USA > New York > New York County > Manhattan > The pioneers of New-York. An anniversary discourse delivered before the St. Nicholas Society of Manhattan, December 6, 1847 > Part 2
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* Morton's New-England Memorial.
t " When they first went to Holland they were known by the name of Brown'sts * The plan they set out upon was not to make a great colony in a Little time. but to preserve a pure and distinct congregation."-Hutchinson.
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rather, their Church and their Lyceum, embodied the Puritans' first ideas of the settlement of a new country, and many of their descendants are unwilling to recognize any other evidence of " freedom, religion, and civilization," as associated with the word "' settlement.".
Now, as it happens, New-York, unfortunately for hier claims by such a test, took exactly opposite ideas from the start, and perversely maintains them to the present day. The asylum of every sect, and eschewing alike the conventicle and the lecture-room, as a basis of civilization, she made the hearth-stone of home the foundation of good citizenship ; and without any reference to identity of doctrine or homogeneous origin, demanding only residence and loyalty to the province from her cosmopolite colonists, she took COMMERCE as her great liberalizer; took it not accidentally, nor with an indirect and incidental view, but clearly and definitely; she explored every river, inlet, and harbor, and made a reconnois- ance of the interior, and established upon her coasts and inland waters, not " a few trading posts," but a whole system of " castles," as the "stations" of the Westein settler were then, and are still called in the language of this State.
How far the policy of New- York and her theory and practice of " settlement" may have fostered " freedom, religion, aud civiliza- tion" within her borders, I may perhaps attempt to show hereafter.
Let us now revert to the historic records which Mr. Brodhead's researches in Europe have recently made the property of this State.
On Saturday the 11th of October, 1614, five years after Hendrick Hudson, in a vessel of eighty tons burthen, had sailed up to the head of tide-water on the river which bears his name, there appeared before a meeting of the States-General convened at the Hague, the deputies of the United Company of Merchants of The United Provinces. They stated, that at great expense and heavy damage to themselves, arising from the loss of vessels during the last year, they had with five ships, owned by them, discovered and explored certain new lands in America between New France and Virginia, which they called New Netherland. They at the same time presented a map of the newly discovered country.
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This, (says Mr. Brodhead,) marks the first official recognition of the existence of New Netherland; its name occurs for the first time in the grant which was made to these merchants to plant here a colony. Of the ships engaged in the exploration, which first gave a map of our coast to the world, one was commanded by John De Witt, another by Adrian Block, a third by Cornelius May. An island in the Hudson river long bore the name of the first of these gallant sailors, and " Block Island " and " Cape May" to this day tell us who were the hardy mariners that first explored them. ~
The two remaining vessels' were severally commanded by Captains Volkertsen and Christiansen. The name of the former has not yet appeared in our annals, but Hendrick Christiansen, (De Laet tells us,) was the first commandant of the first fort erected on Manhattan Island in 1614, and in the same year two other forts were built on the Hudson; one at Esopus and one at the head of navigation near Albany. Six years later, and in the same year that the Puritans touched the rim of the coast at Plymouth, the advanced station of the commercial settlement of this province was on the Mohawk at Schenectady .*
Let me now quote a passage from our historical collections, which sets forth in a still more striking light, the union of com- mercial enterprise and maritime science in these worthy prede- cessors of our present gallant race of New-York ship-masters; and let me invite your special attention to this fact, that within two
" 1616 vers cette annee les Hollandais etablirent le village d'Esopus, qui prit ensuit le nom de Kingston. 1620 establissment, par les mêmes colonistes du village de Schenectady sur la riviere de Mohawk a 15 milles et demi d' Albany."-L' Art de verifier les Dates. See Stuyvesant's indignant protest (of August, 1664,) against the base surprisal and seizure of New-York by the English in a tatar of profound peace, in which he thus marks the date of settlement. "The Dutch came not into these provinces by any violence, but by virtue of & coMMiestoN, by the States-General in 1614, when they settled the North River neur Fort Orange !
