USA > New Jersey > Scheyichbi and the strand : or, early days along the Delaware ; with an account of recent events at Sea Grove ; containing sketches of the romantic adventures of the pioneer colonists ; the wonderful origin of American society and civilization > Part 6
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The Dutch forces were recalled to Manhattan in haste to repel an Indian invasion. The conquerers had been in New Sweden three weeks-a body of men twice the number of the entire Swedish popu- lation living on the country. Consequently, on the 18th of December, 1655, when John Paul Jacquet arrived at Zuydt Riviere as Vice- Director for Stuyvesant, out of an original population of nearly four hundred but a dozen families remained, and, besides, Fort Casimir was no better than a ruin. On July 12th, 1656, the Dutch West India Company conceded the land from Boomtjes Heuken to Cape Hen- lopen to Amsterdam, for seven hundred thousand guilders ($266,000) ; this territory became a colony of that municipality of Holland, under the name of Nieuwer Amstel, the capital being at the present New- castle. New Amstel was ruled with much rigor; to desert the colony was punishable with death, yet the numerous emigrants sent out by the city could not be retained. A trading post and small garrison were kept up at the Horekill, where in 1662 an Anabaptist " Men- nonist" community of twenty-five families settled under the leadership of Peter Cornelis Plockhoy. The Mennonists were a liberal, catholic, tolerant people, and their co-operative institutions were very free and democratic. For several years, owing to disagreements between the authorities of Manhattan and New Amstel, and between both of them and the Governors of Maryland, confusion and distress continued west
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of the Delaware, and the dissatisfied people were scattered abroad by repeated alarms and panics.
§ The glorious rise and progress of the Batavian Republic astonished the world; the commercial and manufacturing greatness of Holland aroused the bitter and ignoble jealousy of the English. In 1664, in a time of peace and progress, England made a treacherous attack upon the Dutch. On the 8th of September, Manhattan and New Netherland were peaceably but unavoidably surrendered to a piratical expedition which Charles II. of England sent out to place his brother James, Duke of York, in possession of the province of the Hollanders. Sir Robert Carr was sent to take possession of the Delaware. Some de- fense was made at New Amstel by Hinoyssa the Governor; the place was captured, however, the Dutch soldiers sold into Virginian slavery, and the people plundered, even of their farms in some cases. A boat was sent to the Horekill and the colony there was robbed; among the goods carried off was "what belonged to the Quaking Society of Plock- hoy, to a very naile." The court of England tried in vain to justify these acts before the world ; they merited the scorn of mankind. Nine years after, even Charles II. repented of his buccaneering; then Hol- land opened her dikes, and aided by the flood defeated two hundred thousand French troops with twenty thousand man; infinitely bold against desperate odds, the Dutch, at the same time, day after day outfought the fighting ships of Britain, until the shattered fleet, sailing as from an infernal scourge, hid behind the strongest forts, while the revengeful guns of De Ruyter and Tromp bellowed in insolent triumph along the shores of England.
By the overthrow of the power of the Dutch West India Company and the States of Holland in North America, James, Duke of York, became Governor of New Netherland. Before the sailing of the expe- dition for the conquest of Manhattan, James appointed Nicolls, its commander, his deputy, to act as such after the subjugation of the Dutch colony. Nicolls had been gone from England but a month when, on the twenty-third of June, the Duke of York, well knowing the success of the enterprise was assured by the treachery which con- ceived it, sold to Lord John Berkeley, Privy Councillor and Baron of Stratton, and Sir George Carteret, of Sattrum, Devon County, Knight, a native of the Isle of Jersey, all the territory now included in the State of New Jersey, which then received the name of "New Jersey," or Nova Cæsaria. James was one of the worst bigots of the English line of kings; all his good qualities, as a man, a prince, a king, were foiled with glaring defects, yet in his honor the name of Manhattan was changed by Nicolls to " New York," the west of the Hudson was called " Albania," and Long Island received the appellation of "Yorkshire ;" thus all the various titles of the Duke were foisted upon the country at once-the force of flattery could no farther go.
1. mh thị, Thị. Ch TẾA
ATLANTIC BEACH.
WHILLDIN COTTAGE.
SEA GROVE HOUSE.
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF NICOLLS.
