USA > New York > New York City > History of the city of New York in the seventeenth century. Vol. I > Part 45
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. . . as soon as they shall grow to any strength or power their busi- ness is to oppress their neighbors and to engross the whole trade to themselves by how indirect, unlawful, or foul means whatsoever, wit- ness their inhumane proceedings at Amboyna in a time of full peace and all professions of particular friendship, and therefore it is high time to put them out of a capacity of doing the same mischief there .. ..
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And so, in this other time of full peace, and a time of spe- cial treaty obligations, the king ordered his commissioners to proceed against the New Netherlanders as they should see fit, using force only if it could not be avoided. It would have been poor policy to depopulate or to injure the province from which the duke had been magnificently promised that he might expect an annual revenue of £30,000. Therefore the commissioners were to assure its people that if they would yield to King Charles they should enjoy the same protection as his other subjects; and the governors of New England, ordered to 'assist vigorously' in the work of reducing the Dutch, were afterwards to treat them as 'neighbors and fellow-subjects.'
Late in May the expedition set sail by the express command of the king given through his brother as lord high admiral - three small men-of-war and a transport, mounting in all ninety-two guns and carrying three companies of veteran troops (four hundred and fifty men) well equipped and accom- panied by engineers. Its purpose was suspected in Holland, and by Downing at least was not actually denied. When De Witt asked him why it had been sent to New Netherland he replied that he knew of no such country except on the maps; the English had 'the first pattern of first possession of those parts'; and, he added, the Netherlanders would fain con- sider all the rest of the world New Netherland. Charles II was more discreet, continuing when he knew his ships were on the sea to assure the Dutch ambassador that he meant to inquire into all matters in dispute without taking any action to interrupt good correspondence with the States.
In June the West India Company informed the burgomasters of Amsterdam as owners of the South River colony that it had asked the States General for ships of war, transports, and three hundred soldiers, explaining that Robert Holmes had seized Cabo Corso and was attacking other places on the Guinea coast while another English fleet was on its way to take New Netherland or 'at least' Long Island. The city agreed to support the demand if no acts were sanctioned at which
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England could take offence. The States General, likewise unwilling to exasperate the English people, refused all aid, trusting in the report of their ambassador whom the king still assured that he would not 'in any way violate his alliance with the Dutch.'
Meanwhile New Amsterdam knew only that the Long Islanders were expecting the advent of an English fleet. It was fearful but not hopeless or panic-stricken. Its magis- trates went quietly about their usual tasks and the governor attended to his own, deeding lands on Long Island to Dutch- men and issuing ordinances for the more regular catechising of the children of the city and for the maintenance of fences around the bouweries on Manhattan.
In April, however, another convention gathered in the Stadt Huis. Again the magistrates had asked for it, and this time it fully deserved the name of a Landtsdag or Landts Verga- deringh, for it represented all parts of the province except the English towns that had recently been cut away from it. Two delegates sat for each of twelve communities - New Amsterdam, New Harlem, Staten Island, and Bergen, the Five Dutch Towns of Long Island, Wiltwyck, Fort Orange (or Beverwyck), and the one surviving patroonship, Rensse- laerswyck. A burgomaster and a schepen, Cornelis Steenwyck and Jacobus Backer, sat for New Amsterdam, Jeremias Van Rensselaer and the secretary of the patroonship for Rensse- laerswyck. Bergen sent its schoolmaster. One Englishman appeared - Thomas Chambers who came from Wiltwyck with a Dutch colleague. Although New Amsterdam pro- tested, Van Rensselaer was chosen to preside because his colony was the oldest in the province.
Again the delegates reproached the West India Company for not protecting them against the 'malignant English.' Stuyvesant replied that he had done all he could and that they themselves had done too little. Refusing to vote more money they adjourned. Before they met again the few sol- diers, the scant supplies, and the plentiful advice tardily sent
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by the Company arrived. Its 'categorical' orders to extirpate the Esopus Indians and to put down the Long Island rebels could not be carried out, Stuyvesant at once replied. The rebels, the convention declared, were six to one as compared with any force the Dutch could muster and, besides, could call for help upon the populous eastern part of Long Island and the whole of New England. The Indian troubles, however, it did bring to a close, not by an attempt at extirpation but by a formal treaty with more than twenty sachems from the Esopus 'nation' and the nearer River and Long Island tribes. This was all that the little Landts Vergaderingh accomplished, but it was enough to justify the day of thanksgiving that the governor proclaimed.