Dr. Laet, in mentioning the administration of Christeausen and Elkens prior to the existence of the West India Company and the chartered government, they established here, under a director general, at a later period says, Ita nostri ab anno cIcioc xiv. ad aliquot succeedentes tenuerunt .- Nov. Orb.
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years from the establishment of those trading stations at the head of the Hudson navigation, a thorough coast survey was attempted in a vessel built here in New Netherland, and launched first upon our waters. Here is the record.
On the 18th of August, 1616, Captain Cornelius Hendrickson, of Monichenden, in Holland, appeared before a meeting of the States-General, in behalf of the directors of Now Netherland, situated in America, " between New France and Virginia, and extending from 40 to 45 degrees of North latitude," and made a report of his having discovered and explored certain lands, a bay, and three rivers, situated between 38 and 40 degrees of latitude, in a small yacht of 16 tons burthen, named the "Onrust," (RESTLESS,) which had been built there. IIe also presented to the States- General a descriptive map of the countries he had discovered and explored. This map is drawn on parchment, about two feet long and eighteen- inches wide, and is executed in the most elegant style of art. It shows, very accurately, (says Mr. Brod- head,) the situation of the coast from Nova Scotia to the Capes of Virginia, and the discoveries then made in Long Island Sound, and in the neighborhood of Manhattan. A fac-simile of this map is now in the office of the Secretary of State at Albany. And the register of the first vessel of which we have any account, built and belonging to the port of New-York, should never be forgotten by any true tarpaulin that sails from our harbor. The Indian term Manhattanuk, meaning, " the people of the whirlpool,"* has been thought still whimsically significant of our present municipal char- acter, but still more prophetic is the name of the first vessel built by white men in this State, 230 years ago. Yes, "the Restless " was the pioneer craft of this fevered metropolis, whose eager commerce now " pushes its wharves into the sea, blocks up the wide rivers with its fleets, and, sending its ships, the pride of naval architecture, to every clime, defies every wind, outstrides every tempest, and invades every zone."t
* Schoolcraft.
t Bancroft, as quoted by Brodhead, in this connection .- Discourse before the New-York Historical Society.
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The fur trade, the early nursery of the hardihood of New Netherland, and her favorite sphere of adventure, long after she passed to the British rule, was now boldly entered upon and prosecuted for a while with singular success. In 1620, as we have already said, a trading station was erected at Schenectady, and two years after the landing of the Mayflower, when Morton arrived in New England in 1622, he tells us that the colonists of the Hudson had already exported the worth of twenty thousand pounds sterling from the forests of New-York. The advanced post on the Mohawk brought the colonists in contact with the nearest of the confederated cantons of the Iroquois; and then began that league with this singular republic of the Red Man, which endured till the acts of England in the Revolution first arrayed the Iroquois against the patriot citizens of New-York, who took up arms in the war of Independence.
The whole imports from 1624 to 1627, were valued at forty- six thousand dollars, while the exports exceeded sixty-eight thou- sand dollars .*
Three years afterwards, (1630,) the condition of the settlements on the Hudson are described by a cotemporary English writer as " knowne to subsist in a comfortable manner, and to promise fairlie both to the State and the undertakers. The cause is evident :- the men whom they carrie, though they be not many, are well chosen and known to be useful and serviceable; and they second them with seasonable and fit supplies, cherishing them as carefully as their own families, and employing them in profitable labors that are knowne to be of speciall use to their comfortable subsistence."f And in. 1632 Captain Mason of New Plymouth writes to the English Secretary of State, that " the Dutch on the river of Man- ahatta have built shippes there, whereof one was sent into Holland of 600 tons or thereabouts ; and have made sundry good returns of commodities from theme into Holland. Especially this year have they returned fifteen thousand beaver skins, besides other articles."}
* Moulton's " Novum Belgium."
t See Planter's Plea, London, 1630.
