the crew of Hudson’s _Half-Moon_, after their fight with the aborigines
on the mainland above Spuyten Duyvil Creek, in September, 1609, buried
their dead before sailing homeward from their voyage of discovery up the
great river named for their commander.
[Illustration: FIRST SEAL OF CITY. 1623-1654.]
Four temporary dwellings, presumably little better than wigwams, housed
Skipper Block and the crew of the _Tiger_ near the lower end of the
island, while they rebuilt their burned vessel, during the winter of
1613-14. The site of the present city was bought from the Indians on
May 6, 1626, for trinkets worth sixty guilders, or four-and-twenty
dollars—less than one tenth of the rate paid a few years since for a
single square foot of land. Building was begun at once and pushed with
vigor. Fort Amsterdam—a blockhouse partly shielded by palisades—marked
the extreme southern limit of the island; and the first bark-roofed
cottages were clustered close together under its harmless, necessary
guns. A warehouse with stone walls and a thatched roof sprang up as soon
as a stronghold had been built; and a horse-mill, with a loft fitted up
for the simplest form of religious services.
[Illustration: MAP OF ORIGINAL GRANTS.]
Fort Amsterdam was a fortress in name only. Scarcely had it been
completed when it began to fall into disrepair; and the pigs were forever
rooting in its sodded earthworks, and threatening its very foundations.
Thus early was it that these four-footed scavengers made their appearance
in the history of New York, playing as picturesque, though not as
patriotic, a part therein as that of the legendary Roman geese. Not till
well forward in the present century did they disappear from the streets
and the annals of the city.
Peter Minuit, the first Director of New Netherlands to hold his place
for more than a year, and the first to organize a permanent provincial
government, sent home hopeful reports, and backed them with shipments of
fur and timber; but the expenses of administering the colony ultimately
exceeded its earnings, and the West India Company was disappointed of the
revenue it had counted upon receiving from the new settlement.
The little village grew but slowly. When it had spread so far northward
as the line of what is now Wall Street—which is so far down-town to-day
that many a New York woman, native-born, has yet to see it for the first
time—a stockade was set up across the island, narrower then than now, to
fence off the village from the farms (bouweries) of the more adventurous
pioneers, and the forest that bordered them. This defense, completed in
1653, consisted of palisades and posts, twelve feet high, with a sloping
breastwork of earth and a ditch on its southern side. In less than two
years its height was doubled to keep the Indians from leaping over it.
[Illustration: THE FORT IN KIEFT’S DAY.]
But neither the Fort with its stone guns, nor this high wooden wall, was
ever called upon to withstand a vigorous attack or resist a siege; for
whenever the place was seriously threatened, its flag came fluttering
down, and its keys were turned over to the enemy. This happened first in
August, 1664, when Col. Richard Nicolls appeared in the bay, as deputy
of the Duke of York, to whom Charles II. had granted all the territory
between the Connecticut River and Delaware Bay, and demanded the Fort’s
surrender. The claim of the English was nebulous to the last degree. As
Freneau neatly put it,
“The soil they demanded, or threatened their worst,
Insisting that _Cabot had looked at it first_.”
But the flimsiest pretension, if vigorously backed, outvalues the
strongest if less sturdily maintained; and Director Stuyvesant found his
people unwilling to support him in defying the intruder. So down dropped
the Dutch colors and up ran the British.
Precisely nine years later, however, what had formerly been called
New Amsterdam, but was now New York, yielded itself to a little Dutch
fleet without striking a defensive blow. Captain Colve’s victory was so
lightly won, indeed, that the English commander, Captain Manning, was
courtmartialled for his apparent inefficiency, cowardice or treason,
and the estates of the Governor, Colonel Lovelace, who, when the blow
fell, was absent on affairs of state, were confiscated by the Duke. The
triumph of the Hollanders was short-lived; for the year 1674 had not run
its course when Major Edmund Andros assumed the governorship, and by the
terms of a treaty of peace between England and the States-General, New
Orange, as the place had been christened by the Dutch, again and finally
became New York.
