USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 3
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New Amsterdam, at the lower tip of Manhattan Island, became the heart of New Netherland. In 1625 the company erected a fort and within its walls built the governor's house, a double-gabled church with a squat tower, a prison, barracks, gallows, and the office of the company. Out- side, the company engineer laid out "bouweries," or farms, along the water front. The town had only one thousand people in 1650, but its population more than doubled during the following decade. When the English captured the city in 1664, they found several hundred houses south of present-day Wall Street, where Stuyvesant had erected a palisade in 1653 to ward off attacks by Indians and English. There were several other small settlements on Manhattan Island and around the bay. Brook- lyn, for example, was a tiny village dating from 1646.
New Amsterdam soon outgrew its status as a fur post. By the end of the Dutch period the settlement with its water front, curving streets, and gabled skyline had become a miniature Amsterdam. The important merchants formed a burgher aristocracy similar to that which dominated the cities of Holland. They asserted political leadership by sending strong protests to the Dutch West India Company and to the Estates-General of Holland when the governor ignored their wishes. They imported artisans to construct large brick houses with roofs of red and black pantiles and with the quaint stepped or straight-line gable ends. Spacious fruit orchards and tulip gardens lay behind the houses of the wealthier merchants.
More numerous than these merchants were the middle class: tavern- keepers, who seldom lacked customers; petty traders, who evaded the regulations against buying furs from the Indians and exporting them untaxed; doctors, who were kept busy patching up the victims of tavern brawls and Indian raids; surveyors, who catered to the land hunger among merchants and officials; accountants, who tallied the beaver pelts and inventoried the warehouses; shopkeepers, who haggled with cus- tomers in open stalls. Artisans of every description drifted to Manhattan
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Island-smiths, carpenters, sailmakers, cabinet makers, shoemakers. Be- low these groups in income and status were common laborers and those (Negro and white) who attended to the personal wants of their masters.
New Netherland from the outset had a heterogeneous population. Curiously enough, the first shipload of settlers sent out by the Dutch West India Company was composed chiefly of French-speaking Prot- estants. In 1664 the Dutch formed about two-thirds of the population. The British, the second largest group, were active as traders and even officials under the Dutch governors. Hundreds of Connecticut citizens had crossed the Long Island Sound since 1640 and settled on Long Island. Germans, French, Finns, and Jews were also present in small numbers. A few hundred Swedes lived along the Delaware River, a region claimed and taken over by New Netherland. The Dutch also brought in slaves from Angola and Brazil who formed the nucleus for the largest Negro population in 1750 north of the future Mason and Dixon line. Governor William Kieft told Father Jogues in 1644 that eighteen languages were spoken at or near Fort Amsterdam. The worthy Jesuit observed that Manhattan had already acquired the "arrogance of Babel," a judgment in which the Puritans of New Haven joined.
Farming developed slowly despite the urging of some company di- rectors, who sent out cattle, horses, and seeds. Profits in the fur trade lured many farmers from their acres, and Indian wars frightened settlers from going far from the forts. Heavy import and export taxes stifled agricultural development until their relaxation in the early 1650's stimu- lated production.
The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, adopted in 1629 by the Dutch West India Company and the Estates-General, included several significant clauses in regard to land policy. It authorized private persons with the permission of the governor and his Council to "choose and take possession of as much land as they can properly cultivate and hold the same in full ownership." Another act in 1640 held out hope that local self-government would be granted to groups of free persons. Throughout the Dutch period the majority of farmers were independent proprietors owning their own property.
Far less important although much better known was the provision for the grant of patroonships. Kiliaen Van Rensselaer, a diamond merchant of Amsterdam, led a faction in the company which advocated vigorous colonization. At his urging the directors authorized members of the company to acquire large estates provided they colonized their land with fifty settlers within four years. A patroon might claim land for twenty-four miles along one bank of the Hudson or the seacoast or for twelve miles along each bank of the river. Of the five patroonships created, only Rensselaerswyck was a success and lasted for any length of
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time. Lack of co-operation by the company, scarcity of skilled managers and able tenants, Indian raids, and distance from Holland, were the most important reasons for the failure of the patroon system.
