About the time the Embargo Act was repealed, Washington Irving,
America’s first important man of letters, wrote his _History of New
York_. This book is a burlesque account of the old Dutch period in New
York history, a very funny book, full of comic pictures of the Dutch
governors and the early settlers. The book also contains some
contemporary political satire in the chapters devoted to William the
Testy. In the selections which follow you will see obvious references to
the _Chesapeake_ incident, the Embargo Act, and President Jefferson’s
actions.
As my readers are well aware of the advantage a potentate has in
handling his enemies as he pleases in his speeches and bulletins,
where he has the talk all on his own side, they may rest assured that
William the Testy did not let such an opportunity escape of giving the
Yankees what is called “a taste of his quality.” In speaking of their
inroads into the territories of their High Mightinesses, he compared
them to the Gauls who desolated Rome, the Goths and Vandals who
overran the fairest plains of Europe; but when he came to speak of the
unparalleled audacity with which they of Weathersfield had advanced
their [_onion_] patches up to the very walls of Fort Goed Hoop, and
threatened to smother the garrison in onions, tears of rage started
into his eyes, as though he nosed the very offense in question.
Having thus wrought up his tale to a climax, he assumed a most
belligerent look, and assured the council that he had devised an
instrument, potent in its effects, and which he trusted would soon
drive the Yankees from the land. So saying, he thrust his hand into
one of the deep pockets of his broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not
an infernal machine, but an instrument in writing, which he laid with
great emphasis upon the table.
The burghers gazed at it for a time in silent awe, as a wary housewife
does at a gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked. The document in
question had a sinister look, it is true; it was crabbed in text, and
from a broad red ribbon dangled the great seal of the province, about
the size of a buckwheat pancake. Still, after all, it was but an
instrument in writing. Herein, however, existed the wonder of the
invention. The document in question was a PROCLAMATION, ordering the
Yankees to depart instantly from the territories of their High
Mightinesses, under pain of suffering all the forfeitures and
punishments in such case made and provided. It was on the moral effect
of this formidable instrument that Wilhelmus Kieft calculated,
pledging his valor as a governor that, once fulminated [_thundered_]
against the Yankees, it would in less than two months drive every
mother’s son of them across the borders.
The council broke up in perfect wonder, and nothing was talked of for
some time among the old men and women of New Amsterdam but the vast
genius of the governor and his new and cheap mode of fighting by
proclamation.
As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having dispatched his proclamation to the
frontiers, he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small clothes, and,
mounting a tall rawboned charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of
Dog’s Misery....
Never was a more comprehensive, a more expeditious—or, what is still
better, a more economical—measure devised than this of defeating the
Yankees by proclamation—an expedient, likewise, so gentle and humane
there were ten chances to one in favor of its succeeding, but then
there was one chance to ten that it would not succeed: as the
ill-natured Fates would have it, that single chance carried the day!
The proclamation was perfect in all its parts, well constructed, well
written, well sealed, and well published; all that was wanting to
insure its effect was, that the Yankees should stand in awe of it;
but, provoking to relate, they treated it with the most absolute
contempt, applied it to an unseemly purpose, and thus did the first
warlike proclamation come to a shameful end—a fate which I am credibly
informed has befallen but too many of its successors.
So far from abandoning the country, those varlets [_rascals_]
continued their encroachments, squatting along the green banks of the
Varsche River, and founding Hartford, Stamford, New Haven, and other
border towns. I have already shown how the onion patches of Pyquag
were an eyesore to Jacobus Van Curlet and his garrison; but now these
moss-troopers increased in their atrocities, kidnaping hogs,
impounding horses, and sometimes grievously rib-roasting their owners.
Our worthy forefathers could scarcely stir abroad without danger of
being outjockeyed in horseflesh or taken in in bargaining, while in
their absence some daring Yankee peddler would penetrate to their
household and nearly ruin the good housewives with tinware and wooden
bowls....
It was long before William the Testy could be persuaded that his
much-vaunted war measure was ineffectual; on the contrary, he flew in
a passion whenever it was doubted, swearing that though slow in
operating, yet when it once began to work it would soon purge the land
of these invaders. When convinced, at length, of the truth, like a
shrewd physician he attributed the failure to the quantity, not the
quality, of the medicine, and resolved to double the dose. He
fulminated, therefore, a second proclamation, more vehement than the
first, forbidding all intercourse with these Yankee intruders,
ordering the Dutch burghers on the frontiers to buy none of their
pacing horses, measly port, apple sweetmeats, Weathersfield onions, or
wooden bowls, and to furnish them with no supplies of gin,
gingerbread, or sauerkraut.
Another interval elapsed, during which the last proclamation was as
little regarded as the first, and the non-intercourse was especially
set at naught by the young folks of both sexes, if we may judge by the
active bundling which took place along the borders.
Irving concludes this satire of William the Testy’s proclamation by a
comic account of how the Yankees captured Fort Goed Hoop. They sneaked
into the fort while the Dutch soldiers were sleeping off their dinner,
gave the defenders a kick in the pants, and sent them back to New
Amsterdam.