In June Stuyvesant reported that the letters from the States General to the Long Island towns had had no effect. The towns had sent them unopened to Hartford, thus seeming 'to say and indicate, You may get your answer there'; and at Hartford, as Thomas Willett, John Lawrence, and other well- affected Englishmen bore witness, the authorities declared that the letters must have been 'fabricated and forged' either by the West India Company in Holland or by its agents on Manhattan, for the States General had nothing to do with New Netherland, being aware that it belonged to the king of England and by his charter had been given to Connecticut.
Connecticut had promised that if this charter should in- clude New Haven the lesser colony should be free to 'join' or not. New Haven decided to 'remain distinct as formerly,' and Winthrop would not permit it to be coerced. But Con- necticut gladly received some of its towns which asked for acceptance, hoping thus to gain the whole colony piecemeal; and it also authorized Thomas Pell to buy again from the Indians the old Dutch tracts between Westchester and the Harlem River including Bronck's Land and the moribund Van der Donck patroonship. If, however, Connecticut would not actively support and defend Westchester, wrote a certain Richard Mills of that place, it ought to say so, for before it asserted its claims the people there had 'lived in peace .
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without disturbance or danger.' This meant under the Dutchmen whom John Underhill had described as insuffer- able tyrants, whom John Scott saw fit to call the 'cruel and rapacious neighbors' of the English on Long Island.
In only one thing Connecticut agreed with New Netherland - in calling John Scott a usurper. In March he was arrested on Long Island and taken to Hartford for trial. Many Long Islanders demanded his release, one hundred and forty-four persons at Flushing, for instance, signing a petition which said that he had acted according to the will of the people and that if they would not rise for him the 'very stones' might justly do so. New Haven also asked that he be set at liberty ; and Massachusetts and Plymouth sent agents to speak the same demand, fearful lest a favorite of the king be hardly dealt with, or alarmed by Scott's threat that he could send damaging reports about them to England. Nevertheless, Scott was tried on ten charges including perjury, forgery, calumny, treachery, sedition, usurpation, and defamation of the king, and was convicted, fined, and sentenced to imprison- ment during the pleasure of the court.
In May the general court of Connecticut, formally resolv- . ing that by the terms of its charter its jurisdiction embraced Long Island, deputed Governor Winthrop and two others to settle accordingly the governments of the English towns. In June, coming with some two hundred followers, Winthrop deposed Scott's magistrates and appointed others. Stuy- vesant, Van Ruyven, Burgomaster Van Cortlandt, and other prominent New Netherlanders had gone to meet him, hoping to make terms with him. Less tractable even than Scott he refused all offers of a compromise, saying that the Indians from whom the Dutch had bought the western part of the island were not its rightful owners and that the English title was clear - 'according to the proverb,' Governor Stuyvesant remarked, 'sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.' In short, Stuyvesant reported to his superiors, Long Island was 'in terminus'; and Domine Selyns wrote that the Englishmen declared they would take New Amsterdam 'with flying colors.'
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On July 8 Thomas Willett informed the governor that he had news from Boston that an English fleet had set sail bearing one 'Nicles' with a commission to take his govern- ment from him. The city was put in posture of defence, lookouts were set to watch the entrances to the harbor, and prayers for money were sent to Fort Orange and Rensselaers- wyck, for ammunition to the South River colony. Soon Willett retracted his warning, and letters from the West India Company lulled the growing alarm. Writing before the English ships had sailed, the Company resented the charge that it had 'abandoned' its province and said that when Stuyvesant received its previous letters and the soldiers it had sent him he had doubtless determined that his people 'ought not to submit to the English yoke.' It promised to do all that it could in Europe, and it confidently affirmed that the English fleet was going simply to 'install bishops' in New England 'the same as in Old England.'
Reassured by this letter and urged by his councillors Stuy- vesant went up to Fort Orange where the white men were again endangered by a war between the Mohawks and Mohe- gans. Refusing to believe a story that the New Englanders had fomented the trouble between the savage tribes, he urged Thomas Willett to warn Governor Winthrop that the Mohawks were harboring evil designs against his people, and Winthrop in a letter to Willett returned his thanks for these 'loving and friendly intimations.'