Rensselaerswyck succeeded partly because of its fine location near Fort Orange and partly because of the able direction of Van Rensselaer. Settlers on the patroonship could sell produce to the traders and rely upon the fort for protection. Van Rensselaer gave his colony careful supervision and invested large sums in it. He shipped out cattle, horses, tools, brewing vats, millstones, and brick. He sent out indentured servants to construct barns, houses, sawmills, and gristmills, and he offered liberal terms to settlers. Van Rensselaer began the practice of leasing and not selling farms. The establishment of the vexing tenancy system and the growth of a landed aristocracy will receive detailed treatment in the chapters on land policy during colonial and post-Revolutionary days.
The Dutch West India Company was governed by a board of directors called the College of Nineteen. The eight members from Amsterdam on their board had charge of New Netherland and appointed as their chief officer a governor, called the "director-general," to serve in New Nether- land. To assist him they created a Council of four men empowered to give advice, vote on local regulations, and serve as a court in both civil and criminal cases. The company also appointed lesser officials, such as the schout-fiscal who acted as sheriff and prosecuting officer, the secre- tary who carried on administrative work, the clergymen, and the school- teachers. The directors of the company were seldom concerned with long-range policies of government in New Netherland, since they were primarily interested in framing regulations to bring in the greatest amount of profit. They did reserve the power to approve all laws for the colony, which were subject always to the higher authority of Holland. At first, the new laws simply followed the regulations in regard to ship- ping and the rights and duties of seamen on shipboard. In fact, the government of New Netherland seemed an extension of quarter-deck rule with ship captains in port often serving as members of the Council.
The governors had a formidable task-to make money for the company and to fight off foreign enemies and domestic troublemakers. Indian attacks, border aggression from Connecticut, and the presence of the Swedes within the region claimed by New Netherland gave much trouble. In addition, the governor had to administer the elaborate trading regulations of the company and to review every administrative decision. Although he possessed broad powers, the governor could not ignore local opinion. The dominies (pastors of the Dutch Reformed church), the merchants, the agents of the patroon at Rensselaerswyck, and espe- cially the republican-minded Yankee immigrants, undermined his au- thority whenever they found their interests jeopardized. The directors in
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Holland sometimes overrode the decisions of their governors after weighing the protests of colonists. The position of governor called for a man of great ability, tact, and force of character, but the company appointed a succession of governors distinguished for their incompetence and perversity.
Peter Minuit took charge of New Netherland in 1626 and held office for six years. The purchase of Manhattan Island and the strengthening of New Amsterdam were his most important achievements. Minuit was a shrewd and determined leader, but his coarse behavior affronted at least one clergyman. The directors recalled Minuit in 1631 because they felt he was more interested in aiding the large landholders than in guarding the company's monopoly of the fur trade.
Wouter Van Twiller, the next governor (1633-1638), took some im- portant actions despite his taste for whisky, his failure to make reports, and his quarrels with other officials and a prominent pastor. He tried to increase trade by constructing a fort on the Connecticut River near present-day Hartford. He placed a garrison on the Delaware River in order to safeguard the trade and land of that region from interlopers from Virginia and Sweden. Van Twiller also helped to settle Long Island by granting several land patents.
The administration of William Kieft (1638-1646) was a succession of crises and controversies. He mismanaged Indian relations so badly that a four-year war resulted. The Algonkins ( a tribe of the Algonkians ) and several related tribes speaking Algonkian languages revolted in 1641 because Governor Kieft favored the Iroquois and because he tried to tax them for the repairs of Fort Amsterdam. The hard-pressed gov- ernor called an unofficial council of twelve local men, but when this group demanded some control over taxes and policy, he dismissed it. This was the first attempt of the colonists to obtain some measure of self-government.