The flag of Britain now covered the coast of the Colonies which became the thirteen original United States ; freedom and progress were served by injustice in the end, but the people of New York, who imagined the privileges of Englishmen were to be added to the secure possession of their property, soon had reason to sigh for the honest despotism of Stuyvesant, to save them from the extortions of their new and rapacious governors; while the Duke of York and his agents were presently forced to realize in disappointment that the profitable despotism they had planned was impossible among such a people as those they fancied they had made their victims and servants.
By his sale to Berkeley and Carteret, the Duke of York prefigured the outlines of the State of New Jersey, and unwittingly forecast the destiny of a free Commonwealth. The change of government which had made Colonel Nicolls Governor of New York and " Albania" and, as President of the Royal Commission, presumptive potentate of New England, was of vital importance to the people of the Colonies, especi- ally those near New York; and the new administration, appreciative of its opportunities, was not slow to energetically assert its powers.
The citizens of New Haven, who had paid six hundred pounds for lands on the Delaware, and perhaps lost as much more in fruitless expeditions thither, who had remonstrated with Kieft, quarreled with Stuyvesant, and sought the aid of Cromwell, through their General Court, by letter, detailed their grievances to the Royal Commissioners ; but the new Governor was too busy to pause to nicely adjust the scales of justice. Ignoring the investitures of the past and the equities of the present, heedless of its own engagements, the government of New York devoted itself to the illegal profit of its officials and the assidu- ous and flattering service of its ducal patron.
Governor Nicolls, in ignorance of the sale to Berkeley and Carteret, made more than two months before the capture of New Netherland, named New Jersey and the western bank of the Hudson Albania, in compliment to the Scottish title of the Duke of York. This ter- ritory he was exceedingly anxious to populate. Tracts of land on Hackensack Neck and elsewhere were granted to parties from New England, who, as required by Nicolls, satisfied the claims of the Indian residents. The Dutch, in 1663, had given a party of Puritans liberty to settle in " Nova Belgia" (New Jersey), with an almost independent charter for a local government, and the settlements under Nicolls were largely the outworking of similar plans by other " Yankee" asso- ciations.
The pioneers from New Haven, and those who soon followed them from the east, brought to their new homes the same dogmatic temper and theocratic ideas which characterized the ecclesiastical tyrannies of early New England; but with them they brought also the inflexible resolution and unceasing industry for which the people of that section
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
have ever been distinguished. The New England emigrants soon ac- quired the influence in New Jersey their pertinacious habits guaranteed from the first, and if the constitution and laws of the new Common- wealth were more favorable to liberty than the primitive enactments of Massachusetts and Connecticut, it was not the fault of the conscien- tiously stubborn Puritans !
While Nicolls by every means encouraged the settlement of Albania, and noted with pride the multiplying farms and increasing villages from Bergen to Sandy Hook, news came that the action of the dull James of York had disparted his Colony, and conceded the fairest and most promising portion to overreaching speculators. In August, 1665, Philip Carteret entered New Jersey, and by virtue of the provision which, in English law, vested the Proprietary of a colony with juris- diction, assumed the office of Governor, under the warrant of his father and Lord Berkeley.
Governor Nicolls was much vexed at the unexpected turn thus given affairs, and tried, but in vain, to induce the Duke of York to compel the reconveyance of the territories he had parted with in ignorance of their value. Berkeley and Carteret remained in possession and control, but it was a long time before the duke or his agents, who assumed to hold by feudal tenure, ceased to claim rightful jurisdiction, customs, rights, and paramount sovereignty under the King.
The few settlers Philip Carteret found in his colony were well dis- posed to receive him as their Chief Magistrate, and when a subsequent Governor of New York invaded New Jersey to intimidate them by a dis- play of the Royal Patent, the sturdy Puritans, without question of the validity of the document presented, referred to Magna Charta as " the only rule, privilege, and joint safety of every free-born Englishman," and stood like a wall for the independence of New Jersey. The begin- ning of the Commonwealth was but small. On a tract of land once sold by the Indians to the Dutch, and afterwards to the Puritans, four houses stood in the same neighborhood ; in honor of Lady Carteret and her kindness, this locality was called Elizabethtown, and in May, 1668, became the scene of a Colonial Legislature and the capital of the Province.
The property of Berkeley and Carteret was almost a wilderness ; to induce emigration its owners had sent successful messengers to New Haven to invite the rigid Calvinists to a home on their shores, while, at the same time, the most liberal concessions to liberty were promised whoever should join them in their invasion of the primeval woodlands.