It was on the last day of July that Stuyvesant started up the river. Two of the English frigates bearing two of the royal commissioners, Maverick and Carr, had then been lying for ten days in the harbor of Pascataway, now Ports- mouth in New Hampshire; and the Long Islanders knew of the fact for Maverick had sent them word.
Sailing late in May from Portsmouth in England the fleet, as Maverick reported, had met with 'cross winds and very bad weather.' Not until the beginning of August did all four ships lie in Boston harbor. Massachusetts did not wel- come them very cordially but allowed the recruiting of two
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hundred volunteers. Connecticut sent a strong contingent; and at the request of the chief commissioner, Colonel Nicolls, Governor Winthrop started for the western end of Long Island there to await the invaders' appearance. With him were other representatives of Connecticut including his son Fitz-John, and also Thomas Willett, no longer showing friendship for the Dutch but acting on behalf of Plymouth.
Sure now that the invaders were really coming, New Am- sterdam sent an express to recall Governor Stuyvesant from Fort Orange. Ill when he embarked on what proved a 'diffi- cult and dangerous' river voyage he reached Manhattan on August 25. Immediately he ordered the soldiers down from Esopus and lent the city six small cannon and some powder from the fort. By order of the magistrates one- third of the inhabitants were constantly at work upon the defences. On August 26 Nicolls's flag-ship, the frigate Guinea, anchored in the little bay called Nayack, now Graves- end Bay, between Coney Island and New Utrecht. By August 29 its companions had arrived with the transports that carried the New England levies, all piloted by New Englanders familiar with the waters of Manhattan. Promptly Nicolls blockaded the Narrows, seized a block-house which had been set on Staten Island to defend them, patrolled the rivers forbidding the farmers to feed the city, and distributed a proclamation promising to all 'foreigners' safety and good treatment if they would quietly submit. In answer to his summons the English Long Islanders gathered in throngs for plunder and bloodshed, as could easily be understood from their 'cursing and talking' when any one spoke of a capitula- tion - so at least declared the magistrates of New Amster- dam when, a few days later, they described in a farewell letter to the West India Company the results of its 'neglect and forgetfulness.'
New Netherland was in as good a condition for defence as any American colony ; Fort Amsterdam, indeed, was a better fortification than could elsewhere be found. Yet the state-
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ments made at the time by Stuyvesant's council of war, the reports which he afterwards prepared, and various support- ing documents show how impossible it was to defend city or fort against an invading force of any size. The fort contained neither cistern nor well. Its walls were only two or three feet thick and 'backed by coarse gravel'; in some places they were not more than ten feet high; they were so closely encircled by private buildings that at almost any point they could easily be scaled; and they were commanded within pistol-shot by the hills at the north over which the Heere Weg ran. In the fort there were less than a hundred and fifty sol- diers and only twenty-five hundred pounds of powder. And in the city there were not more than two hundred and fifty civilians able to bear arms. The magistrates, according to Domine Drisius, were as anxious as the Company's officials to protect the place, but how could they do so? Even if the walls had been real fortifications and the fort a veritable fortress the circuit of the city could not have been guarded; its defenders would have stood 'four rods distant' from each other. Although Stuyvesant had called for one man in three from the Dutch towns no man dared to desert his own home to assist the capital; no aid from Holland could reach it for months; and its English inhabitants were almost with- out exception hostile. Only John Lawrence, it appears, prayed that he might remain neutral; only Thomas Hall stood openly with the Dutch. Moreover, New Amsterdam would have starved even if it could have fought: the great freshet had swept the fields along River Mauritius so bare that although sloops had been sent to New England for a supply of grain only fifteen hundred schepels could be found in the city. On his own bouwerie Stuyvesant kept his servants and negroes busy threshing wheat to be carried to the fort. Greatly he regretted that when the Company's lulling letter came he had let a vessel laden with provisions sail for Curaçoa; and sadly he deplored the arrival about a fortnight before of the ship Gideon freighted, as has been told, with more than three hundred negroes. As these alone, he
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said, would have required a hundred schepels of grain a week he sent them in small parties overland to the South River.
