USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York, 1609-1909 > Part 7
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Trouble was brewing with the English. The border was not defined and while there was plenty of recognition of Stuyvesant as a de facto governor, there was a claim that would not down: that England had a right to a part or the whole of the territory of New Netherland. An English patent to Lord Stirling had for years been made the basis of a British claim to owner- ship of Long Island; and in 1648, a Scotchman named Forrester appeared with credentials from Lord Stirling's widow, claiming to be governor of Long Island and of all islands within five miles of it, and demanding that Stuyve- sant should show him his commission. The governor arrested him and sent him, on the first ship, to Holland.
Correspondence was constantly going on between Stuyvesant and Gover- nor Eaton of New Haven. Three runaway servants of the West India Com- pany took refuge in New Haven, and the demand of Stuyvesant that they should be surrendered to him was denied. Stuyvesant retaliated by a decree that all refugees from New England, "bond or free," should be sheltered in Manhattan, an order which greatly displeased the burghers, who did not want Manhattan to become a refuge for runaways and outlaws. Other bones of contention were connected with the strict harbor regulations enforced at New Amsterdam. These and other subjects were aired in sharp letters between the heads of the two colonies.
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At home complaints were made that Stuyvesant failed to impartially enforce the laws against smuggling, and against the heavy tariff exactions, amounting to thirty per cent., ad valorem. His endeavor to collect tithes from farmers who had occupied their lands for ten years was another unpopular move. It is true that this was according to contract, but Kieft's wars had so desolated the province that the people could ill afford to meet the impost. As to this particular debt, the governor agreed to a postponement, but declared that he was bound to obey the company's orders. Several things arose in which the desire of the company to exact profits from the province ran counter to the people's ideas of what was due them, and the Nine Men sug- gested a desire to appeal on these questions directly to the States-General without reference to the company. Stuyvesant intimated approval of the plan, but thought he should direct its execution.
There were in 1649 three new members of the Board of Nine Men, Adriaen van der Donck, Oloff Stevensen and Elbert Elbertsen having suc- ceeded Damen, Bout and Thomas Hall on the board. They asked permission of the governor to secure from the Commonalty an expression about sending a delegation to The Hague; but Stuyvesant contended that all communications to the government should be sent through him. The Nine Men, however, informed him that they believed it would be prejudicial to the interests of the province to appeal through him, but promised him copies of such documents as should be prepared. Stuyvesant forbade them to call any public meeting; so the board instructed Van der Donck, who was president, to take the views of constituents, and keep a private record from which any statement could be prepared. Machiel Jansen, who was a member of the board, and at whose house Van der Donck boarded, together with Thomas Hall, an English ex- member of the Nine Men, informed Governor Stuyvesant of what was being done. The governor was furious; went to Jansen's house and made a search of Van der Donck's room, where he found and confiscated a rough draft of the information he had collected; had Van der Donck arrested and jailed on a charge of lesè majesté, arrested Augustine Herrman, another one of the Nine Men, issued, as his predecessor Kieft had done, an order that no docu- ments should be legal unless prepared by Secretary Van Tienhoven; and at the same time notified Domine Backerus that nothing should be read or announced from the pulpit in regard to public affairs except by definite authority of the governor. He soon after called together the officers of the Burgher Guard, the organization of which was still intact, although Stuy- vesant had failed to comply with the company's orders to muster the guard at regular times. To them he declared his intention of calling two deputies from each of the settlements, including the English towns on Long Island, to consider the sending of a deputation to Holland in the interest of the province.
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MELYN AND KUYTER RETURN FROM HOLLAND
Soon after the arrest of the president of the Nine Men, Van Dincklagen, the vice director, made a protest against the action that had been taken with- out his concurrence in the matter, and secured the release of Van der Donck on bail, though the governor deposed him from office and declared he should not sit with the Nine Men until he had either recanted or proved certain statements contained in the documents which had been found in his room.