The Governor, the Council, and popular Representatives were to «create the laws, persons and property were to be secure, no taxes were tto be levied but by the Colonial Assembly, both Proprietaries and people were to unite in maintenance of their mutual rights, even against royal imposition ; and last and greatest of all, " freedom of judgment,
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AN ECONOMICAL HERESY.
conscience, and worship" were guaranteed every peaceable person. The power of veto, judicial appointments, and the executive authority were all which was reserved for the Proprietaries. The lands of the new State were to be held under a quit-rent of a half-penny an acre, the payment of which was deferred for five years, or until 1670; and to please the Royal Duke, who was President of the African Company, a bounty of seventy-five acres of land was offered for the importation of every able-bodied negro slave.
As the Dutch patroons had done, settlers were required to base the title to their lands in equity, by a fair and satisfactory purchase of their estates from the Indians.
The compact of New Jersey being ratified by the people, and peace prevailing under the mild sway of Philip Carteret, the province pros- pered and increased, encouraged by a temperate and salubrious climate, united with a fruitful soil easy of tillage; but in 1670 the quit-rents became due, and then the Puritans, who, in New Haven, had Arthur Smith brought into Court in 1659, and fined fifty pounds, because he expressed some of the "divvilish oppinions" of the "cursed hereticks" the Quakers, developed a peculiar heresy of their own. Referring to their well-thumbed Bibles, from which they were apt to wrench a text to cover any purpose, they argued that Noah was the original proprietor of New Jersey, having in himself and heirs become invested with the same by his landing on Mount Ararat, directly after his protracted voyage in the ark. The title having thus been in Noah, as they argued, followed his descendants. The Indians were lineal offspring of Noah, they bought their lands of the Indians, and hence, particularly as Gov- ernor Nicolls had approved the deed and Carteret himself assented thereto, they refused rent which was merely due by the laws of Eng- land and their own voluntary contract and agreement.
To save a few shillings, the Puritan farmers precipitated anarchy, drove Philip Carteret from his Governor's chair, and hunted William Pardon, who withheld the records from them, out of the country as if a malefactor. A new Governor was chosen by an irregular assembly of delegates, in the person of James Carteret, a trifling young man, an illegitimate son of Sir George; and while the legal Governor, leaving John Berry as his deputy, voyaged to England for fresh instructions and renewed authority, the revolutionists cultivated their farms in peace, kept the quit-rents in their pockets, and doubtless regarded Noah as a man who had left something very handsome to his family. Great prin- ciples dawn slowly on the minds of men, and rightful independence and freedom are evolved, age after age, through the crimes of those who grope toward truth in selfishness and disorder.
While toleration was established in New Jersey and the exercise of freedom urged to the license of revolution, Liberty was exiled from New York, and justice banished that corruption might prostitute the
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
offices of government. There was no popular representation, the Gov- ernor and his Council made the laws, decided causes, and assumed executive supremacy ; moreover, the functions of government were made means of extortion, and the people were plundered in the name of law and security. Contrary to the stipulations of the surrender, " Even the Dutch patents for land were held to require renewal, and Nicolls gathered a harvest of fees from exacting new title-deeds." That which had been New Sweden was retained under the government of New York, and shared the evils of an extortionate oppression. Governor Lovelace, who succeeded Nicolls in 1667, added to the trials of the people; even the Swedes and Finns became turbulent. "The method for keeping the people in order is severity," said Lovelace, " and laying such taxes as may give them liberty for no thought but how to discharge them." Regardless of the liberties of New Jersey, arbitrary customs were collected at the mouth of the Delaware by the agents of the Duke of York. The people of Maryland invaded Lewestown with an armed force in 1672, to establish the domain of Lord Baltimore on the shores of the Delaware; the country was at once reclaimed by Sir Robert Carr, deputy of Governor Lovelace, as belonging to the Duke of York by conquest.