On August 29, the day when the last of the frigates reached Nayack, he sent Domine Megapolensis and his son with two of the city magistrates to inquire why a hostile fleet lay at his doors. Nicolls civilly explained the nature of his commission, demanding instant surrender and renewing his pledges of protection for all who would yield and obey. As he forgot to sign the letter Stuyvesant sent it back. Before it came again in proper form - on the 30th, Saturday - the magistrates, the militia officers, and delegates from the people meeting in the Stadt Huis determined not to resist but simply to take such measures of defence as would pre- vent a surprise and thus 'obtain good terms and conditions.' On Monday when they reassembled they forced the governor against his will to make public what Nicolls had written. It would discourage the people, Stuyvesant said, while he him- self would be held responsible for a surrender.
The following day, September 2, Governor Winthrop, Fitz-John Winthrop, and Willys of Connecticut, Willett of Plymouth, and John Pynchon and Thomas Clarke of Massa- chusetts came, says Stuyvesant's account, 'in a row boat with a white flag' to the city wharf in front of the public store ' whence they were immediately conducted to the nearest tavern.' Thither Stuyvesant repaired 'to greet them' with his councillors and the two burgomasters, Cornelis Steenwyck and Paulus Van der Grist. They had brought him a letter written by Winthrop but indorsed by Nicolls and two of the other commissioners. A 'friendly advertisement,' Winthrop called it, of the good terms that were offered, promising that the Dutch should have the same privileges as 'his Majesty's English subjects,' that any who desired might freely return to their fatherland in their own vessels, and that other Nether- landers might as freely come to settle in the province. Resist- ance could mean only a 'wilful protraction' of the inevitable end, said the governor of Connecticut. General Stuyvesant,
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he begged, would not provoke a 'needless war' when only 'peace, liberties, and protection' were tendered.
This letter, which merely recorded what the emissaries had verbally made known, Stuyvesant, he reported, opened in the council chamber after their departure and read to the council- lors and the two burgomasters. The burgomasters asked for a copy of it to show to the other members of their court. 'For reasons' their request was refused, and they 'departed greatly disgusted and dissatisfied.' Then it was resolved to destroy the letter 'to prevent its communication.' Shortly afterwards the work of 'setting the palisades on the land side of the city' suddenly stopped and the greater part of the burghers thronged around the Stadt Huis, clamoring for 'a view and copy of the letter' and saying that the city could not be defended and that no succor could be hoped for. 'To prevent the appearance of a mutiny' the torn letter was pieced together 'as well as possible' by De Sille, copied by Nicholas Bayard 'who understood the English language,' and delivered to the burgomasters.
It had always been plain, General Stuyvesant afterwards said, that 'whosoever by ship or ships is master on the river will in a short time be master of the fort'; this had been proved on the South River at the time when the Company had sent a well-armed ship to reduce the Swedes; had New Amsterdam been 'how strong soever,' without 'superior rein- forcements in men and ships' it must have fallen in twelve days before such a force as Nicolls brought against it. Yet for two days after he got Winthrop's proposals the old general stood firm, sending to Nicolls nothing more humble than one of his ever excellent, ever futile expositions of Dutch rights with a demand that the English should make no move until further advices should come from Europe where, he felt sure, the king and the States General had already agreed about their colonial boundaries. Refusing to argue, Nicolls gave the governor forty-eight hours in which to accept his terms. On September 4 large numbers of Long Island Englishmen gathered at Gravesend to meet the king's commissioners.
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Nicolls published the Duke of York's patent and his own credentials. Winthrop resigned on behalf of Connecticut its pretensions to the island. On the same day the regular troops landed at Gravesend and marched northward to the Ferry where the New Englanders were already encamped with a multitude of volunteers from the eastern end of the island under command of Captain John Young. Also, as Domine Drisius tells, two of the frigates, sweeping up the bay under full sail, passed beneath the walls of Fort Amster- dam and anchored between Manhattan and Nutten Island
They had put all their cannon on one side intending if any resistance were offered to pour a full broadside into this open place and so to take the city by assault, giving up everything to plunder and massacre.
As they came to anchor in the best spot for attack General Stuyvesant, a gunner with a lighted match beside him, stood on one of the points of his useless fort, broken-hearted, help- lessly defiant. 'The ministers Megapolensis father and son,' it is written, 'led him away.' Once more he wrote to Nicolls, saying now that he was ready either to 'stand the storm' or to arrange an accommodation. If he would raise the white flag on his fort, Nicolls replied, then terms might be debated. This message also the people heard; and, men, women, and children thronging about the governor, they besought him to yield. He would rather, he cried to them, be carried a corpse to his grave.