Several occurrences about this time had a bad effect on the popularity of the governor with the people of New Amsterdam. Not long before, he had convicted three men of trafficking in firearms, and had passed upon them a sentence of death; which was only commuted after many of the chief citizens had made earnest protest. A little later it was found that Stuyvesant had himself imported a small consignment of guns for the up-river Indians, and his explanation that the company had ordered this disposal of the arms did little to soften public criticism. The company had also advised Stuyvesant to maintain friendly relations with the traders of neighboring English colonies; but this did not prevent the charge of favoritism toward those traders, which the merchants and burghers of New Amsterdam brought against him. They also accused him of trying to monopolize the trade of New Amsterdam; as he owned stores and brewhouses, and was owner of interests in several ships. The feeling against him was intensified by the return from Holland of Cor- nelis Melyn.
Although the position which had been taken first by Kieft and afterward by Stuyvesant, that no appeals should lie from New Netherland to the States- General, had the backing of the West India Company, it failed in the case of Melyn and Kuyter. The States-General taking up this case after some delay, suspended the sentence of banishment which had been passed upon them by Stuyvesant, and issued a mandamus which, after stating the wrongs and losses which Kuyter and Melyn had suffered as the result of the war started by Governor Kieft, and various other matters, called upon Governor Stuyvesant and the members of his government to appear in person or by attorney to defend the sentence passed upon the appellants. At the same time the States- General gave Melyn and Kuyter a passport to return to New Netherland and there enjoy their liberty and property on the same footing as other citizens; and the Prince of Orange wrote a personal letter to Stuyvesant forbidding him to molest the two men, and gave the latter authority to serve the gover- nor with the mandamus by any hand they might select. Melyn embarked for New Amsterdam and arrived there January 1, 1649. Kuyter remained in Holland. After Melyn's arrival Stuyvesant twice sent the secretary and schout-fiscal to demand all his papers; but Melyn gave them only his pass- port, saying that he would produce the others before the council in due course. Stuyvesant wanted to order Melyn to jail instanter, but Vice-Director Van
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Dincklagen, who was an excellent lawyer, protested against such summary action. So Melyn was summoned to appear before the council the next morn- ing, and then delivered the orders and despatches he had brought. Stuyve- sant stated that he would obey the orders of the States-General, but declined to make a public statement exonerating Melyn; so the latter retained the man- damus for a time when it could be used more effectively.
On March 8, 1649, the governor having issued a call to the Commonalty, about three hundred men assembled in the church, where Stuyvesant had intended to have read to them his commission, which be claimed gave him sovereign power in New Netherland; even to the annulling or at least suspending the orders of the States-General. There Melyn gave the manda- mus to Arnoldus van Hardenburgh and invited him to read it to the governor in the presence of the Commonalty. Stuyvesant, much enraged, seized the document with such violence that two of the seals were torn loose from the vellum document (which is now in the possession of the New York Histor- ical Society). The governor afterward wrote to the States-General a letter of protest against this "mutinous and indecent" service. The meeting broke up in a row. In answer to the mandamus, Stuyvesant refused to go to Hol- land personally, but promised to send an attorney to appear in his behalf.
The tide of his unpopularity had risen so high that he could no longer prevent complaints being made to the home government. The Nine Men (in- cluding Van der Donck, the suspended president), and Bout and Thomas Hall, two former members of the board, signed each of the three documents which were sent forward. One was designated a "Petition to the States-General," to which was attached the second, entitled "Additional Observations;" while the other was entitled the "Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States- General of the United Netherland." The "Petition" and the "Remonstrance" are the work of Adriaen van der Donck, but the "Observations" is the work of a cruder and less able writer.
The Petition was a brief but clear statement of the reasons for dissatis- faction and the remedies asked by the Commonalty. The complaint was chiefly that the government was inappropriate and inadequate; its methods were harsh, and while it inflicted heavy burdens in taxation and restrictions on trade, it gave few privileges or exemptions. Long-continued war, the loss of the Princess, the prevalence of traders and peddlers. the lack of farmers and farm servants, and the scarcity of many things, together with the arro- gance of the Indians since the strife with them began, had left the province in a very poor and most low condition. It asked for exemption from tithes and taxes until the population and prosperity of the country should be in- creased; for freedom of trade in the produce of the country ; encouragement of the fisheries; free transportation of agricultural immigrants; and for a defi-
THE "PETITION" AND THE "REMONSTRANCE"
nite agreement with neighbor nations of the boundaries of the province; and as the chief demand they wished the States-General to do away with the com- pany government, and the States-General to assume its ownership and control, giving New Netherland a suitable burgher government, approved by their High Mightinesses, but resembling as nearly as practical the excellent gov- ernment of the Fatherland. The "Additional Observations" were an elabo- ration of the matters set forth in brief in the Petition.
