USA > New York > Oneida County > Utica > Historical fallacies regarding colonial New York : an address delivered before the Oneida Historical Society, Utica, N.Y., at its second annual meeting, January 14, 1879 > Part 1
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Gc 974.701 On2onhs
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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Gc 974.701 On2onhs Campbell, Douglas, 1839- 1893. Historical fallacies regarding colonial New York
F89153,68
HISTORICAL FALLACIES
REGARDING
COLONIAL NEW YORK,
AN ADDRESSES
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY
UTICA, N. Y.
AT ITS SECOND ANNUAL MEETING,
JANUARY 14, 1879.
BY
DOUGLAS CAMPBELL,
OF NEW YORK.
NEW YORK : F. J. FICKER, LAW & JOB PRINTER, 79 & 81 William St.,
1879. 599
HISTORICAL FALLACIES
REGARDING
COLONIAL NEW YORK,
1733039
AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED BEFORE THE
ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
UTICA, N. Y.
AT ITS SECOND ANNUAL MEETING,
JANUARY 14, 1879.
BY DOUGLAS CAMPBELL, OF NEW YORK.
.
NEW YORK : F. J. FICKER, LAW & JOB PRINTER, 79 & 81 William St.,
1879
F85152 ,68
THE ONEIDA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
OFFICERS FOR 1879.
PRESIDENT. HORATIO SEYMOUR.
VICE-PRESIDENTS.
CHARLES W. HUTCHINSON, ALEXANDER SEWARD, EDWARD HUTCHINSON.
RECORDING SECRETARY. S. N. DEXTER NORTIL.
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY AND LIBRARIAN. MORVEN M. JONES.
TREASURER. ROBERT S. WILLIAMS.
JOHN F. SEYMOUR, S. G. VISSCHER,
JOHN L. EARLL, WILLIAM J. BACON,
RICHARD U. SHERMAN.
BOARD OF COUNCILORS.
POSCOE CONKLING,
FRANCIS KERNAN,
POMROY JONES,
MICHAEL MOORE,
LUTHER GUITEAU,
EDWARD NORTH,
PHILO WHITE,
OTHNIEL S. WILLIAMS,
DANIEL B. GOODWIN,
WILLIAM D WALCOTT,
CHARLEMAGNE TOWER,
DAVID E. WAGER,
JOHN STRYKER, WARD HUNT, 1. ROBERTS,
DANIEL BATCHELOR,
JOHN F SEYMOUR,
RICHARD U SHERMAN,
WILLIAM J. BACON,
DEWITT C. GROVE,
JOHN G. CROCKER,
THEODORE S. FAXTON,
SIMEON G. VISSCHER,
JOHN H. EDMONDS,
JOHN L. EARLL.
١٠
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
JOHN P. GRAY,
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historicalfallac00camp
Extract from minutes of annual meeting of The Oneida His- torical Society, January 14th, 1879 :
" At the conclusion of the address of Major Douglas Campbell, it was, upon motion of Mr. Ellis II. Roberts,
" Resolved, That the thanks of the Oneida Historical Society are most gratefully extended to the distinguished orator of the evening, for his scholarly and exhaustive, his suggestive and inspiring address, and that he be requested to furnish a copy for publication.
("S. N. DEXTER NORTHI, " Rec. Secretary.")
HISTORICAL FALLACIES
REGARDING
COLONIAL NEW YORK.
SIR ROBERT WALPOLE, during his last illness, desiring a friend to read to him was asked to select the book. "Any- thing but History," he answered, " that must be false." The dying statesman, who for more than twenty years, as Prime Minister of England, had been making history, knew full well whereof he spoke. His criticism was somewhat novel then, but the century since its utterance has made the sneer a maxim. A hundred years ago, and to the common mind all history was alike ; the legends of Livy or the marvels of Herodotus, the gossip of Suetonius or the campaigns of Cæsar-all were sacred, to question them was well nigh heresy. But to-day is the age of the iconoclasts. Under their blows our idols are crumbling to powder. They dig up the musty records from which history has been made, they search into the lives of the historians to find out who they were, and they seek further to find out why they wrote. True science is exact, for it is founded on laws which are immut- able ; true poetry is immortal, for its breath is inspiration : but history is like the work of the photographer, it depends for its accuracy upon the material, the workman, the focus and the atmosphere. No wonder that the scholar rises from his task to say with Walpole, " It must be false."