In February 1643 Governor Kieft and his men set out to attack two camps of Algonkins fleeing from the relentless Mohawks. He massacred over a hundred natives, but the remainder retaliated by burning farms and killing settlers. In desperation Kieft called a group of eight men to organize resistance and to authorize an excise tax. This group quar- reled with Kieft and appealed to the officials of the Dutch West India Company for Kieft's removal. After suffering many losses, the Dutch, in February 1644, sallied forth into the region later known as Westchester County and killed over five hundred Indians. The next year Kieft negotiated a peace treaty ending the war, which had cost both sides over one thousand lives. Kieft was lost at sea as he sailed home in 1647 to defend himself against charges of blundering and cowardice.
An old soldier but new bridegroom entered the governor's mansion
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in 1647 and kept office until the English conquest, despite the constant stream of complaints against his autocratic rule. From the outset Peter Stuyvesant (1647-1664) exhibited a hot temper, vitriolic language, and autocratic habits. One of his first actions was to try to convict two men who had dared to challenge the authority of Governor Kieft and his inner Council. Stuyvesant felt obliged to secure the co-operation of the settlers, and in 1647 he established a board of nine men, the first formally constituted and permanent board of local officials in New Amsterdam. Although this unofficial advisory council agreed to new taxes, its members soon quarreled with the governor. Van der Donck, secretary of the board, drew up a long indictment of misrule by Kieft and Stuyvesant. This remonstrance of 1649 called for more settlers, freer trade, and better protection from the Indians. Its criticism of Stuyvesant as domineering and tyrannical did not persuade the Amsterdam directors to withdraw their support of the governor.
New Amsterdam received a "burgher government" in 1653, thus be- coming the oldest municipal corporation in the United States. At first Stuyvesant appointed the burgomasters and schepens (or aldermen), who formed a municipal court of justice. These magistrates by the end of five years won the right to nominate their successors. They followed the medieval practice of setting up a system of "burgher rights," by which only those newcomers who paid a fee could buy or sell goods or practice their craft within the city of New Amsterdam. Governor Stuyvesant carefully reserved the right to enact ordinances, since he was suspicious of every step toward representative government.
The grant of municipal rights to New Amsterdam set off a demand for more self-government among the settlements on Long Island. Settlers from Connecticut were especially eager to secure all the rights of self- government to which they had become accustomed. In December 1653 representatives from both Dutch and English towns joined with delegates from the unofficial board of nine men and from the city of New Amster- dam in petitioning for the end of arbitrary rule by governor's decree. They criticized the appointment of officials and magistrates without the consent of the people, the enactment of laws without the knowledge of the people, and favoritism to insiders. Governor Stuyvesant declared their resolutions illegal and dismissed the delegates.
Stuyvesant showed more skill in handling external affairs than in governing his unruly subjects. New Netherland, like Holland, was resisting Spanish efforts to regain control of world trade and was at- tempting to thwart British ambitions to displace Holland as the leading mercantile power. In addition, New Netherland had its own problems, such as bickerings over the indefinite boundaries with Connecticut, the
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intrusion of the Swedes on the Delaware, and bad relations with the Indians. Technically the Estates-General and the Dutch West India Com- pany directed the foreign policies of New Netherland, but the governor had some discretionary power, especially in making treaties with the Indians and other European colonies in the New World.
Stuyvesant achieved his greatest success in taking over New Sweden on the Delaware. During the first half of the seventeenth century Sweden was a great power, and her leaders sought to enter the race for foreign trade and colonies by chartering trading companies. In 1637 the New Sweden Company, with considerable Dutch money behind it, sent out an expedition to the Delaware River. The Dutch refused to recognize the legality of the Swedish settlement; but because they feared even more the various attempts by New Englanders to establish colonies in the Delaware Valley, they did little to stop it until Stuyvesant in 1651 invaded the region and erected Fort Casimir. Three years later the Swedes demolished the fort, whereupon the Dutch governor sent an armada of seven ships and 650 men to the Delaware. Confronted with this large force, the Swedish governor surrendered.