The "Remonstrance" is a long document, and one of the most valuable ever written for the historical material as well as strength of its argument. From it come many of the details of the history of New Amsterdam previously given. It is caustic upon the despotic methods of the governor. Kieft had spent no money for public benefit except on the church and that had been willingly contributed by the people. Stuyvesant had finished the church and built a wooden wharf, both of which were good expenditures, but scarcely represented the 30,000 guilders annually taken from the people, the whole of which he had promised to expend for public works. Stuyvesant's claim to sovereignty, his arrogance, his tyranny, his activity in starting prosecutions, his bullying methods, and abusive language, came in for a severe scoring. Vice-Director Van Dincklagen had at times protested, but the director was so domineering and threatening that he let some things go without raising serious objection. Van Dyck, the schout-fiscal, had been excluded from the council, but there was little harm done, for hard drinking had made him irresponsible. Secretary Van Tienhoven is denounced much more strongly than even the governor; and while his great ability was admitted he is accused of lying, grossly dissolute living, and charged with having been the originator of the war, and the one to whose evil counsels many of the mistaken actions both of Kieft and Stuyvesant were due.
To carry these papers to Holland, Van der Donck, Van Couwenhoven and Bout were selected by the Nine Men, who gave them credentials to present to the States-General. Van Dincklagen wrote a letter saying that he had tried to dissuade the Commonalty from sending these envoys, but as they were going, he hoped they would secure an audience, that their intentions were good, and their knowledge of conditions in New Netherland was com- plete and accurate. Cornelis Melyn, who had been subjected to many annoy- ances, went with the envoys. Secretary Van Tienhoven was sent by Governor Stuyvesant to represent his side of the case; for the governor had been greatly stirred by the turn affairs had taken, and it was not safe to bear too high a hand, after the action already taken in the Melyn and Kuyter case. Domine Backerus, tired of New Amsterdam, and of disputes with Director Stuyvesant, went to Holland, and added his voice to those of the envoys of the Nine. Domine Megapolensis, formerly pastor at Rensse-
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laerswyck, succeeded to the charge of the church in New Amsterdam. Wouter van Twiller, the former director, who was in Amsterdam as a trustee of the estate of Kiliaen van Rensselaer, was attacking the West India Company for its neglect of the interests of Rensselaerswyck.
Altogether the affairs of New Netherland occupied the centre of the stage in Amsterdam, where various tracts and pamphlets dealing with the matters in dispute were published. One of these, "Broad Advice to the United Netherland Provinces," or as it is commonly quoted, the Breeden Raedt, is a satire, bitter and biting, in which the West India Company and all its works are held up to scorn. The delegates from New Amsterdam prepared, in Jan- uary, 1650, an abstract containing sixty-eight charges, briefed from the longer documents they had brought with them; and Van Tienhoven wrote a reply to this digest, on behalf of the company; the delegates also had printed another "Remonstrance," containing the substance of their case against the company, but differing in form from the official paper of the same name.
