Growth of New Netherland--Governor Stuyvesant's Despotic Rule--His
Comments on Popular Election--New Amsterdam Becomes New York--The
Planting of Maryland--Partial Freedom of Conscience--Civil War in
Maryland--The Carolinas--Settlement of North and South Carolina--The
Bacon Rebellion in Virginia--Governor Berkeley's Vengeance.
New Amsterdam prospered under methods of government which were mild as
compared with those of the Puritans, although the annals of the Dutch
colony are unhappily not free from the stain of persecution for
conscience' sake. Englishmen as well as Hollanders thronged to New
Netherland, and the people, as they grew beyond anxiety for enough to eat
and drink, became ambitious for a share in the government. In 1653, after
much agitation and resistance on the part of Governor Stuyvesant, New
Amsterdam was organized as a municipality, the power of the burghers
being, however, very limited.
The smaller Dutch towns possessed the privilege of electing their
officers, though their choice was subject to the approval of the
director-general. New Amsterdam had not been granted this privilege,
although it had been demanded in 1642 and again in 1649. At last, in
1652, Governor Stuyvesant was instructed to have a schout, two
burgomasters and five schepens "elected according to the custom of the
metropolis of Fatherland." He, however, continued for a long time to
appoint municipal officers, and when a protest was made he replied that
he had done so "for momentous reason." "For if," he said, "this rule was
to become a synocure, if the nomination and election of magistrates were
to be left to the populace who were the most interested, then each would
vote for some one of his own stamp, the thief for a thief, the rogue, the
tippler, the smuggler for a brother in iniquity, that he might enjoy
greater latitude in his vices and frauds." The magistrates had not been
appointed contrary to the will of the people, because they were "proposed
to the commonalty in front of the City Hall by their names and surnames,
each in his quality, before they were admitted or sworn to office. The
question is then put, 'Does any one object?'" At length, in 1658,
Stuyvesant allowed the burgomasters and schepens to nominate their
successors, but the city did not have a schout of its own until 1660.
Other troubles besides the demands of the people for self-government,
were gathering around the sturdy Dutch governor. The English were
pressing him from the east, and in New Netherland itself they were
aggressive and defiant in their attitude toward Dutch authority. Charles
II. granted New Netherland to his brother, the Duke of York, and an
English flotilla under Richard Nicholls appeared in front of New
Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the province. Stuyvesant refused
to submit, but the people of New Amsterdam were more than willing to come
under English rule, and their doughty governor was made to understand
that he would be virtually alone in resisting the invaders. After a week
of fuming and raging against the inevitable, Stuyvesant yielded, and the
English took possession of New Amsterdam. The place was recaptured and
held by the Dutch for a few months in 1673, but with the exception of
this brief period the English remained thenceforth masters of the
Atlantic coast of North America from the St. Lawrence in the north to the
Spanish possessions in the south.
* * *
The planting of a Roman Catholic colony in Maryland was almost
contemporary with the Puritan settlement of New England. The first steps
toward the establishment of the colony had been taken under James I., but
it was in the reign of Charles I. that Cecil Calvert, the second Lord
Baltimore, obtained the charter which made him almost an independent
sovereign over one of the fairest regions of North America. The charter
granted civil and religious liberty to Christians who believed in the
Trinity. The Ark and the Dove, two vessels fitted out by Lord Baltimore,
bore about two hundred Roman Catholic immigrants to the banks of the
Potomac, where they landed on March 25, 1634. The cross was planted as
the emblem of the new colony, and Governor Leonard Calvert opened
negotiations with the Indians for the purchase of their lands. The first
assembly met in 1635, and another in 1638. Question having arisen as to
whether the lord proprietor or the colonists had the right to propose
laws, that right was at length conceded to the colonists. Of course the
settlers would not have been allowed to persecute non-Catholics, even had
they so desired; but they showed no such desire, and laws were enacted
securing freedom of worship to all professing to believe in Jesus Christ;
with the important limitation, however, of severe penalties for alleged
blasphemy. This limitation clearly made it possible for magistrates to
construe an honest expression of religious opinion as blasphemy, and to
inflict the cruel punishments provided for that offence. It should be
noticed that the Toleration Act of Maryland, passed in 1649, was the work
of a General Assembly composed of sixteen Protestants and eight Roman
Catholics, the governor (William Stone) himself being a Protestant. Some
years later the Puritans, being in a majority in the Maryland General
Assembly, passed an act disfranchising Roman Catholics and members of the
Church of England. Civil war followed, resulting in a defeat for the
Roman Catholics near Providence, now called Annapolis, April, 1655. Lord
Baltimore, whose authority was overthrown in the course of the conflict,
recovered his rights when the monarchy was restored in England. The
government of the Baltimores continued, with some interruptions, until
the Revolution, and it is but fair to state that the character which they
stamped upon the colony was not effaced even by that event.