# Brodhead's London Doc.
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In 163S the trade as well as the cultivation of the soil of New Netherland was by the formal act of the States-General, thrown open to every person whether denizen or foreigner .*
From this period, although still but a hamlet, dates that cosmo- politan character which soon marked the future metropolis of the Union, more decidedly even at that early day, that it did more populous neighborhoods. The colony often languished from the inefficiency of its rulers; bat that very imbecility of rule left the character of the people to develope through their own individual enterprise; and while all strangers were welcome among them, the New-Yorkers of that day asked nothing from the new comer save that he should show he was identified with " this country," as they already began to term their province, by accepting a grant of land, and laying a hearth-stone with the rest. Their whole idea of homogenousness, of clanship, of conservatism, seemed based upon the notion of each denizen having a homestead of his own. Their ingenious modification of the feudatory spirit, transferred to the State the homage and loyalty which pure feudalism gave to the prince or the baron; and this, as I shall show hereafter, was the intended correction of any abuse of the cosmopolitan spirit induced by their theory of citizenship-a theory as different from that of the English as is the bond of marriage from the filial tie.
Learning, meanwhile, which already began to flourish in New. England, was sadly neglected in New-York, as literature is now ; while commerce, as now, was the one idea of the Knickerbockers as much as a peculiar Church had been the one idea of the veritable Pilgrims. Now, which of these ideas was first established here ? which of these ideas has been most steadily carried out up to the present moment ?
Why they whose literature now gives law to the mind of so many American communities, brought over with them the doctrines of the Dutch Armenius, stowed away in the hold of the Mayflower to puzzle their own minds; the home inheritors of their peculiar Church and College privileges, are now the first to embrace the
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* O'Callaghan.
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questionings of every new dogma, and impinge it with Puritanic intolerance upon others; while the two noblest edifices upon the continent, consecrated to the Faith of the original Pilgrims, are now reared beneath the wing of Commerce in the " New Netherland " islands of Manhattan and Nassau .*
THE EARLY CIVIL PRIVILEGES OF NEW-YORK offer indeed a most interesting field of inquiry. The political question of " Na- tivism," as it is called, (which was broad, generous, and republican, as compared with the question now pressing upon us; that of the Puritan Anglo-Saxon, or any other foreign race claiming to be the chief representatives and only interpreters of the genius of our institutions,) finds no support in the early doctrines of New-York ; though the spirit which influenced some of the upholders of nativism is deeply ingrained in her unwritten constitution, That spirit, while freely recognizing to the uttermost the cosmopolitan principle already indicated, sedulously guarded against its abuse by exacting from all new comers the most solemn and comprelien- sive oath of allegiance to the commonwealth here. Like the marriage rite in some schools of faith; this allegiance carried with it the sanction of a sacrament, in the modified feudal views of that day. It was an allegiance, not to doctrine nor opinion, which seems to be the existing theory of citizenship among some of our wise politicians, but to the State itself; whose loyal liegeman each foreign candidate for citizenship became, as the first condition of that political marriage which was intended wholly to supersede the filial tie of " Father-land."
Many were the New Englanders, as I shall hereafter show. who, seeking for " a fair field and no favor," availed themselves of this broad but clearly defined platform, to rise to consideration in New-York; many who never dreamed that the condition of loyalty to the pride and dignity of the commonwealth under which they won preferment here, would be set aside by their modern country- men in order to prove that New-York was a province of New England.
* The "Church of the Puritans" on Union Square, and the "Church of the Pilgrims" on Brooklyn Heights.
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We must now-in order to see how far the rights of a freeman were guarantied to her citizens, at the very inception of the political history of the State-we must now briefly revert to the country whence came her first pioneers of many races and every religious persuasion.