A committee of the States-General took up the matters brought to their attention by the New Amsterdam delegates, and after many conferences with the directors of the West India Company, submitted a scheme which they named a Provisional Order for the Government, Preservation and Popu- lation of New Netherland. It was in the nature of a compromise between the demands of the New Amsterdam delegates and the views of the company's directors, and so was not satisfactory, as a finality, to either party, least of all to the company, whose attitude was that it was entitled to make its own laws for its own province. The Provisional Order suggested a recall of Stuyvesant, provided for the introduction into New Amsterdam of burgher or municipal government by a schout, two burgomasters and five schepens; but continued the Nine Men in office for three years longer, and gave them jurisdiction over small civil cases and final jurisdiction of such as did not involve more than fifty guilders, but with right of appeal where the sum involved was larger. Bout and Van Couwenhoven, two of the people's envoys, returned with a copy of the Provisional Order, which much rejoiced the people of New Amsterdam; but on the same ship came directions from the company not to obey it, and Stuyvesant therefore refused to publish the document. He was thoroughly incensed and resentful toward the people of New Amsterdam, particularly the Nine Men, whom he slighted in the most humiliating ways, even taking their pew in the church for his own use. The Nine Men wrote to the committee of the States-General complaining of the disobedience of Stuyvesant to the orders of the home government, and the accentuation of the bad conditions about which they had complained, and expressing the hope that their High Mightinesses would redress the people's grievances and give them a good and wholesome government.
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ENGLISH SETTLERS SUPPORT STUYVESANT
Van der Donck had remained in Holland to plead the popular cause, but Cornelis van Tienhoven, who had continued his licentious life in Holland and had trouble in the courts because of it, had returned to New Amsterdam, adding his counsels of evil to intensify the spirit of tyranny which had been aroused in Stuyvesant. Vice-Director Van Dincklagen and Van Dyck, the schout-fiscal, joined in a protest to Holland, hearing of which, Stuyvesant deposed Van Dincklagen from the council; and when that officer refused to retire, he was, on Stuyvesant's order, seized by the soldiers and dragged to the guardhouse. Van Dyck was removed from the council on a charge of drunkenness, and Van Tienhoven was given his place, thereby securing a seat in the council.
In fighting his battle in favor of autocracy and against the grant of any important governmental function to the people of New Amsterdam, Governor Stuyvesant had nearly all the Dutch inhabitants against him; but, on the other hand, the English settlers of Long Island, almost to a man, supported the governor. Coming from New England, the home of the town meeting, this attitude is scarcely explainable on the basis of principle; but, on the other hand, they had come from a foreign and almost hostile jurisdiction, and had on the basis of a mere oath of fealty to the Dutch and company governments been permitted to settle in selected spots and to establish their own local govern- ments. They therefore had the rights for themselves which the burghers of New Amsterdam were trying to secure; and they curried favor with the director by supporting his side of the contention. The English were largely
incited to this course by George Baxter, who was English secretary to Governor Stuyvesant, as he had been to Kieft, and had been a strong partisan of both of these directors in carrying out their policies. He was also schout (sheriff) in the local government of Gravesend, the town authorities of which had sent several letters to the company and to Stuyvesant supporting the policies of the governor of New Netherland.
The English in other towns of Long Island followed the lead of those in Gravesend, and in fact in all of New Netherland, Thomas Hall was the only Englishman who took active part in the opposition to the governor. The Provisional Order, therefore, had put Stuyvesant in the position that the States-General, from which he had received his commission, had recalled him; the West India Company, which paid his salary, had ordered him to stay where he was; the Dutch colonists were against him, except a few of his immediate hangers-on, and the only supporters he had outside of those few were those of another nationality.
As fortune would have it, matters so turned out that just at this time the authorities of the United Colonies sent him notice that they would agree to meet him in the conference he had so long desired, to settle the boundary lines
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and other matters of dispute and friction between New England and New Netherland. To this conference Stuyvesant appointed his English secretary, George Baxter, and Thomas Willett, another Englishman who afterward became the first mayor of New York. They met the New England delegates, Simon Bradstreet of Massachusetts and Thomas Prince of Plymouth. Stuyvesant had always contended that all the land from Cape Cod to Cape Henlopen belonged to the Dutch, but Connecticut had many more residents than New Netherland. The arbitrators gave the English all of Long Island to a line running northward from the ocean to the westernmost part of Oyster Bay; and on the mainland the dividing line was to begin west of Greenwich Bay and thence run northward for twenty miles beyond which point it was left for future determination. The boundaries were to be inviolate until a full and final determination should be agreed upon between England and Holland. The question of Dutch and English rights in the Delaware River region were left open.