[Illustration: PETER STUYVESANT.]
New York has been in turn a Dutch village, an English town, and an
American city. In its infancy it was wholly Dutch; but in its early youth
the population was so leavened by English immigration that the transition
to English control was less violent than one might expect it to have
been. English influence was powerful even in Stuyvesant’s day; and
when Stuyvesant was supplanted by Nicolls, the Dutch element was still
powerful in the councils of the little town. The new ruler moved slowly
and cautiously in anglicizing the government, and almost all the changes
he made were for the better. The brief resumption of Dutch authority
in 1673 was reactionary and wholly detrimental to the interests of the
community; and, all things considered, the peaceful cession of the town
to England, a year later, was the happiest chance that could possibly
have befallen.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE CITY IN 1686.]
A more violent and radical change was effected in 1689, when Jacob
Leisler seized the occasion of the fall of the Stuart dynasty to grasp
the reins of government which Andros had been forced to drop. By the aid
of the militia and with the support of nearly all the less prosperous
townsfolk, he administered public affairs till that good Dutchman William
III. of England commissioned Governor Sloughter to hang the usurper
and reign in his stead. Leisler’s rule had been in many respects an
enlightened one, and years afterward his adherents succeeded in having
his dishonored bones dug up and honorably reinterred. It was in this
town, and at the instance of this earnest but ill-balanced and despotic
champion of the poor, that the American Colonies took their first step
toward concerted action, their objective being the overthrow of the
French at Montreal.
The most striking characteristic of New York has always been its
cosmopolitanism. As Governor Roosevelt points out in his capital review
of the city’s history, no less than eighteen different languages and
dialects were spoken in the streets so long ago as the middle of the
seventeenth century. The Dutch, the English and the Huguenot refugees
from France predominated, but there were many Walloons and Germans, and a
large body of black slaves. The riffraff of the Old World was to be found
here, as well as the nobly adventurous; and, in fact, at all times since,
the proportion of foreign-born residents has been very large.
[Illustration: JOHN JAY.]
In the period immediately preceding the Revolution, the desire for
independence was far less general in New York than in Massachusetts or
Virginia. The large land owners and leading merchants were mainly members
of the Church of England; and while there was no state church, so called
and admitted to be such, the Anglicans were first in wealth and fashion,
and their organization enjoyed exclusive privileges. Even King’s College
(now Columbia University) was placed officially under Church control.
The court party included not only the Anglican clergy and almost all the
laity, but even an influential section of the membership of the Dutch
Reformed Church. It included such families as the De Peysters, the De
Lanceys and the Philippses in the city and its suburbs; and the Johnsons,
who dominated central New York. There were Tories even on the Committee
of Fifty-one that first authoritatively proposed the assembling of a
Continental Congress. In no other colony was the Tory element so numerous
and powerful; in none other were the patriots opposed by so active a
spirit of loyalty to the Crown, and so vast a bulk of indifference on
the part of property-owners, solicitous for nothing but the security of
their possessions. At first the Schuylers, the Livingstons, and Hamilton,
Jay and Morris found their support almost wholly among the masses, who
rose not only against England, but also against the domination of the
classes, which was more oppressive in the aristocratic city of New York
than in the democratic town of Boston, or in Philadelphia. Thus, it was
the so-called Sons of Liberty that had led in the agitation which made
the Stamp Act a dead letter, so far as this colony was concerned, and a
decade later prevented the landing of taxed tea on New York wharves. And
their demonstrative radicalism found little response in the minds of some
of the ablest civil and military leaders contributed by this colony to
the work of liberation and reconstruction. But the violence of the mob
could not blind such men to the essential justice of the American cause,
and the actual beginning of the war found a large majority of the best
people of the colony definitely committed to a patriotic course. So when
Washington and his army were driven hither from Brooklyn and hence to New
Jersey, in 1776, New York was no longer the populous place it had been
before their sympathizers fled from the terrors of hostile military rule.