.
This restless, inquisitive nineteenth century presses its inquiries everywhere, into the heavens above, into the earth beneath, and into the waters under the earth ; but its record will contain no more instructive and fascinating chapter than that which describes its re-arrangement of the annals of the past. We have seen a host of great scholars, led by the au- dacious Niebuhr, reconstructing Roman history ; we have seen another army sifting the grains of truth from the fairy tales of the early Greek historians ; while to- day an inde- fatigable explorer exhumes the walls of ancient Troy, and shows to the world that the immortal Homer was no writer of romance.
But it is not ancient history alone that our scholars are re-writing. Men now living have seen the " Wizard of the North" change the whole face of Scotland by the magic of his matchless pen ; until Scott waved his wand, it was but the
'. Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, Land of the mountain and the flood ;"
but under his spells it has become, for old and young alike, the land of heroic daring and romantic deeds.
What Sir Walter did for Scotland, Prescott and Irving have done for Spain, Macauley has accomplished for the England of the Puritans, and, what is of more interest to us, Motley has done for the heroes who founded the great Dutch Republic, planted the Colony of New York, and Jaid the corner stone of the Empire State.
Did time permit I should like to dwell upon this subject, and point out some of the causes which formerly made his- tory of so little value. I should speak of Louis the Four- teenth, who withdrew a pension from one historian for his impertinent remarks upon taxation, who banished Fenelon for a supposed criticism of his reign in the romance Telem- achus, and threw ancther author into the Bastile for inno- cently revealing a secret of state in a panegyric of the Grand Monarch himself. I should like to point out the influences
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of a different character, but hardly less potent, which fettered the historians in England. I should like to show how Vol- taire first brought secular history to the bar of human reason by attacking the carly fables of Greece and Rome, thus laying open the broad domain of the past to the fear- less seekers after truth, and then contrast the work of his great successors, following his methods, with that of men like Rollin, who, in their libraries, blindly translated the classic authors or evolved history from their inner conscious- ness. Above all, I should like to show the effects of modern liberal ideas in opening to the scholar the secret archives of state which have made possible the works of recent histori- ans, calling attention to the fact that less than forty years ago an agent of the State of New York was in England de- nied access to the official documents relating to our colonial period. The topic is a fascinating one, and so far as I know it has received but slight consideration, but I must confine myself to-night to a single branch of this broad subject.
In view of the multitudinous volumes which have been written upon America, it would seem at first glance almost presumptuous to suggest that anything of importance had been omitted. But when we consider the worthlessness of most of the old accepted histories of countries much better known and more cultivated than our own, we shall feel less surprise at the assertion that the truth about New York has never yet been written.
The reasons for this are not far to seek. Here all the ob- stacles which were encountered in the Old World existed in an exaggerated form, with a multitude of others unknown in Europe. First, was the newness of the country. The early settlers were too much occupied in conquering nature, and in battling for their rights, to find time to compose historic memoirs. Added to this, was the fact that the very cosmo -. politan population, which helped so largely to make this colony great in action, prevented the oneness of feeling and pride of origin which ordinarily give birth to history. Again, New York had but a small population in colonial times. At
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the outbreak of the French and Indian war, she stood seventh or eighth in rank ; at the adoption of the Federal Constitu- tion, in 1789, she had only advanced to the fifth position. Lastly, her original inhabitants were Dutchmen, of whom the English knew very little, and whom, with characteristic insolence, they hated and despised just in proportion to their . ignorane .