" No part of Europe contains half the number of beautiful cities, towns, aud villages, all distinguished by an air of neatness peculiar to Holland * * *. The civil wars in France, the troubles in Germany, and the religious persecutions every where, crowded the provinces with ingenious mechanics and artists; because here they might practise the dictates of conscience, and enjoy the fruits of industry in security and repose. New manufactories were every day erected, and trades too big for individuals, were conducted to advantage by joint-stocks. During a bloody contest that continued for forty years, the republic attained the highest pitch of grandeur -the freedom of the press was thorough and universal-and not- withstanding the magistrates were themselves the subjects of the keenest pasquinades, they opposed every proposition to shackle it The colonists composed the body of the people, but Jews, Mahomedans, Armenians, and Brownists, were permitted the free exercise of their religion * * * a sedulous regard to freedom appears in every part of their constitution. This Republic of Holland, composed of seven provinces, each enjoying its own independent privileges, the State may be termed a confederacy, united by one common interest. The seven provinces are all separate republics, acknowledging no authority, subordinate to no other power save that vested in their particular States. Even the provinces them- selves are divided into smaller republics, [our present township and district system.] Every city possesses certain sovereign privi. leges: Her provincial States cannot seize an offender, pardon a crime, or frame laws within the jarisdiction of a city. Every thing relative to itself and unconnected with the rest of the province, is transacted by its own magistrates. $ * The union of the seven provinces may be compared to the union of several princes, formed for their mutual security, repose, and defence. Each preserves his own sovereignty, while he enters upon certain engagements
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peculiar to the confederacy. * * * The government favors no curious inquiry into the faith of any man. * * At Amsterdam every sect known in Europe, almost in the world, hath its public meetings; all are citizens associated by the bonds of society and government, under the important protection of indifferent laws, with equal encouragement of arts, industry, and genius, and equal freedom of sentiment, speculation, and inquiry."*
Such was the European Republic from which came the pioneers of New-York; in the heart of which State already existed the only aboriginal Republic known among the Red Race of this continent. An aboriginal Republic, which, by Cadwallader Colden, writing one hundred years ago, is most curiously assimilated to the Re- public of Holland; the accomplished tory writer never dreaming the while, he was proving that a pure Republican system, whether imported or indigenous, secmed intended by Providence to stamp the genius of our institutions from the first.t
* Sir William Temple, Basnage, and others, quoted in the " Universal History," vol. xi. fol. ed. London, 1762. This work, so favorably mentioned by Dr. Johnena is Clarke's favorite authority in his Commentaries on the Bible.
t The parallel drawn by Colden is worth quoting in this commection:
" This FIVE NATIONS, (the Iroquois of New-York,) consist of so many tribrv es nations joined together by a league or confederacy, like THE UNITED Peouisets (of Holland,) and without any superiority of one over the other. This union hat continued so long, that the Christians know nothing of the original of it. The people of it are known by the English names of Mohawks, Oneydoes, Onandacute, Cayugas, and Senekas. Each of these nations is again divided into three tribes ce families, who distinguish themselves by three different arms or ensigns, and the sachems put this ensign or mark of their family to every public paper when they sign it. Each of these nations is an absolute republic by itself, and every cated in each nation makes an independent republic, and (as in our existing towirhp and district system) is governed in all public affairs by its own sachems. The authorty of these rulers is gained by and consists wholly in the opinion the rest of tar natron have of their wisdom and integrity. They strictly follow, (Eke the Hollanders, ) one maxim, formerly used by the Romans, to increase their strength, that is, they encourage the people of other nations to incorporate with them."
" A distinguished feature of their character, (says De Witt Clinton,) was an exalted spirit of liberty, which scouted with equal indignity at domestic or foreign control. " WE ARE BORN FREE !" said Garangula, a century before the identical"
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Let us now sce how the first white Republicans of New-York carried out the eclectic principle of citizenship, already indigenous to the soil of this State, as shown by Colden; how "they encour- aged the people of other nations to incorporate with them," and how the rights and privileges accorded to all men of all nations in Holland, were guarantied to settlers of every country in this State.
The first chartered city in the colony was our present metro- polis, and the avowed object of her first charter is to establish a government, wherein the citizens shall choose their magistrates and a representative council annually. (Dunlap.) This charter dates in the month of May, 1621. That is, within seven years of the first active measures which had been taken and effectually carried out for planting the colony of the Hudson. That wide- spread colony, being already so advanced as to require a central government, which should erect it into a province.
The trading " stations" previously planted on the Hudson, which are at this day populous towns, had each already become the nucleus of a " settlement," and in the municipal government, two systems, essentially different, obtained.
