THE DUTCH AT NEW AMSTERDAM.
Soon after the discovery of the Hudson, Dutch ships began to visit that
region, to traffic in furs with the Indians. Some huts were erected by
these traders on Manhattan Island in 1613, and a trading-post was
established in 1615. Relics of these times are frequently turned up yet
on Broadway while putting in new pipes, or taking out old pipes, or
repairing other pipes, or laying plans for yet other pipes, or looking
in the earth to see that the original pipes have not been taken away.
Afterwards the West India Company obtained a grant of New Netherland,
and New Amsterdam was fairly started. In 1626, Minuit, the first
governor, arrived, and, as we have stated, purchased the entire city of
New York of the Indians for twenty-four dollars.
Then trouble sprang up between the Dutch and the Swedes on the Delaware
over the possession of Manhattan, and when the two tribes got to
conversing with each other over their rights, using the mother-tongue on
both sides, it reminded one of the Chicago wheat market when business
is good. The English on the Connecticut also saw that Manhattan was
going to boom as soon as the Indians could be got farther west, and that
property would be high there.
[Illustration: STUYVESANT'S VISION.]
Peter Stuyvesant was the last Dutch governor of New York. He was a
relative of mine. He disliked the English very much. They annoyed him
with their democratic ideas and made his life a perfect hell to him. He
would be sorry to see the way our folks have since begun to imitate the
English. I can almost see him rising in his grave to note how the
Stuyvesants in full cry pursue the affrighted anise-seed bag, or with
their coaching outfits go tooling along 'cross country, stopping at the
inns on the way and unlimbering their portable bath-tubs to check them
with the "clark."
Pete, you did well to die early. You would not have been happy here now.
While Governor Stuyvesant was in hot water with the English, the Swedes,
and the Indians, a fleet anchored in the harbor and demanded the
surrender of the place in the name of the Duke of York, who wished to
use it for a game preserve. After a hot fight with his council, some of
whom were willing even then to submit to English rule and hoped that the
fleet might have two or three suits of tweed which by mistake were a fit
and therefore useless to the owners, and that they might succeed in
swapping furs for these, the governor yielded, and in 1664 New York
became a British possession, named as above.
The English governors, however, were not popular. They were mostly
political hacks who were pests at home and banished to New York, where
the noise of the streets soon drove them to drink. For nine years this
sort of thing went on, until one day a Dutch fleet anchored near the
Staten Island brewery and in the evening took the town.
However, in the year following, peace was restored between England and
Holland, and New Amsterdam became New York again, also subject to the
Tammany rule.
Andros was governor for a time, but was a sort of pompous tomtit, with a
short breath and a large aquiline opinion of himself. He was one of the
arrogant old pie-plants whose growth was fostered by the beetle-bellied
administration at home. He went back on board the City of Rome one day,
and did not return.
New York had a gleam of hope for civil freedom under the rule of the
Duke of York and the county Democracy, but when the duke became James
II. he was just like other people who get a raise of salary, and refused
to be privately entertained by the self-made ancestry of the American.
He was proud and arrogant to a degree. He forbade legislation, and
stopped his paper. New York was at this time annexed to the New England
Colony, and began keeping the Sabbath so vigorously that the angels had
great difficulty in getting at it.
[Illustration: DUKE OF YORK.]
Nicholson, who was the lieutenant tool of iniquity for Andros, fled with
him when democracy got too hot for them. Captain Leisler, supported by
Steve Brodie and everything south of the Harlem, but bitterly opposed by
the aristocracy, who were distinguished by their ability to use new
goods in making their children's clothes, whereas the democracy had to
make vests for the boys from the cast-off trousers of their fathers,
governed the province until Governor Sloughter arrived.