Then they drew up a formal written Remonstrance. The first person who signed it was Hendrick Kip; the next was Stuyvesant's son Balthazar who, born on Manhattan, was only seventeen years of age; the third was Abraham Wilmer- doncx a director of the West India Company who had recently been sent from Holland. Stuyvesant's brothers-in-law added their names; so did the magistrates, old residents like Van Cortlandt and Van Dyck, prominent merchants like De Pey- ster and Lockermans, and many persons of a humbler sort, ninety-three in all - Dutchmen, Flemings, Frenchmen, and a single Englishman, the first who had come to live on Man-
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hattan, Thomas Hall. Thus the last of New Amsterdam's many popular petitions expressed the will of the whole city ; and to the modern reader it symbolizes the life of the city from its very beginning almost to the end of the seventeenth century, bearing with the name of its first-born son, Jan Vinje, the name of Jacob Leisler who was to become in 1689 the act- ing governor of New York.
In this sad and dignified petition the people urged Governor Stuyvesant not to reject the offers of 'so generous a foe' but to arrange an 'honorable and reasonable capitulation.' To resist could mean only
. . . misery, sorrow, conflagration, the dishonor of women, murder of children in their cradles, and in a word the absolute ruin and de- struction of about fifteen hundred innocent souls, only two hundred and fifty of whom are capable of bearing arms.
Meanwhile the soldiers who had recently come from Holland, and who were almost all mercenaries, German, French, Scotch, and English, were openly babbling that they knew where plunder could be found if fighting should ensue. Captain John Scott, escaping from the Hartford jail, appeared at the English rendezvous on Long Island with his 'horse and foot'; and, Domine Drisius relates, there also came
. . . daily great numbers on foot and on horseback from New England, hotly bent upon plundering the place. Savages and priva- teers also offered their services against us. Six hundred northern Indians with a hundred and fifty French privateers had even an English commission.
Of course not all of this was true. But it was evident, as Stuyvesant declared, that the English would, 'like the heads of the serpent Hydra, have grown more numerous the more they were lopped off from day to day.' Even he could hesi- tate no longer. Nicolls consented to his request 'to treat of a good accommodation,' pledging himself to 'redeliver' the fort and the city should the powers in Europe so decree ; and on Saturday, September 6, twelve delegates met outside
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the walls in the governor's own bouwerie house and drew up in English an agreement called Articles of Capitulation of the Surrender of New Netherland. Three of the six Dutchmen represented the provincial government and the West India Company - Councillor De Decker, Nicholas Varleth, and the younger Megapolensis; three represented the city - Cornelis Steenwyck an actual burgomaster, Oloff Stevensen Van Cort- landt an 'old burgomaster,' and Jacques Cousseau an 'old schepen.' The six Englishmen were the royal commissioners Carr and Cartwright, Winthrop and Willys of Connecticut, and Pynchon and Clarke of Massachusetts, the New Eng- landers being appointed to sign because, as Nicolls explained, their colonies might be involved should trouble with the Dutch ensue.
The Articles upon which they agreed said that a copy of them signed by Nicolls, with copies of his commission and the Duke of York's patent, should be delivered to Stuyvesant at the 'old mill' - the nearest building to the ferry-landing on Manhattan, well outside the city - by eight o'clock of the Monday morning, and that within two hours thereafter the fort should be surrendered to Colonel Nicolls, the garrison to march out with the honors of war. Nicolls at once in- dorsed the Articles. On Sunday after the second service they were read aloud to the burghers in front of the Stadt Huis. On Monday, the official copy having duly reached Governor Stuyvesant, they were ratified by him, and by De Sille the schout-fiscal, Martin Cregier the chief militia officer of the province, Peter Tonneman the city schout, Burgomaster Van der Grist, Jacobus Backer the president of the board of schepens, and three other schepens - Timotheus Gabry, Isaac Greveraet, and Nicholas De Meyer. The certificate of their ratification, now in the Public Record Office in London, bears the indorsement : 'On the same day the town and fort were delivered accordingly.'
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