[Illustration: ALEXANDER HAMILTON.]
For the next seven years this remained the chief British stronghold in
America. If the eastern and southern colonies could be split apart by
English control of the Hudson, the backbone of the colonial federation
would be broken—as the backbone of the Confederacy was broken, nearly a
century later, by Sherman’s march to the sea. So every energy was bent
toward dislodging the Continentals from this dividing-line. This was
the immediate object of Arnold’s treachery, as well as of many an overt
movement from south and north. But Washington outgeneralled the enemy
and kept the federation intact, till the capture of Yorktown made New
York no longer tenable by the foe. The city was well-nigh ruined by its
experiences during these seven terrible years; and the outlying country
to the north—Westchester County—suffered no less severely, being exposed
to raids from the opposing bodies of regulars, and to constant marauding
at the hands of free-booters, who pretended affiliation with one side or
the other, sometimes in good faith, but often merely as a pretext for
lawless depredations.
[Illustration: FRAUNCES’S TAVERN.]
The most joyously celebrated event in the annals of Manhattan was the
city’s evacuation by the British at the close of the war. On the day
that this occurred, November 25, 1783, General Washington arrived in
town and dined at Fraunces’s Tavern; and hither he repaired again, ten
days later, on the eve of his departure for Annapolis, to bid farewell
to his officers. In this same building, and in the same Long Room, the
first meeting of the New York Chamber of Commerce had been held, in 1768,
fifteen years before any similar association was organized in Great
Britain. This hostelry had, indeed, been the fashionable rendezvous of
New Yorkers since 1762, when the shop at the southeast corner of Broad
and Pearl Streets was converted to still more public uses by Samuel
Fraunces (“Black Tom”), who in later years was to become the first
President’s steward. At the beginning it was known as the Queen’s Head
Tavern, its sign bearing a portrait of Queen Charlotte. Enlarged, and
otherwise altered, but not improved, Fraunces’s Tavern is still, as it
has always been, a public-house, though fashion has long since deserted
it. It would be most deplorable if the march of improvement (in whose
name, as in Liberty’s, so many offences are committed) should ever be
allowed to obliterate this most aged and interesting relic of old New
York.
The war of 1812 was by no means popular with the representative merchants
of New York, despite the fact that the enforcement of England’s
pretended right of search had acted almost as a blockade of the port
for some years before the outbreak of hostilities. It had been a common
occurrence for merchantmen in the lower bay to be stopped by a shot
across their bows, and searched for possible British subjects among their
crews. But when war came the fighting spirit was aroused, and many a
privateer was fitted out to prey upon the enemy’s merchant marine. Rich
prizes were taken, and desperate engagements were fought between the
crews of brigs and schooners from New York and British men-of-war’s men
who interfered with their privateering practices. A few years earlier
(1807), Fulton had demonstrated on the Hudson the practicability of steam
navigation; and now he built in New York, under Congressional direction,
a steam frigate, iron-clad and heavily armed. This formidable craft might
have been depended upon to raise the British blockade, had it not been
raised still more effectually by a declaration of peace. The city did
not suffer in this second war with England as it had suffered in the
first. Instead of waiting for years, as before, to recuperate, it entered
at once upon a period of unprecedented growth. The return of peace
stimulated immigration, and local prosperity was vastly augmented by the
opening in 1825 of the Erie Canal.