While all these things took place, the claims of Berkeley and Carteret were reaffirmed in England, and it seemed that trouble was impending for the New Jersey anti-renters; suddenly the political kaleidoscope was shifted by an unexpected hand-Evertsen of Zeeland, command- ing a Dutch fleet, appeared in New York harbor, the 30th of July, 1673; again without a blow Manhattan was surrendered, the flag of Holland waved once more over New Netherland. The unjust war upon Holland became unpopular in England, and Parliament refused supplies for its prosecution ; peace was declared on the 9th of February, 1674, and the rights of neutral flags were established by the treaty which followed, Holland under the teaching of Grotius having been the first to claim the enfranchisement of the ocean, the freedom of the seas. By treaty, too, England regained the port of New York, with the geo- graphical unity of her Colonies, and the flag of Holland, radiant with vic- tory and honor, was finally withdrawn from the shores of North America.
Under Edmund Andros, the power of James of York was rein- stated at Manhattan, October 31, 1674. The narrow-minded duke had learned nothing from experience, and though Andros was a better man than Nicolls or Carr, yet the despotic system which oppressed the people of New York and clutched at the Charter of Connecticut re- mained. Philip Carteret reappeared in New Jersey, and renewed after a time his argumentative warfare for rights and dues according to feudal law and kingly pleasure, with a people who claimed to hold their lands from Noah, their privileges from Magna Charta, and their faith from private judgment of the infallible word of God.
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PERSECUTION OF THE QUAKERS.
The Proprietaries of New Jersey sought above all things for profit from their province. Their liberal concession of popular rights was dic- tated by a policy which, however laudable in its means, looked to the same end gained by the piracies of Carr and the maladministration and extortion of Nicolls. Lord Berkeley was already an old man ; as no profit had been derived from his New Jersey property, and trouble was still apprehended from contumacious subjects and disputatious tenants, he became willing to withdraw from the barren adventure.
Where avarice falters in discouragement, and ambition halts in des- pair, the love of liberty populates the wilderness, and religious enthu- siasm builds the institutions of the State. From the time when Charles I. laid his head upon the block in front of his own banquet hall in 1649, the sufferings of " the peculiar people," the Quakers, had been indescrib- able and universal : whoever was tolerated they were disallowed ; they were contemned, insulted, fined, scourged, imprisoned, enslaved, maimed, branded, and hung, even in the New World. In England all classes united to persecute ; even the Presbyterians declared that "hell had broken loose" in the person of George Fox, and the mild apostle was forced to denounce them as "exceeding rude and develish." "They were as poor sheep appointed to the slaughter, and as a people killed all day long." And yet, aside from the irregularities of a few fanatics, such as are found in all sects, the offense of the Quaker was only in his spirituality and his democracy. But in the days of Fox and Penn, these were counted worthy of stripes, bonds, and death, by those who worshiped Churches and Kings more than God; and even those who contended to the uttermost for purity of soul, and the right of private judgment themselves, turned like wolves upon a people who gave to the Puritans' version of the rights of man a still more radical translation.
Resolute to bear witness in testimony of the truth of the INWARD LIGHT, ready at all times to be offered up a sacrifice, the Quaker pre- served the serenity of his reason, whether he stood amid courts in the presence of kings as a Counselor and Friend, or perished from hunger, cold, and neglect amid the frozen filth of dungeons. He who "affirmed" himself the peer of peers, wore his hat as only a peer by law might do; the " Friend" was ready with his "thee" and " thou," and other titles he would have none; but " plain speech" was not impertinent language, and formal dress meant other things than eccentricities of character.
Determined on freedom, the Friend was not bent on useless martyr- dom, and while Fox journeyed as a missionary, and Penn traveled as a preacher, the iconoclasts cast about for an asylum for the persecuted, a land where "Salem" might be founded, where " the Holy Experi- ment" might be tried, and, God willing, " Philadelphia" arise to wel- come to the " city of brotherly love" the universal tribe of man .. Penn traversed Europe, Fox the colonies of America; nowhere was there to be found rest and peace, except perhaps in the narrow confines of
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SCHEYICHBI AND THE STRAND.
Rhode Island. New Netherland turned aside from the policy of Fader- landt, and half tolerating Lutherans; Stuyvesant had only imprison- ment, labor in chains, and the dungeons of Fort Amsterdam for "the new, unheard-of, abominable heresy, called Quakers."
At last light dawned from afar, and in New Jersey there was hope. Edward Byllinge, by John Fenwick, as trustee for himself and his assigns, bought of Lord John Berkeley, in 1675, for a thousand pounds, one undivided half of New Jersey; under this indirect purchase mis- understandings arose, but they were managed by the arbitration of William Penn, to whom, with Gawen Laurie and Nicholas Lucas, Byllinge finally assigned his property for the benefit of his creditors.