In the colonies, as the settlements removed from Manhattan were called, the superintending power was in several instances lodged in one individual known as the patroon. This " patroon,"'
words were penned by the immortal Jefferson. With this republic of native freemen on our own soil, a formal league was contracted at Schenectady in the year 1620, by the first European republicans who ever trod this soil, and these last came from the United Provinces, which the acute-minded and sagacious Colden recognized as the nearest type of this then only existing American Confederacy. That New-York league, though often tested by the dire invasions of the French, existed unbroken through one hundred and fifty years of the colonial history of this State. Let the speculative reader now revert to the spirit of the institutions of either section of that league as here traced by other pens than mine, and then turn to the Constitution of New- York for the year 1846, in which the best features common to both re-appear, and he must acknowledge that there is no necessity for . New-Yorkers, whether of to-day or of two hundred years ago, looking either to Connecticut or to New Plymouth for the genius of New-York institutions. (See an interesting paper on this subject by the zealous antiquarian Giles F. Gates, Esq.)
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who at his own expense imported hither the settlers upon his manor-grant, was the immediate vassal of the State, and wa. responsible to that sovereign authority for the conduct of the tenants upon his manor. In return for their obedience to the ac: of his special courts, edicts, and ordinances, the patroon was bound to protect his colonists against the surrounding Indian tribes and all other aggressors, and the colonists had the right to address themselves by appeal to the supreme authority at Manhattan, in case they were either aggrieved or oppressed by said patroon.
But this provision for drawing capital into the country by the erection of manors, constituted only a single feature in the general system of colonial government, which was erected upon the follow. ing basis :--
" Those colonists who shall form within their limits such a settlement of people as to constitute hamlets, villages, or even cities, shall obtain in such case, middle and lower jurisdiction, and the same rights as manors in Holland, and shall in like manner be capacitated to bear and use the names and tilles thercof; and the qualified persons* of such cities, villages, and hamlets, shall in such case, be authorized to nominate for the office of magistrates, a double number of persons, wherefrom a selection shall be made by the director and council ; and justice shall be administered in these hamlets, villages, and cities, according to the style and order of the Provinces of Holland, and the cities and manors thereof; to which end the courts shall follow, as far as the same is possible. the ordinances received here in New Amsterdam."
Now I would ask you, if our boasted " Anglo-Saxon " township system offers any thing freer than this ? or if there be any chatter found in the colonial history of America, establishing more clearly the privileges of a colonist, whether viewed in reference to the town in which he lived, or to the whole province, or to the mother country ?
Well then does the historian of New Netherlandt say, that
* I can only gather from the spirit of the institutions of Holland, as pourtrayed upon a previous page, that each town settled the qualification of its own voters. t Dr. O'Callaghan.
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" it is to the Republic of Holland, and the wise and beneficent modification of the feudal code, which obtained these, and not to the puritanic idea of popular freedom introduced from Connecticut, as some incorrectly claim,* that New Netherland and the several towns within its confines were indebted for whatever municipal privileges they enjoyed. The charters under which they were. planted were essentially Dutch, and not of Connecticut origin; and those who look to New England as the source of popular privileges in New Netherland, fall therefore into a grievous error, sanctioned neither by law nor history."
But the Englishmen of two hundred years ago themselves best recognized the freedom of New Netherland by crowding hither, as to an asylum of liberty; by aiding to plant an infant State under this very charter, and by taking the oath of allegiance, which identified them and their descendants with the existing franchises and future prosperity of the commonwealth of which they formed a part, and with all the memories and pride of the sovereign State of New-York.
Founded, as this Society is, upon those associations which mark our independent existence, whether as a colony, a province, or a state, without any reference to the extraction of its members,t whether Hollander, Huguenot, English, or Hindostanee, it may still be interesting to mention a few of the diverse peoples which, in the early days of New-York, were again and again grafted in among the three races which form the basis of the Knickerbocker stock. For the three great eras of New-York colonization are its first commercial planting by the Hollanders; its becoming the principal asylum of the Huguenots in America after the revocation of the edict of Nantes ; and the influx of Cavalier and anti-Puritan English, after it became a province of the British Stuarts .¿
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