Until 1822, the mayor was appointed by a State council, presided over
by the Governor; thereafter, until 1834, he was chosen by the municipal
council; since then he has been elected by the people. But democratic
rule was not always found to work satisfactorily, and in 1857 the
control of local affairs was largely delegated to the legislature. This
precaution proved of comparatively little value, however, and the Tweed
ring of local office-holders found little difficulty in running things
as they wished and robbing the tax-payers of millions upon millions. The
charter of the city recently created by the amalgamation of New York,
Brooklyn, etc., professed to restore home rule, in large measure; but
so much of the supposed boon as it confers may be withdrawn at any time
by State legislation, and bills withdrawing it piecemeal are, in fact,
introduced at every session of the legislature.
When secession threatened, in 1861, the Democratic city of New York was
the least friendly of Northern communities in its attitude toward the
federal government. The common council, indeed, rapturously applauded
the mayor’s formal suggestion that the city itself secede. But the first
overt act of hostility at the South showed that, beneath this surface
sympathy with the secessionists, the great mass of earnest citizens were
ardent in adherence to the Union. Life and treasure were poured out more
than abundantly. The Seventh Regiment—the “crack” militia organization
of the city, if not of the nation—hurried off to Washington to guard the
capital from surprise; and tens of thousands of volunteers followed to
the front. No one city contributed more to the national cause. In fact
the city’s contributions were too liberal for her own good; for the
consequent dearth of able-bodied honest men at home left the community
a prey to the enemies of society, and regiment after regiment had to be
called back to restore order. The worst outbreaks were the so-called
draft riots, caused by the enforced enlistment of troops; in these
uprisings, negroes were the special object of the mob’s hostility.
The first few huts in New Amsterdam were huddled together beneath the
sheltering walls of the Fort. There was but one general direction in
which the hamlet could extend; yet it was long before the northward
movement filled with shops and houses the space between the Fort and the
line of Wall Street, and for several years thereafter the great Wall
marked the boundary of the village. The Revolution found the border
pushed forward to the edge of the Common, where the post-office stands
to-day. The chief outlet from this point lay eastward, through what is
now Park Row to the Bowery, and thence through the outlying farms to
Westchester County, Connecticut and Boston.
On the west side there was another outlet, skirting the Hudson River and
extending to the little village of Greenwich; and the occasional outbreak
of yellow fever in New York made this a popular resort. The influx of
twenty thousand refugees during one of these scares, early in the present
century, completely changed the character of this village, and although
most of the newcomers returned to the lower end of the island, Greenwich
had practically become, by 1830, an integral part of the city. The
northward spread via Greenwich Street, the Bowery and Broadway continued,
till Yorkville and Harlem on the east and Manhattanville and Bloomingdale
on the west were absorbed by the growing city. In 1874 the Harlem was
crossed, and New York ceased to be an island; in 1895 still further
accessions were made in Westchester County. But the crowning event in
the expansion of the city was the legislation by which, on January 1,
1898, Brooklyn and the outlying towns and villages on Long Island, and
all of Staten Island, were brought within the limits of New York—an act
that raised the population at a stroke from less than 1,900,000 to near
3,400,000, and incidentally brought almost half the people of the State
under the immediate rule of Tammany Hall.
A word should be said as to the Society, named in honor of Tamanend,
an Indian chief who signed one of the treaties by which William Penn
acquired the site of the city of Philadelphia. One of many societies of
the same name, organized for social and political purposes toward the
close of the eighteenth century, it reflected, to a certain extent, a
spirit which had prevailed among the younger officers of the Revolution
who had felt the force of Rousseau’s idealization of primitive man.
Its first meeting was held on “St. Tammany’s day” (May 12), 1789. In
membership it was allied with the Sons of Liberty and the Sons of 1776,
and it has always professed “intense Americanism,” so far as that phrase
is synonymous with Anglophobia. At first its ranks were recruited from
among the small merchants, retailers and mechanics of the city; and by
coming into close touch with the mass of immigrants that form so large
a proportion of the population, giving the newcomers employment in some
cases, in others charitable aid, instructing the alien voter as to his
political rights and privileges, and directing him in their exercise,
it has built up an enormous voting machine, insufficient to defeat a
united opposition, but almost invariably so fortunate in local contests
as to find its opponents divided. While nominally Democratic in national
affairs, Tammany has never scrupled to oppose the Democratic party in
the pursuit of its own immediate end—the control of local offices and
revenues. This powerful machine has now for several years been dominated
by an illiterate immigrant.