In June, 1675, Major John Fenwick, claiming his own right as an associate in the purchase with Byllinge, arrived in the Delaware in the ship Griffith, " with a large company and several families." The arbi- trators had assigned one-tenth of Byllinge's purchase to Fenwick, with a sum of money as his share ; he assumed the character and style of Lord Chief Proprietor. Near where the people of New Haven had settled on Varcken's Kill, not far from the site of the Swedish fort Helsingborg, and where the relics of unknown pioneers were found, the colony of "plain John Fenwick" also selected their location, and, feel- ing secure at last, landed upon the peaceful shores and bestowed the name of "Salem" upon the place. Byllinge had failed, and, in the interest of his creditors, the nine-tenths of one undivided half of New Jersey, left to his estate, was offered for sale in decimal shares of tenths and hundredths; to carry out the purpose of an asylum for the perse- cuted, these shares were largely taken up by Quakers.
To found his colony, John Fenwick had borrowed money of John Eldridge and Edmund Warner, giving his tenth of the Byllinge pur- chase as security, with the right to sell lands therefrom to their satis- faction. Eldridge and Warner conveyed their claim to the trustees, Laurie, Penn, and Lucas. Fenwick still asserted himself in all the qualities of Lord Chief Proprietor, refusing to abide by the results of arbitration: The rights and claims of Fenwick were a sore trial to Penn, and he and his associates have been accused of duplicity in re- gard to the matter, how justly or unjustly still seems a matter of dis- pute ; however it may have been, Fenwick abode in his place, and as long as he lived gave token of an uncompromising and dauntless, even if, at times, impolitic and arbitrary spirit.
As soon as the matter of ownership was adjusted, the Quakers se- cured from Carteret a division of the estate. Anxious to come into pos- session of their territory, where they could institute a government, the Friends haggled not for advantage, and Carteret, conscious of having the best of the bargain, readily fell in with their proposals. The line of division ran from Egg Harbor to a point on the Delaware River, under the forty-first degree of north latitude, and near Burlington; the
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"THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE."
lands to the north and east were to be left to Carteret, and those to the southward and west, under the name of WEST NEW JERSEY, became the property of Quaker associates.
Long accustomed to endure suffering, competent as critics and preachers, " the peculiar people" were now to be more severely tested ; they were required to build, to organize, to govern and enjoy. Con- sulting among themselves in England, the Friends evolved their scheme of government. "The CONCESSIONS are such as Friends approve of," wrote the Quaker Proprietaries to those already in their land of rest. "We lay a foundation for after-ages to understand their liberty as Christians and as men, that they may not be brought into bondage, but by their own consent, for we put THE POWER IN THE PEOPLE."
The basis of the Quaker State was democratic equality ; methodically and clearly the "agreements" stated the sublime affirmations of the Quaker, and in harmony therewith promulgated the "fundamentals" of the highest form of actual government the world has ever known. Freedom of conscience, the ballot-box, equality before the law, the right of assembly, freedom of election, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, popular sovereignty, trial by jury, open courts, free legisla- tures, all these were provided for in West Jersey, in March, 1677. What more ? No poor man could be imprisoned for debt, none held as slaves ; there was free access to the courts, where each man might plead for himself; the judge, an appointee of the assembly for two years only, merely announced the law, the jury gave both the verdict and the sentence ; where Indians were concerned the natives were to make half the jurymen. The statutes prescribed were admirable and con- sonant with the Constitution, the whole wise, just, and discriminating, full of justice, benevolence, and protection even to the humblest deni- zen of the aboriginal woods. The helpless orphan became the ward of the State, and the child of misfortune was educated at the cost of the Commonwealth.
The honor and fame of William Penn are borne toward future ages with the progress of the mighty State that bears his name; but, let it be remembered, in West Jersey his inspired mind and benevolent heart first wrought out his model of a state, and there, and there alone, his will and his purpose became the law and rule of a happy people. Every acre of New Jersey has been fairly bought of the Indian tribes. West Jersey is unstained by Indian blood. "You are our brothers," said the sachems; "we will live like brothers with you. The path shall be plain; there shall not be in it a stump to hurt the feet." "Their ways were ways of pleasantness, and all their paths were peace."
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