These conditions threw the writing of colonial history into the hands of the New Englandeis, and there were special reasons why that people never understood New York. From their first landing at Manhattan Island, the Dutchmen found themselves engaged in a boundary quarrel with their New England neighbors, which continued even after the Revolution, and at times almost culminated in open war. New York was generally in the right, and it was so adjudged by the authorities in England, but her vic- tories only intensified the bitterness against her. This, with the English dislike for foreigners inherited by our eastern brethren, sufficiently accounts for the prejudice, of which we see so much among the New England revolutionary writers. But that is only a part of the story, a more potent cause of misunderstanding was actual want of materials re- lating to our history. We must remember that in the last century these colonies were very far apart. We are much nearer Central Europe to-day than we were to Virginia a hundred years ago. The early records of New York were in Dutch, a language which our own people had substanti- ally forgotten, and lastly, our official correspondence was almost a sealed book not only to New Yorkers, but to all others who desired to investigate her history.
Such are some of the causes which have made colonial New York play so insignificant a part in the current histories of America, and the result of this is not a matter of slight im- portance. If I am right in my conclusions, the want of a correct appreciation of the history of New York is some- thing more than a local loss, for it causes the absence of a chapter without which American history is, to say the
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least, very incomplete. To illustrate my meaning, let me call your attention to a few facts, the truth of which will be at once acknowledged, but which have generally passed un- noticed.
According to the views of most historians, the two colonies which exercised the greatest influence upon American affairs were Massachusetts and Virginia, which stood head and shoulders above the rest in wealth and population. Now take down from your book shelves the volumes relating to America, and glancing them over, what do you discover ? In regard to Virginia you will find chapter after chapter devoted to the days of her colonization, you will read that in 1631 her House of Burgesses passed a law that no tax should be levied without its consent, and that, in fact, the colony was almost independent. But run down the pages till the resto- ration of Charles the Second, in 1660, and thercafter you will find a blank. Virginia becomes the mildest and most easily managed of all the Provinces ; you hear no more of independence ; the great history of the primitive age has closed, to re-open only with the American Revolution.
Now, repeat the process with New England, and see how nearly you reach the same result. Begin with the landing of the May Flower in 1620 ; set down the famous names which have illuminated the pages of her colonial annals prior to the Stamp Act, and you will find nearly all of them clustered in the first fifty years of her existence. Leave out the Witch persecutions, and recall what you know of her history, and you will discover that it is substantially confined to the same great period. In 1683 the charter of Massachusetts was for- feited by Charles the Second ; take up your colonial histories, and notice how little you will find relating to New England after that event. Prior to that time Massachusetts had al- most been a separate republic, and her writers glow with justifiable enthusiasm as they trace the great events of those heroic days. But run down the subsequent years to the passage of the Stamp Act, and mark how bare the pages are of interest. Bancroft devotes two entire volumes to the
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period anterior to the English Revolution of 1688, and then gives a part of two chapters to the interior affairs of the colonies from that time until 1748, when, he claims, that the American Revolution began.
Now, what is the cause of this? Before answering this question let me say a few words about the cause commonly assigned, and in which lurks one of those fallacies with which history is overflowing. In 1688 occurred the event which settled English liberty on an imperishable basis. At the time of the Stamp Act in 1765, the American colonists are found in possession of most of the rights which the English acquired by their glorious revolution. Many persons assume that America gained these rights at the same time and by the same event, and hence conclude that the intervening period was one in which the people, happy in their liberty, lived on unnoticed and uncared for, enjoying the blissful lot of being without a history. Of all historical fallacies none sur- passes this. It has gained credence by a misapprehension of the nature of the English revolution and of the character of the man whom it placed upon the throne. Read the surface of books and you will think of William the Third as a liberal minded Dutchman, who, from some kind of disinterested love of English liberty, left his home and ascended the throne from which the despotic Stuarts had been driven. As you read further, some curious problems will arise before you. You will see that the only country that he ever loved was his native Holland, that he hated England and disliked her people. Recollecting that he was a grandson of Charles the First, and a nephew as well as son-in-law of James the Sec- ond, you will find that he was as arbitrary and fond of kingly power as his grandfather or uncle. Go on now and read be- tween the lines, and you will see that this Dutch Stadtholder was a greater man than English historians have ever painted him, although the revelation of his true character is not so flattering to English pride. You will see a careworn, hag- gard man, prematurely old, almost friendless, racked with ceaseless pains, dragging out fourteen years of bitter exile
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from motives much higher than ambition or love of England. From his early boyhood France had been his enemy, for she was the foe of European liberty. He had saved Holland from her grasp by the exercise of talents which history can scarcely equal, but something more remained. Nothing but his frail lite stood between the Grand Monarch and universal power. The arch enemy must be crippled or nothing had been done. To accomplish this became his life work. Slowly but patiently he built up the Grand Alliance, yet England, whose aid was indispensable, could never be secured while the Stuarts on the throne were rioting with Gallic gold. He married his cousin to advance his plaus but nothing came from that ; at length the revolution called him to the throne, and he went to England to gain an ally for the Grand Alli- ance.