The claims of Massachusetts and Connecticut for land westward to the Pacific conflicted with the rights of the Dutch West India Company, which had founded posts in the region from the Connecticut Valley to the Delaware River. The dispute broke out in the 1630's, when hundreds of Englishmen settled along the Connecticut River and surrounded the tiny Dutch fort at present-day Hartford. During the next decade more English towns were established along both the northern and southern shores of Long Island Sound despite the protests of the Dutch governors. Southhampton, East Hampton, and Southhold were settlements by New Englanders in the eastern part of Long Island which denied Dutch authority.
The Amsterdam directors authorized Stuyvesant to make a "provisional settlement" with New England in order to prevent open conflict. In 1650 Governor Stuyvesant, in the humiliating Treaty of Hartford, gave up all effective claim to the Connecticut Valley. This agreement set the border at a line running northward from the west side of Greenwich Bay. This line, however, was never to be less than ten miles from the Hudson River, a provision which Massachusetts and Connecticut officials were later to ignore. Long Island was divided, with New Netherland retaining only the small portion west of a line dropped from Oyster Bay to the ocean. The treaty in which Dutch weakness was officially recognized opened Stuyvesant to much criticism. Significantly, the treaty was first repudiated by Massachusetts and Connecticut, both of which revived their claims to land west of the line of 1650. The Connecticut settlements
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secured a charter in 1662 which claimed a broad belt of land across New Netherland. In fact, the governor of Connecticut ordered people in Greenwich and Westchester to send deputies to the General Court of his colony.
Other issues embittered relations between New Netherland and its neighbors to the east. The close ties between the Dutch and the Mohawks irritated settlers in the Connecticut Valley, who suffered from occasional Indian raids. Merchants in New England, eager to buy and sell from the Iroquois, resented the trading monopoly claimed by the Dutch com- pany. Traders, both English and Dutch, complained against the heavy imposts levied on all imports and exports at New Amsterdam. The Anglo-Dutch competition for trade, colonies, and bases in the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean led to a series of wars during the third quarter of the seventeenth century. Neither New Netherland nor the New England colonies could avoid involvement in these wars.
Immigrants from Connecticut living west of the borders drawn in 1650 proved even more disagreeable as citizens than as neighbors. The small palisaded towns of Hempstead, Flushing, Newton, Gravesend, and Ja- maica copied the characteristic institutions of New England-the town meeting, the autonomous church congregation, and the co-operative land system. These towns and their sister settlements along the Sound in what is today western Connecticut were centers of unrest against the rule of Stuyvesant. In 1653 rebels in Flushing raised the cry of "English Union," which was echoed in other townships. During the next decade these towns usurped more political rights; finally in 1663 Stuyvesant granted them the right to elect their own magistrates in town meeting. The following year Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut asserted his colony's rights to all of Long Island, but he surrendered the island to Colonel Richard Nicolls when the latter captured New Netherland for the Duke of York.
Religion played a less important role in both the public and private lives of the citizens of New Netherland than in either Roman Catholic Quebec or Puritan New England. The Dutch were concerned with neither the conversion of the Indians to the "true faith" nor the establish- ment of a wilderness Zion ruled by God's elect. The company directors were unabashedly seeking profits. The settlers, reflecting the same secu- lar spirit, were often rough and unruly characters who became notorious for their addiction to strong drink.
In the United Provinces, however, Calvinism had sunk deep into the Dutch consciousness. Few doubted that Jehovah had chosen the Dutch to smite the Spanish overlord and, incidentally, to capture the carrying trade of the world. The directors of the West India Company gave their
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blessing to the Dutch Reformed church (a form of Calvinism) in New Netherland and sent out clergymen to serve the people, but some of the dominies seemed more interested in denouncing the governors than in advancing the spiritual welfare of their communicants. Dominie Bogardus (1633-1647) had a sharp tongue and delighted in castigating Governors Van Twiller and Kieft. The former is reported to have pursued the young divine with drawn sword; the latter, to have ordered cannon shot off and drums beaten during church services. Such antics certainly gainsay Washington Irving's description, in his Knickerbocker's History of New York, of phlegmatic officials seldom aroused from their alcoholic torpor.