It is said that when the decision was reported to him, Stuyvesant exclaimed that he had been betrayed; but he accepted the treaty. When he returned he made no report to the people about the matter, though the story came later in a letter to an Englishman resident in New Amsterdam. The general feeling was that Stuyvesant had been out-generaled by the English, and he was much blamed for having entrusted the interests of New Nether- land into the hands of English arbitrators. It is probable that the blame was not deserved. The English were in much stronger possession of Connecticut and Eastern Long Island than the Dutch were of New Netherland, and it is not at all likely that Stuyvesant could have bettered the treaty by sending Dutchmen instead of English, though it would have shown more tact for him to have done so. But tact was far from being Stuyvesant's strong point and he did not even send a copy of the Hartford Treaty to Holland.
Adriaen van der Donck, in Holland, hearing of the treaty, wrote a Memorial on the Boundaries of New England to show how Stuyvesant had been outwitted by the English. Cornelis Melyn, procuring a conduct from the States-General, returned to New Netherland with seventy colonists who had been sent out by Jonkheer van der Capellen, to whom Melyn had sold a half interest in his Staten Island patroonship. Melyn stopped on the way for some needed repairs to the ship, in Rhode Island, which fact Stuyvesant made a pretext to arrest Melyn on his arrival in New Amsterdam, notwithstanding his safe conduct, on a charge of illegal trading. Melyn resisted arrest and Stuyvesant confiscated and sold his property on Manhattan, and seized and sold to Thomas Willett the ship and cargo belonging to Van der Capellen, who afterward recovered heavy damages from the West India Company. Melyn went to his house on Staten Island, where he was defended by a guard of
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TERRITORIAL DISPUTES BECOME ACUTE
Raritan Indians, and was joined by Van Dyck as soon as the latter was released from imprisonment.
Orders came from Holland for the reinstatement of Van Dincklagen as vice director, but he declined to serve, and Stuyvesant and Van Tienhoven had no one in the council to interfere with any plans they might formulate.
The Hartford Treaty had left the matter of delimitation of the territory of New Netherland on the Delaware entirely unsettled. The West India Company had been for some time engaged in the endeavor to secure from Sweden a settlement of boundary lines, and Stuyvesant had sent several overtures to the same end to Governor Prinz, of New Sweden. Meanwhile the English of Connecticut also had their eyes on the same region. But when a ship with fifty would-be colonists from New Haven, on their way to the South River country, touched at New Amsterdam, Governor Stuyvesant arrested them and would not let them go until they gave him a written pledge to give up the attempt. Following this, Stuyvesant determined to take a personal hand in the settlement of the dispute, and with several vessels and a hundred and twenty men he went to the Delaware River, and pulling down the old Fort Nassau which the Dutch had built, erected another, called Fort Casimir, at a point much farther down the river, and below the Swedish Fort Christina. He settled several families from New Amsterdam around the new fort. Governor Prinz claimed that Stuyvesant's acts constituted a trespass upon Swedish territory, and there were several interviews between the governors. They came to no settlement, but they parted on friendly terms. The company, however, which had not been consulted by Stuyvesant, expressed its disapproval of proceedings that might cause trouble between the Fatherland and Sweden. The cost of the expedition was heavy and this increased its unpopularity both with the people and the company. Part of this cost Stuyvesant levied upon the patroonship of Rensselaerswyck, and in the violent disputes about this impost, which ensued, Van Schlectenhorst, director of the patroonship, was twice arrested and long imprisoned by the governor. One outcome of the dispute was that Stuyvesant declared the village of Beverwyck to be outside of the jurisdiction of the patroon, and established there the Court of Fort Orange, from which is dated the begin- ning of city government at Albany.
Van der Donck, at The Hague, was working hard with the members of the States-General to keep them from forgetting the demands of the burghers of New Amsterdam, and as a result of this, the States-General referred the Provisional Order of 1650 to all the chambers of the Dutch West India Company. It was approved by all except the Amsterdam Chamber, whose approval was by far the most important; because it alone had, or at least, claimed sole control of New Netherland affairs. That chamber, however,
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