To William personally, England's aid was dearly bought. Time and time again bis kingly power was encroached upon; concession after concession was wrung from his necessities, until it seemed as if his pride could bear no more, and that he must give up his life work and return to Holland. Fortu- nately for the world, he persevered ; France was crippled; Europe was saved, and the concessions wrung from him by Parliament, crystallized into the foundations of English lib- erty. Such was the origin of the great constitutional prin- ciples which make the English revolution so justly famous. But America had no troops to furnish and no money to sup- ply; she had nothing with which to purchase freedom. It is probably the most curious fact connected with the reign of William, that in all the discussions regarding popular rights which mark that period, the colonists were never so much as mentioned. They were left after that event just where they stood before, subject to the prerogative of the crown, and that crown was worn by a monarch, who was at least as fond of power as any of the Stuarts.
Such being the character of the English revolution and its relations to the Colonies, one sees that America must have had a history for the next half century. To those who re-
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gard New England as America, this proposition will be some- what novel. But, although New England during that period made little history, it was not because America was standing still. New England was not America, and no one will under- stand our institutions until he appreciates this truth. Look about you to day, sum up all that to your mind distinguishes our people, and then turn back to the famous history of the . Puritans, and see how little you will find of similarity be- tween the two. New England was a Puritan colony from Old England, its cmigration was a transplanting, not the creation of a new people. Its great men simply acted out in Massachusetts and Connecticut a chapter of English history. Between 1630 and 1640, twenty one thousand Puritans left England and settled in America. They were men picked from among a race who, directly after their departure, made the English Commonwealth honored in every quarter of the globe. They had among their number statesmen and soldiers, and so many scholars that it was said one out of every two hun- dred and fifty emigrants was a college graduate. Here they showed the same virtues as their English brethren exhibited in the Long Parliament and on the fields of Dunbar and Worcester, but, with their faith, courage and indomitable energy, were mingled the same petty bigotry and narrowness of mind.
With the restoration of Charles the Second, Puritan- ism died in England. It lingered on a little longer in America, but with its decadence New England's first great chapter of history was closed. The foundation of Puritanism was strictly a religious one ; civil liberty was of consequence only as a protection to religion ; the State was important simply because the Church was the State. When that in- tense, religious, crusading spirit died out-and we see it failing long before the English revolution-but one result. could follow. There came a period of transition which sinks into insignificance compared with the days of positive ideas by which it was preceded. The Puritan was becoming an American ; the descendant was worthy of his ancestor, but he did not at once spring into full maturity.
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Meantime, however, America was moving forward. The missing chapter is somewhere . to be found. Let us see if we can find it.
The favorite process of the scholars who have reconstructed ancient history, is to test the statements of early writers by the argument of probabilities. Judged by this standard we should expect much more from New York than that with which she has been credited At two points we have solid ground as a basis for our reasoning. In the first place, we know the ancestry of the founders of New York ; their his- tory has been written by outside, impartial scholars, who tell us that they were second to no people of modern times. That much is setiled, and the present is no less assured. We see around us what is, indeed, the Empire State ; first in wealth and population, second to none in enterprise, patriot- ism and public spirit. Within the present generation we have seen her sending to the battle-field half a million of her sons. Go back to the days which followed the Revolution, and we hear the same report. She launched the first success- ful steamboat, she dug the first great canal ; she built the first locomotive in America. In love of liberty and devotion to the Union she has never been excelled. One of her sons penned the most famous of the early revolutionary papers which excited the admiration of Burke and Chatham. Her statesmen furnished the model for the con- stitution of the Union. She gave to Washington's Cabinet the great master of American finances ; she gave to the Su- preme Court its first Chief Justice. These things we know. If then, in the early colonial times which tried men's souls, New York was wanting, it would be strange indeed. Na- tions do not, like men, put off their bodies each seven years, nor do they undergo an instantaneous change of heart. Some men achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them, but nations are only born great.