The Protestant Netherlands was the haven of persecuted religious groups during the seventeenth century. For example, the Pilgrims left England for Holland before they took voyage on the Mayflower. Re- flecting this tolerant spirit, the Dutch company urged their officials to welcome newcomers and to minimize religious persecution. Gradually members of many creeds drifted to New Amsterdam despite the op- position of the clergymen of the Dutch Reformed church. Governor Stuyvesant regarded nonconformists as potential rebels against his rule. Certainly his unhappy experiences with the Connecticut Yankees on Long Island confirmed his fears. The governor therefore expelled Quakers, discouraged the immigration of Jews, and even blocked the formal organization of a Lutheran church. The more tolerant directors censured him for his attitude and laid down the rule that the "consciences of men should be free and unshackled."
A landmark in the fight for freedom of religion is the Flushing Remonstrance of 1657. In 1645 Flushing, Long Island, had received a charter guaranteeing settlers "liberty of Conscience, according to the custome and manner of Holland, without molestation or disturbance." When Stuyvesant forbade Quakers to hold meetings, twenty-six free- holders representing various religious viewpoints issued a remonstrance. This bold assertion of the right of freedom of conscience foreshadows New York's great tradition of religious freedom and toleration.
Cultural activities were extremely limited in sparsely settled New Netherland. The Dutch, however, were one of the most literate people in Europe and recognized the value of basic schooling. The famous petition of 1649 complained that there was no school, although a school- master had arrived in New Amsterdam before 1640. Stuyvesant showed considerable interest in education and helped establish primary schools in several localities, including Brooklyn, Flatbush, and Harlem. The Catechism was the basic textbook, supplemented by the ABC book, the Gospels and Epistles, and arithmetic books. Stuyvesant lent his support to a secondary school in which Latin was taught.
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Charles II of England and his advisers decided to take over New Netherland because traders at New Amsterdam made the enforcement of the British acts of trade and navigation difficult. In 1664 he awarded to his brother James, the Duke of York and Albany, "all the land from the west side of Connecticutte River to the East Side of De la Ware Bay" with "power and Authority of Governement and Commaund in or over the Inhabitants of the said Territories or Islands."
Charles II dispatched four warships to seize New Netherland, after securing the assistance of the New England colonies. News of the ex- pedition leaked out and reached the ears of Governor Stuyvesant, already troubled by threats of rebellion on Long Island. The British fleet dropped anchor in New York Bay on August 18, 1664, and Colonel Richard Nicolls, the future English governor of New York, and Governor John Winthrop of Connecticut sent letters to Stuyvesant inviting him to surrender. At first Stuyvesant refused to yield, and he tore the Winthrop letter to pieces when the burgomasters asked for a copy. But when the merchants and populace refused to take up arms and the British in- creased their pressure, Stuyvesant on August 26 (or September 5 accord- ing to the new-style calendar), agreed to surrender.
The terms of surrender were generous, guaranteeing liberty of con- science and granting the Dutch full property and inheritance rights. All judgments previously given in courts were to remain unquestioned. Minor civil officials continued in their offices until the next election. The terms granted to the city of New Amsterdam (renamed New York) a choice of deputies with "free Voyces in all publique affaires."
The Dutch remained after 1664 a piquant strain in the New York melting pot. Dutch enclaves in Ulster County, northern New Jersey, and western Long Island clung to the language until the early years of the nineteenth century. Place names such as Harlem, Brooklyn, Kinderhook; common words such as boss, stoop, cruller; political figures with names such as Van Buren and Roosevelt, all kept alive the heritage from New Netherland. A recent historian of the Dutch colony makes the suggestive comment that they "developed a culture resembling more nearly the American way of today than did any other group of colonists in their part of the world." Certainly New Yorkers can find in these early settlers some of our most cherished characteristics-a commercial spirit, a keen interest in material things, a zest for life, and a tolerant attitude toward people of varying religious and racial backgrounds.
Chapter 3
Revolt against Autocracy, 1664-1708
The people here have no claim of right to General Assem- blys. . . . It is purely the grace and favour of the Crown that allows them to have Assemblys .- EDWARD CORNBURY, C. 1705
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