* * *
The Puritans nearly succeeded in adding North Carolina to their chain of
colonies. The first settlers, after the ill-fated Raleigh expeditions of
the previous century, were Presbyterian refugees from persecution at
Jamestown, who, led by Roger Green, settled on the Chowan, near the site
of Edenton. These were joined by other dissenters who had found the
religious atmosphere of Virginia uncomfortable, and Puritans from New
England landed at the Cape Fear River in 1661, and bought lands from the
Indians. The soil and climate were admirably suited for successful
colonization, and North Carolina might have proved a southern New England
but for the hunger for vast American domains which just then possessed
the courtiers of Charles II. In view of the notorious depravity of that
merry monarch's surroundings it seems ludicrous to read that the grantees
obtained Carolina under the pretence of a "pious zeal for the propagation
of the gospel among the heathen." The list included the Earl of
Clarendon, General George Monk, to whom Charles owed, in a large degree,
his restoration to the throne; Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, afterward Earl
of Shaftesbury; Sir John Colleton, Lord Craven, Sir George Carteret and
Lord John Berkeley and his brother, then Governor of Virginia. It is
related that, "when the petitioners presented their memorial, so full of
pious pretensions, to King Charles in the garden of Hampton Court, the
'merrie monarch,' after looking each in the face a moment, burst into
loud laughter, in which his audience joined heartily. Then taking up a
little shaggy spaniel, with large, meek eyes, and holding it at arm's
length before them, he said, 'Good friends, here is a model of piety and
sincerity, which it might be wholesome for you to copy.' Then tossing it
to Clarendon, he said, 'There, Hyde, is a worthy prelate; make him
archbishop of the domain which I shall give you.' With grim satire
Charles introduced into the preamble of the charter a statement that the
petitioners, 'excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation
of the gospel, have begged a certain country in the parts of America not
yet cultivated and planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people
who have no knowledge of God.'"
The Puritans, already settled in North Carolina, had no desire to take
part in the propagation of the gospel in the fashion which prevailed
among the courtiers of Charles II., and most of those who were from New
England abandoned their North Carolina plantations. Governor Berkeley, of
Virginia, extended his authority over the remainder, and made William
Drummond, a Scotch Presbyterian, who had been settled in Virginia,
administrator of the Chowan colony. Emigrants from Barbadoes bought land
from the Indians near the site of Wilmington, and founded a prosperous
settlement with Sir John Yeamans as governor. Other emigrants from
England, led by Sir William Sayle and Joseph West, entered Port Royal
Sound, and landed at Beaufort Island in 1671. They soon deserted Beaufort
and planted themselves on the Ashley River, a few miles above the site of
Charleston. In December, 1671, fifty families and a large number of
slaves arrived from the Barbadoes. Carolina, about this time, had a
narrow escape from being made the subject of a grotesque feudal
constitution conceived by John Locke, the philosopher, and approved by
the Earl of Shaftesbury. This constitution proposed to inflict on the
infant colony a system of titled aristocracy as elaborate as that of
Germany. The good sense of the colonists repelled the absurd scheme, and
saved Carolina from being a laughing stock for the nations. In 1680, the
settlers on Ashley River moved to Oyster Point, at the junction of the
Ashley and Cooper Rivers, and laid the foundation of Charleston.