[Illustration: THE STADT HUYS.]
Comparatively recent as were the beginnings of the city, hardly a trace
of the original village remains. Not a single building has come down to
us from the Dutch period. It was to have been expected that something
would survive the flight of less than three centuries. A happy chance
might easily have preserved the stone “temple” erected within the walls
of the Fort in 1652, or the slightly older warehouse, or some one of the
many curious little stone or brick houses in which the burly burghers
of the seventeenth century smoked their long pipes by the chimney-side,
while their wives plied the spinning-wheel, their daughters spread the
board, and their children, in padded breeches, played about the sanded
floor.
The Stadt Huys, originally built as an inn, to relieve Director Kieft of
the burden of overmuch entertaining, dated back to the same year as the
Dutch Reformed Church in the fortified enclosure. The organization of the
old church is still maintained, and the functions of the city government
have been performed in successive buildings to the present day; but the
picturesque old government house—fifty feet square, three stories high
in the walls and two in the attic, with windows in the gable of its
crow-stepped roof,—that should have been cherished as a most interesting
relic of the city’s earliest period, lasted but a little way into the
present century, having then been used for over a hundred years for
commercial purposes.
[Illustration: STAINED-GLASS WINDOW IN “BOWLING GREEN OFFICES.”
SHOWING GREEN ABOUT 1760.]
Chief among the few other survivals from the early days, and antedating
all of them, is Bowling Green. This oldest bit of park land in the city
dates from the Dutch occupation. It lay immediately in front of the
Fort, and no building has ever stood upon its diminutive, oblong site.
The relatively old row of buildings (Steamship Row) which overlooks it
from the south will ere long be replaced by a Custom House worthy of
the second port of entry in the world. This will occupy the site of the
old government house, which once served the purpose for which the new
building is designed. In 1771, it was found advisable to enclose the
Green with an iron fence. Bereft of the crowns that surmounted the posts,
the fence still surrounds it, though the equestrian statue of George
III., which it was put up to protect, vanished in 1776. In the excitement
that followed the reading of the Declaration of Independence, in that
year, the crowd marched down Broadway from the Common, and tumbled the
King from his pedestal. The leaden carcass was shipped to Connecticut,
where the wife and daughter of Governor Wolcott cannily converted it into
rebel bullets. An indignity similar in degree though different in kind
was offered to America’s eloquent Parliamentary advocate, William Pitt,
whose marble effigy at Wall and William Streets was decapitated during
the Revolution by the Tories, and left standing for years as a mere
“disturber of traffic.”
[Illustration: GOVERNMENT HOUSE.]
The house at No. 1 Broadway, looking eastward over the lower end of
Bowling Green, built in 1760 by Colonel Kennedy, afterward Earl of
Cassilis, and occupied in turn by the American leaders, including
Washington, and by the English, including Cornwallis, Howe and Sir Henry
Clinton, was the scene of Major André’s last interview with the British
commander before his fatal journey to West Point. And in another house
in Broadway overlooking the Green, Benedict Arnold had his quarters
after his flight and the exposure of his infamous plot. Mention of the
gallant young British officer, André, naturally suggests the name and
fate of Nathan Hale, whose heroism is commemorated by a noble statue
by MacMonnies, which faces Broadway from the lower corner of City Hall
Park, not far from the spot where the American spy was hanged from an
apple-tree. The Beekman “Mansion,” overlooking the East River near what
is now Fifty-first Street, the scene of Hale’s trial and condemnation,
survived till 1874; the Kennedy House, identified with André’s memory,
lasted eight years longer.
[Illustration: FEDERAL HALL.]