But we have much more than the argument of probabili- ties to throw light upon the subject. The old records, buried long in dust and unknown to the earlier historians, have been
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discovered within the past few years. To the New York Historical Society belongs the chief credit of their resurrec- tion. More than thirty years ago it induced the Legislature to send an agent to Europe to explore the state offices of Holland, France and England. In Holland he found great masses of correspondence and documents relating to the Dutch period of the colony ; in France all the papers relating to Canada and our Indian wars ; and in England, all the official correspondence between the royal governors and the British cabinet. At home, the society rescued from the garrets and cellars of our public buildings most of the records of the colo- ny itself. We have all the statutes, all the minutes of our colonial assemblies, and many of the records of our courts. These documents, now substantially complete, show that colonial New York was a daughter worthy of her noble ancestors and fit to be the mother of the Empire State. They prove conclusively that here is the unwritten chapter, without which the history of American liberty is incomplete.
Several causes combined to make New York the most im- portant of all the colonies, although far down the scale in point of population. The chief of these was her geographical position, which gave her, through the Hudson and Mohawk, the key to the American continent. Upon this subject I need not dwell. The learned and eloquent President of this so- ciety# has on other occasions treated it so exhaustively that gleaners in the field find nothing to reward their industry.
The second marked feature of the colony was the character of her population. New England and Virginia were peopled almost exclusively by Englishmen, but New York was always cosmopolitan. The America of to-day is not English in itg character, it has engrafted on the original stock shoots from all the modern European nations, and this heterogencity makes it what it is, with all its virtues and short comings. Such as America is to-day, New York has ever been, except that her settlers were culled from nations whose virtues are all historic.
*Hon. Horatio Seymour.
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Firs: in time stand the Dutch-heroic men who came in an heroic age. We never can overrate their influence in the history of American liberty. Their New England neighbors sometimes sneered at the Dutchmen, but an American historian has taught the whole world to do them honor. While Henry Hudson was on his memorable voyage, the inhabitants of the United Netherlands took their place among the nations of the earth as an independent people. For forty long years they had carried on a war with Spain and had grown great in the struggle. At the outset they only demanded religious liberty as subjects. For answer their country was overrun by Aiva and his Spanish butchers, the Council of Blood covered the land with gibbets, and the inquisition sacrificed its victims by thousands. Then they became a nation of warriors worthy of their Batavian ancestors whom Tacitus has immortalized. " Other nations," said he, "go to battle-they go to war." In the open field they defeated the trained legions of Philip ; besieged in their cities they surrendered only to famine, and at times, to sweep the invader from their soil, they cut their dykes and gave the land back to the sea from which it had been reseued. In 1581, thirteen years after the ontbreak, they proclaimed their independence of Philip, and thence- forth fought for civil as well as religious liberty. On the 9th of April, 1609, while the Half Moon, Hudson's vessel, was on the ocean, after forty years of continuous war, Philip the Third signed a twelve years' truce at Antwerp, by which he recognized the United Netherlands as "free countries, provinces and States."
It is to this people, restless and undaunted, successful by the land and by the sea, whose motto was " Taxation only by consent," who founded the first great republic, and who en- forced the doctrine of universal religious toleration, that the Empire State of New York owes its origin.
Next in point of numbers and of time came another race, who however need no enlogy, for history has always done them justice. They were the men who chanted psalms as they went into the battle of Ivry with Henry of Navarre,
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who for years had by their virtues kept France from sinking into unutterable depths of public and private vice. Then came accessions from New England of the more liberal think- ers, who fled from that new hierarchy to find a home where they could be free to worship God as they thought fit. Later on came Protestants, driven out of the Palatinate by the cruelties of Louis the Fourteenth, Scotch- Irish who had borne the horrors of the siege of Londonderry, Catholic Highland- ers who had fought with the Pretender.
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