* * *
Meantime Virginia was the scene of a memorable struggle between the
aristocrats and the people, the royalists led by the Governor, Sir
William Berkeley, and the republicans marshaled by Nathaniel Bacon, a
wealthy lawyer, deeply attached to the popular cause. The character of
Berkeley can best be judged by a communication which he sent to England
in 1665: "I thank God there are no free schools nor printing in Virginia,
and I hope we shall not have them these hundred years; for learning has
brought heresy and disobedience and sects into the world, and printing
hath divulged them and libels against the best government; God keep us
from both!" It is not strange that a man who felt like this should have
cared but little for the safety and welfare of the common people. He
himself reveled in riches, accumulated at the cost of the colony, and he
had in sympathy with him the large landholders, who sought to imitate in
their Virginia mansions the pomp and circumstance of the English
nobility, while they looked down on the mass of poor whites as vassals
and inferiors. The immediate provocation for the so-called Bacon
Rebellion was the failure of Governor Berkeley to protect the settlers
from Indian depredations, the governor having a monopoly of the
fur-trade, and being inclined by motives of self-interest to propitiate
the savages. An armed force assembled and chose Bacon as their leader.
They first repulsed the Indians, and then demanded from the governor a
commission for Bacon as commander-in-chief of the Virginia military.
Berkeley, although urged by the newly-elected House of Burgesses, which
was in sympathy with the people, to grant the commission, for some time
hesitated, but at length consented. Bacon marched against the Indians,
and Berkeley proclaimed him a traitor. This hostile action of the
governor excited Bacon and his followers, in whose numbers were included
many of the best men in the colony, to an open and resolute stand for the
rights of the people. Berkeley fled to the eastern shore of Chesapeake
Bay, and sought to raise an army to maintain his authority. He proclaimed
that the slaves of all rebels were to free; he aroused the Indians to
join him, and several English ships were placed at his service. With this
following the governor went back to Jamestown, and again proclaimed Bacon
a traitor.
The popular leader hastened to accept the challenge, and at the head of a
considerable force of republicans, he appeared before Jamestown.
Berkeley's mercenaries refused to fight, and stole away under cover of
night, Berkeley being obliged to accompany them in order to avoid being
made a prisoner. Jamestown was burned by the republicans, all the colony,
except the eastern shore acknowledged Bacon's authority, and the success
of the insurrection seemed assured when the popular leader fell a victim
to malignant fever. Without his genius and energy to guide the cause of
liberty, it rapidly declined, and Berkeley returned and soon succeeded in
re-establishing his authority. He made Williamsburg the capital of the
colony, instead of Jamestown, which never rose from its ruins--a fact
hardly to be regretted, as the site was decidedly unhealthy. Berkeley had
no mercy on the now submissive insurgents. Bacon's chief lieutenant had
been the brave Scotch Presbyterian, William Drummond, the first governor
of North Carolina. When Drummond was brought before him the governor
said: "You are very welcome; I am more glad to see you than any man in
Virginia; you shall be hanged in half an hour." Drummond calmly answered:
"I expect no mercy from you. I have followed the lead of my conscience,
and done what I could to rescue my country from oppression." Drummond was
executed about three hours later, and his devoted wife, Sarah, who had
taken an active part in urging the people to defend their rights, and who
had in her the spirit of the mothers of the Revolution, was banished with
her children to the wilderness. A wife who offered herself as a victim in
place of her husband, claiming that she had urged him to rebellion, was
repulsed with coarse and brutal insult, and the husband was led to the
gallows. Twenty-two in all were executed before Berkeley's vengeance was
satiated. Charles II. heard with indignation of the sacrifice of life,
exclaiming: "The old fool has taken more lives in that naked country than
I have taken for the murder of my father." Berkeley was recalled to
England in 1677. But for the presence of the fleet and troops of Sir John
Berry, sent over by the king to maintain the royal authority, Berkeley
might have been subjected to violence by the colonists who fired guns and
lighted bonfires to show their joy over his departure. Upon Berkeley's
arrival in England he found himself equally an object there of public
hatred and contempt on account of his cruelties, and he died in July of
the same year of grief and mortification.