Sloughter was another imported Smearkase in official life, and arrested
Leisler at the request of an aristocrat who drove a pair of bang-tail
horses up and down Nassau Street on pleasant afternoons and was
afterwards collector of the port. Having arrested Leisler for treason,
the governor was a little timid about executing him, for he had never
really killed a man in his life, and he hated the sight of blood; so
Leisler's enemies got the governor to take dinner with them, and mixed
his rum, so that when he got ready to speak, his remarks were somewhat
heterogeneous, and before he went home he had signed a warrant for
Leisler's immediate execution.
[Illustration: GOVERNOR SLOUGHTER'S PAINFUL AWAKENING.]
When he awoke in the morning at his beautiful home on Whitehall Street,
the sun was gayly glinting the choppy waves of Buttermilk Channel, and
by his watch, which had run down, he saw that it was one o'clock, but
whether it was one o'clock A.M. or P.M. he did not know, nor whether it
was next Saturday or Tuesday before last. Oh, how he must have felt!
His room was dark, the gas having gone out to get better air. He
attempted to rise, but a chill, a throb, a groan, and back he lay
hastily on the bed just as it was on the point of escaping him. Suddenly
a thought came to him. It was not a great thought, but it was such a
thought as comes to those who have been thoughtless. He called for a
blackamoor slave from abroad who did chores for him, and ordered a
bottle of cooking brandy, then some club soda he had brought from London
with him. Next he drank a celery-glass of it, and after that he felt
better. He then drank another.
"Keep out of the way of this bed, Julius," he said. "It is coming around
that way again. Step to one side, Julius, please, and let the bed walk
around and stretch its legs. I never saw a bed spread itself so," he
continued, seeming to enjoy his own Lancashire humor. "All night I
seemed to feel a great pain creeping over me, Julius," he said,
hesitatingly, again filling his celery-glass, "but I see now that it was
a counterpane."
Eighty years after that, Sloughter was a corpse.
We should learn from this not to be too hasty in selecting our
birthplaces. Had he been born in America, he might have been alive yet.
From this on the struggles of the people up to the time of the
Revolution were enough to mortify the reader almost to death. I will not
go over them again. It was the history of all the other Colonies; poor,
proud, with large masses of children clustering about, and Indians
lurking in the out-buildings. The mother-country was negligent, and even
cruel. Her political offscourings were sent to rule the people. The
cranberry-crops soured on the vines, and times were very scarce.
It was during this period that Captain William Kidd, a New York
ship-master and anti-snapper from Mulberry Street, was sent out to
overtake and punish a few of the innumerable pirates who then infested
the high seas.
Studying first the character, life, and public services of the immoral
pirate, and being perfectly foot-loose, his wife having eloped with her
family physician, he determined to take a little whirl at the business
himself, hoping thereby to escape the noise and heat of New York and
obtain a livelihood while life lasted which would maintain him the
remainder of his days unless death overtook him.
[Illustration: NYE AS A BOY READING ABOUT KIDD.]
Dropping off at Boston one day to secure a supply of tobacco, he was
captured while watching the vast number of street-cars on Washington
Street. He was taken to England, where he was tried and ultimately
hanged. His sudden and sickening death did much to discourage an
American youth of great brilliancy who had up to 1868 intended to be a
pirate, but who, stumbling across the "Life and Times of Captain Kidd,
and his Awful Death," changed his whole course and became one of the
ablest historians of the age in which he lived.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN KIDD ARRESTED.]
This should teach us to read the papers instead of loaning them to
people who do not subscribe.
* * * * *
Since the above was written, the account of the death of Governor
Andros is flashed across the wires to us. _Verbum sap._ Also _In
hoc signo vinces_.
The author wishes to express by this means his grateful
acknowledgments to his friends and the public generally for the
great turn-out and general sympathy bestowed upon his relative, the
late Peter B. Stuyvesant, on the sad occasion of his funeral, which
was said to be one of the best attended and most successful
funerals before the war. Should any of his friends be caught in the
same fix, the author will not only cheerfully turn out himself, but
send all hands from his place that can be spared, also a six-seated
wagon and a side-bar buggy.