousand Stuyvesants, he
knew what he would do; but he was impotent. In August, 1664, here was
the fleet actually anchored in Gravesend Bay, with Nicolls in command.
"What did they want?" the Governor inquired. "Immediate recognition of
English sovereignty," replied Nicolls curtly; and the gentler voice of
Winthrop of Boston was heard, advising surrender. "Surrender would be
reproved at home," said poor Stuyvesant, refusing to know when he was
beaten. He was doing his best to defeat the army and navy of England
single-handed. But the burgomasters went behind him, and capitulated,
and--Peter to the contrary for four days more notwithstanding--New
Amsterdam became New York.